Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games or its characters. I just put them into a time machine so I can play with them here.


Chapter 2: Strangers in a Strange Land

"Kaaat-niiiiss," I could barely register the hushed voice singing into my ear. Assuming it was just the voice of the disembodied smile that was haunting my disturbing dream, I chose to ignore it. "Katniss!" the persistent voice repeated, now hissing at me. After I had continued to disregard it, I felt a shove – a very real shove – and woke up with a start.

"Prim! What is the matter with you?" I scowled at her, wiping my slimy, saliva-coated cheek on my t-shirt sleeve. As much as I wanted to savor our very first plane ride, the turbulence had put me on edge and gave me a terrible headache. After the lady in front of me turned for the third time to give me a dirty look for shaking her seat with my nervous leg twitch, my mother finally suggested I try to sleep off the rest of the trip. She even went as far as to provide me with a Benadryl to sedate me.

Unaffected by my foul mood, Prim's eyes glowed bright as she peeked out the oval window and pointed downward. "Look! We're here."

I leaned over her to get a better view out the tiny window. The plane continued to descend, allowing visual access to the blue expanse beyond the puffs of clouds, but this blue was not the uniformed sky we had been staring at for two hours (before I fell asleep for the following four); this blue rippled and undulated until it met the sandy edge of the land. The plane was turning over the water, heading back over the land towards the airport.

The sick feeling I had earlier was starting to come back to me as the plane continued its gradual slope downward. I swallowed hard to attempt to push down the lump that had formed in my throat. My ears were abruptly bombarded with the loud whirring of the plane's engine, the rattle of the baggages in the overhead compartments, and Prim's squeals of delight. Something about palm trees.

The plane finally touched down on the tarmac with a rough jolt, enough to cause me to grip my mother's hand so hard, I left indentations where my nails had planted themselves. She didn't seem to be bothered by the sudden death grip I had placed on her body. In fact, she seemed somewhat pleased that I actually made physical contact with her. I hated to give her that satisfaction, but I was feeling so distressed, I couldn't find control of the proper muscles to let go.

As soon as the plane slowed down and began its casual taxi down the runway, I immediately broke contact with her and busied myself with staring out the window. It wasn't long before the cabin filled with the sounds of passengers on their cell phones, telling whoever was on the other end that they had arrived in Los Angeles safely. Some were arranging meeting areas, others were already missing those they left behind. I couldn't help but wonder if Gale was back home, waiting by his phone for me to call him and let him know we'd arrived. Thankfully, no one in my family owned a cell phone, so I was excused for the time being.

This feeling I was having towards Gale was so foreign to me. We'd always had a very open and comfortable friendship. There were no secrets between us… at least I didn't think there was. But whatever was going through his mind that motivated him to kiss me was completely unknown to me. Now, after one 2-second gesture, I began feeling nervous – my stomach churned, my heart raced, my cheeks flushed – at the very thought of him. And I couldn't even figure out if my involuntary response was a good thing or a bad thing. All I knew was that our friendship was irrevocably altered last night. I had gone to his house clinging to our last few moments of closeness and now I was taking refuge in the 2,200 miles between us. Maybe this summer away was going to be a good thing. Maybe I just needed to have some time to myself, away from Gale, to figure things out. Or not. I was perfectly okay with avoidance.

After we'd successfully disembarked the plane, we honed in on a woman holding a yellow paper that read "Everdeen". She wasn't dressed in a suit or sporting a driver's cap. She was a petite woman clad in pink velour sweatpants, dark pink tank top, and sequined platform sandals, her platinum blonde hair, piled high on her head in a messy bun. She looked to be in her early 30's, but she could've been much older judging by how much "work" she had obviously had done.

"Mrs. Everdeen?" she asked after lowering her oversized Dior sunglasses to make eye contact with my mother.

My mother's eyes bulged in surprise. "Please, call me Annalise," she replied, offering her hand to shake.

"Annalise it is. I'm EuphemiaTrinket – everyone just calls me 'Effie'. I'm so happy to welcome you to California. I'm sure you and your daughters are totally going to love it here." Her bright white smile flashed in stark contrast to her artificially tanned skin.

"Forgive my alarm. For some reason, I was expecting Dr. Trinket to be a man. The personnel director I spoke to was referring to the Chief of Staff as 'he,'" my mother stated.

Effie let out a soft chuckle. "Oh, no, I'm not Dr. Trinket. Leopold Trinket is my husband. He called me not too long ago as I was just getting out of Pilates class – hence the outfit. Ugh, I would never go out like this normally to, like, meet a stranger! Gosh, no! He was held up in surgery, so he asked me to come pick you guys up, so I just raced on over here without changing because I hate being late for anything." Effie spoke a mile a minute, with dramatic emphasis and gestures. There was something about her that rubbed me the wrong way. She was too dramatic, too perky, too… tan. Was this what everyone was like in California?

We waited at the bustling baggage claim area as luggage after luggage spilled out onto the rotating carousel. Prim was wide eyed and mesmerized by the novelty, watching with anticipation for our tattered old suitcases to make an appearance. Truth be told, I was pretty impressed myself, but I didn't want to look like a naïve idiot, giggling and gasping at everything around me. We waited at least twenty minutes for our belongings to finally make an appearance. Effie kept looking at her watch and mumbling something about parking costs. She had some random passerby stack our suitcases onto a cart then escorted us towards the parking structure.

I stopped in my tracks when we finally stepped outside. The air was slightly salty and the sun caressed my skin. It wasn't the thick, stifling heat that was characteristic of June day in Detroit. The voices I was vaguely aware of were receding into the distance. When my eyes reopened, the three of my companions were already in the middle of the crosswalk prompting me to run to catch up.

It turned out I'd have plenty of time to drink in the sunshine and cool breeze. Effie helped us into her silver convertible before driving off down the highway with the top down.

"How far away is our apartment from here?" my mother asked, trying to make conversation.

"Oh, not too far. Just gotta head up the 405 to the 10. Maybe, like, 20 to 30 minutes, depending on traffic. The morning rush hour should be over, but here in L.A., you just never know! The odds never seem to be in my favor!" Effie kept spewing out words and numbers that had no meaning to us. I caught my mother's expression in the side mirror and I could tell she was wondering if she'd ever get used to the customs of this place.

As we headed to our temporary home, I pulled the rubber band from the end of my braid, shook my head to loosen the strands and let my hair tangle in the wind.

"Do you miss Gale yet?" Prim shouted over the whooshing sounds. I returned her question with a confused glare.

"Gale?" Prim nodded. My hand reached over the side of the car and weaved through the moving air. "Gale who?"


"I know you were probably expecting something nicer. If it were up to me and Leopold, we'd put you up at the Ritz-Carlton, but unfortunately, the hospital budget is tight, so this is what they gave you." Effie opened the door to a quaint one-bedroom apartment, already furnished with simple necessities – a small dining table with two chairs, a green sofa bed, a television – which is now a luxury we haven't had in a long time - and a queen size bed and dresser in the bedroom. The place wasn't much smaller than our apartment back home, so we weren't exactly disappointed in it. Effie had nothing to apologize for. It occurred to me that, by the standards she was used to, this place wasn't up to par, but she clearly was not aware of the life we were accustomed to living. This "Ritz-Carlton" she spoke of probably exceeded any extent of our imaginations anyway.

"No, it's perfectly fine," my mother assured her.

"Cool. Well, I'll pick you up for your first day tomorrow morning, but there is a pamphlet on the kitchen counter with the bus schedule as well as a few take out menus, and a list of phone numbers you might need. Our home number is on there, but let me…" Effie grabbed a purple pen from her purse and began jotting something down on the paper. "… there is my cell phone number. Call me if you or the girls need anything. As you might have noticed, I don't usually have anything very pressing to do with my days except for the occasional party planning. Such is the life of a doctor's wife!" She let out a sigh that had Prim and me rolling our eyes and giggling.

"Thank you for the ride and all the assistance, Mrs. Tri – Effie," my mother said, seeing the perky woman out the door. After she had left, my mother turned to us and pointed to the single bedroom. "You girls go ahead and unpack. You can share the room and I'll take the sofa bed. I just need to take care of something first."

Her voice sounded a bit weary and nervous, but we complied without question. Prim and I began unpacking our suitcases and finding homes for our clothing and personal effects.

"So what do you think of California so far?" she inquired. I caught a glimpse of our mother in the kitchen, nervously pacing and gripping the phone tightly.

"Uh, great. It's nice," I answered apathetically, my attention still fixated on my mother's phone call. I couldn't make out what she was saying or who she could be talking to, but her face was very intense and anxious and her body language was cowering.

"… the airport?" I caught the tail end of whatever Prim had been prattling on about.

I didn't want to hurt her feelings by letting her know I wasn't listening, so I just answered generically, "Uh-huh, yeah." My mother's face seemed to have relaxed a bit and I could see a trace of a smile begin to form at the corner of her mouth. She nodded hesitantly before she finally hung up the phone.

"When?" Prim looked up at me.

"When what?" I finally turned to give her my full attention.

"When are you going to call Gale? You told him, when he dropped us off at the airport, that you were going to call him," she clarified.

My face heated up and I averted my gaze from hers. "Oh, umm, whenever. It's no big deal. I'm sure he's not waiting by the phone or anything. I'll just call him later or something."

"By the way he looked at you when we were leaving, I think he probably is waiting for your call."

"What look?" I asked incredulously.

Prim looked up as if searching her memory for the image. "Like a little kid that lost his balloon to the sky." I had no idea how to respond to what Prim had just said. "I think Gale kind of likes you, Katniss," she added quietly.

I scoffed unconvincingly, trying to ward off her suspicions. "Of course he likes me, Prim. We're best friends."

"Not like that way. I think he –" Prim stopped short of finishing her thought when our mother stepped into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. "Mom? What wrong?"

"Girls, I'd like to talk to you about something…"

She prefaced the discussion with a background story Prim and I had already heard many times in our lifetime. Whenever we'd ask about our grandparents, she always told us about how she grew up with a dad that was a successful doctor and a mother who was a quiet, dutiful wife. Their family was pretty well off. My mother became a nurse because her father had pressured her into getting into the medical field, but she did not want to go through so many years of schooling, so she opted for nursing instead. She had a younger brother who was accepted into Harvard Medical School just before she met my father and got married. Her father was so disappointed in her decision to marry a man who was of a lower socio-economic class. He felt that my father wouldn't be able to provide for his family. Consequently, my mother cut her ties with my grandfather and they hadn't spoken to each other in eighteen years.

"So I just got off the phone with your grandmother. They're here in California now. They've been here for the past five years and I thought that it would be a good opportunity to see them again… for them to meet you two." We stared blankly at her. "But only if you're okay with it. If you don't want to, we don't have to."

"Yes!" Prim exclaimed excitedly, catching both of us off guard. "We finally get to meet our grandparents? When?"

"Well, tonight, actually. They've invited us to meet them for dinner. Katniss? What do you think?"

"Why now? Because daddy's gone, now we're good enough for them?" I spat out without thinking.

"Honey, I was very angry at them for how they treated him, but it's my fault more than anybody's that they haven't contacted you. I was the one that cut them out. I just feel like this is a good opportunity to mend my relationship with my parents. This trip would be a great time to finally let go of my resentment and forgive them." She looked me squarely in the eye and her subtext was not lost on me. She was forgiving her parents in hopes it would get me to forgive her.

"I guess," I mumbled softly.

"Yes?" she asked hopefully.

"Yeah, sure." She pulled Prim and me into a constricting hug. I don't know what it is about our relationships with our parents. No matter how old we get or how much they disappoint us, we never stop trying to please them.


My stomach had been tied in knots for hours by the time I finally decidedly to call Gale. I was afraid he'd bring up the big question looming between us during our call, but my need to talk to someone about our impending introduction to our grandparents far outweighed the anxiety I felt about talking to Gale.

"Hey, Catnip! I was starting to think I'd hear about some plane crashing on its way to California! What took you so long?" he asked casually.

"Oh, umm… just had a lot to do when we got here," I lied, then quickly added before the conversation could turn to less desirable subject matters, "But yeah, we're here safe and sound. The weather's gorgeous, the people are tan, our apartment is cozy."

"Oh. Sounds great?" he replied awkwardly. "So nothing eventful happened yet? No earthquakes or anything?" Thankfully, he seemed to understand the need to put the issue aside.

"No, no earthquakes. But something big is going on tonight."

"Big?"

"Yeah. We're, uh, going to meet our grandparents for the first time." I finally let out the breath I had been holding in.

"The stuck up,'bourgie', estranged grandparents? They're in California? I thought your mom was from Boston?" I was relieved by Gale's ability to slip back into our normal roles.

"I guess they came out here five years ago. How my mom knew about that, I'm not sure, but apparently we're having dinner with them at some hoity-toity country club in an hour." I picked up my nicest blouse from the closet, as per my mother's request, and placed it on the bed next to the grey slacks I had bought for a job interview at the library back home.

"And you're not excited about this?" Gale asked.

I thought honestly about this question for a few moments. "I don't know. I guess it was just easier to accept that they weren't a part of our lives because of my mom's choice. I just don't want to meet them and have them reject us for us. Prim and I are my dad's daughters and I'm just like him. What if –"

"Now you stop right there," Gale interjected. "Money doesn't buy class. Just remember that. You Everdeens are the best kind of people I know, so when you walk into that 'hoity-toity country club', you hold your head up. People like that, they just put on a show. That's all they want."

I couldn't help but smile at Gale's reliable prejudice against rich folks. "Alright, thanks for the pep talk, Gale. I should get ready to go now. Mom and Prim have been ready for the past twenty minutes and they're starting to pace."

We hung up after a half-hearted promise to keep in touch and I slipped into the outfit I had laid out. I re-braided my long, dark hair, and slung it back over my shoulder. Makeup was never my thing, but I couldn't help but feel the need to primp myself for the company I was sharing tonight. After a few minutes debate, I finally settled on a quick brush of mascara and a swipe of lip gloss.


"The Sunset Shores Country Club is a sprawling resort that boasts a 100-acre, world-renown golf course, 16 tennis courts, two Olympic-sized salt water swimming pools, 4-mile walking trail, and private beach access. For our valued members, the resort also includes a 5-star restaurant, full-service spa, a 56 guest room lodge, as well as 8 fully functioning executive bungalows…" Prim read from the club's brochure as we waited in the restaurant's foyer.

"Wow, it sounds like we'd totally fit in here," I added sarcastically.

A hostess approached us and my mother told her we were here with the Solomon party. It was funny that, in all the years of not knowing our grandparents, I never thought to even ask their names. The hostess led us to a table situated in an outdoor patio in the back overlooking the sun setting into the Pacific Ocean. My eyes wandered away from the breath-taking view to the couple that stood from the table to greet us.

The first to draw towards us was an older gentleman with ashy brown hair, greying on the edges, his blue eyes serious and thoughtful but neither friendly nor threatening. The woman with him looked almost exactly like my mother. She obviously had to be much older than my mother, but stress and depression had worn my mother down with wrinkles way beyond her age and this woman clearly had not worked a day in her life.

"Annalise?" her voice cracked. My mother quickly surrendered into her mother's arms, allowing this strange woman access to her vulnerability. The image stunned me, but not as much as what she said next. "Oh, my little girl!"

"Mom, I'm hardly a little girl anymore. Let me introduce you and Dad to my little girls – this is my eldest, Katniss; she's sixteen. And Primrose who is twelve now." My mother stood between us, placing a tentative hand on each of our shoulders. "Girls, these are my parents – your grandparents – Conrad and Lillith Solomon."

Our grandfather shook our hands awkwardly and our grandmother followed with a bone-crushing embrace. We soon retreated to our seats, taking our etiquette cues from the elderly couple across from us – unfolding the cloth napkins onto our laps and dipping our fingers into the tiny bowls of water set before us. Prim and I exchanged puzzled looks.

"Annalise, dear," my grandfather finally broke the icy silence, "your mother tells me you're here in California on temporary assignment?"

My mother nodded timidly. "Yes, a three month stay at St. Vincent's."

"Really? Where are you all staying?" he asked curiously.

"The hospital has put us up in a modest one-bedroom apartment near the facility."

"Oh dear, I simply couldn't have my girls living in squalor!" he exclaimed without filter.

Both my mother and grandmother looked at him in appalled.

"Conrad, honey…" my grandmother began.

"Dad, it can hardly be considered squalor. It's really perfectly alright," mother attempted to defend herself.

I could help but let out an amused snicker. "If you think that's 'squalor', you should see what our place is like in Michigan."

"Katniss!" my mother hissed at me. I looked at her with feigned innocence as I was completely aware of the cloud of discomfort I brought to the table.

"Are we ready to order?" the waiter interrupted just in time. I hid my face behind the menu to avoid further eye contact with the adults at the table. "And you, Miss?"

Remembering Gale's advice, I held my head up with pride and said in my most polite voice, "Yes, I'll be having the lamb stew."

The waiter stood there staring at me for several moments causing my previously confident decorum to begin cowering with uneasiness.

"Katniss? Katniss Everdeen?"


A/N: Thank you for all the reviews and alerts! Please continue to keep them coming as they do give me motivation and helps me sort my thoughts. Basically, Reviews = next chapter update!

I know this chapter might have felt a little slow. It's really just setting things up and situating our protagonist. I'm hoping you're still sticking with me. I kind of felt like the books each had some slow starts too, but they were all well worth it in the end.

Tell me your thoughts! What did you think of this Effie? I know she's a little different, but this isn't the Capitol. I had to make her the Southern California version of herself. Also, I'm not from Los Angeles, so if you're from there and you're reading this, pardon any inaccurate names or locations.

One last thing – looking for someone to beta for me. For the most part, I'm usually okay with the spelling, punctuations, and grammar stuff, but it always helps to have a second pair of eyes to catch mistakes! What I'm really looking for someone to help with story continuity, flow, etc. If you're interested, please PM me. Thanks!

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