The next few weeks go by agonizingly slow. Posy spends all her time listening to those damn CDs, and all she talks about is Madge. It makes me sick. I almost start to resent her, Madge, I mean. She's so fake, that smile and that attitude like nothing matters. It breaks my heart, honestly, because it felt so real. The way she picked up that old camera and smiled like she'd just found what she's been looking for her whole life. I've looked at that picture every day.
Every time Posy is watching TV, I make sure to join her. She never fails to smirk as I sit beside her, and maybe she's doing it for the right reasons. Yeah, Madge is pretty. She's funny. She's charming. And yeah, I acted like a twelve-year-old with a schoolyard crush that night. But I can't shake the overwhelming falseness that just radiates off of her with each word she says on the damned screen. Of course, the Capitol citizens, Caesar, even Posy, they don't detect it. But I do, and it annoys the hell out of me.
"Oh, I've told you!" she giggles on screen one day. "He's not my boyfriend!"
Though she's been asked about me nearly every time I watch, they never show the photos they surely took of me; they never mention my name. I wonder why. Still, each allusion to us shocks through my veins.
One day when I've decided to actually nap for once, Posy bursts into my room just as I'm drifting off to sleep.
"Gale! Gale!" she exclaims, bouncing on the bed. I groan. "What?" Fuck," I mumble under my breath. "Pose, I just about fell asleep." She stops jumping and falls back on the bed, hair touseled. "Sorry," she says, unphased. "But Madge is coming back again! Tomorrow night!"
Ah, right. Just when I stop watching, overanalyzing, caring. "That's great, Pose," I groan, trying to hide my excitement. As much as Madge has been getting under my skin, I need to talk to her. "Can we," she starts bouncing again, her words becoming staccato. "go-and-see-her-again-be-cause-I-really-really-want-to!" she jumps off my bed and the house rattles; I hear my mother shout her name. "Sorry!" she yells back. "Please?"
"Alright, Posy," I mumble. "Just let me go back to sleep."
She kisses my forehead before bounding out the door. "Six o'clock!" she cheers before shutting it.
Posy greets me again the next night with equal vigor as she had the night before. We get to the Hall in a flash, and again, we're in the front row. Tonight Madge wears a long black gown covered in dead-looking flowers; a white collar folds down above her collarbone, matching cuffs at the end of black, transparent sleeves. Though her appearance is dark, she greets the audience again with the same happiness, same gratefulness, same awe. Her stage-grin is back, and it stings now, because I know how watery and breakable it is. Her songs are darker; the piano sounds like thunder, floods, fire.
"I just wanted to say something," she says at the end, her speech void of any "um"s tonight. "I want you all to know that I love you."
Cheering. I still don't. Not because I'm dumbstruck, but because I'm confused. Tonight there's no waving. She just smiles, mouth closed, and wipes a single tear from her eye. Then she slinks back behind the curtain like she accidentally fell out onstage.
"She sounded sad," Posy says when we're walking home. "Yeah," I agree. "I guess when you have cameras following you around all the time and all of Panem watching your every move you can get a little stressed." Posy shrugs. "I wish I could be like her."
We've reached the front door. I peck her cheek. "You're fine the way you are, Pose." She starts up the front steps. "I'll be back again later. I've got some things to do in town," I lie. I need to go back and find Madge again when there's no time limit; I need to know why.
"Okay, Gale," Posy says, confused. "I'll tell Mom. Should we save you dinner?"
I laugh to cover up the tension. "Sure. Love you."
"Mhm," my little sister mumbles as she shuts the door. "See you."
Again I ask for Madge at the counter. Again I sprint towards the door; different room this time. I'm in a hall, and I'm confused; but then I see a door with her name on it, and I knock.
"Come in," Madge's voice chirps. I open the door softly. It won't help for me to appear crazed. She turns around in her swivel chair and I see her visibly deflate. She's changed; denim shorts and a black-and-white-striped sweater nearly big enough to fit me. Her hair spills over her shoulders and her makeup is smeared across her face.
"Sit," she says coldly. "Want a drink?"
"What do you have?" I say, trying to match her tone. "Wine," she deadpans. She walks over to a small red fridge in the corner of the room. "Do you want your insides to burn or do you want to wake up tomorrow with the worst headache you'll ever have in your life?"
Her bluntness catches me off guard. "Um, water?" I reply. "You're boring," she says, almost laughing. She grabs a water bottle and tosses it at me.
She sits down in the chair again and I take a seat on the overstuffed green couch across from her. "The book," she quips.
"Yeah." Silence. " 'Few weeks,' you said. Here I am."
"Hawthorne," the way she says it makes me shudder. "I'm not from District One."
I laugh bitterly. "Hell, Undersee, I didn't even know that was a thing." Calling her "Undersee" makes me uncomfortable. "Why do you lie like that?"
She reaches for a flask, taking a drink from it. "That's not important." More silence. "So, the book. I, um, I've been writing in it since...since I was about fifteen years old." I study her face. Sadness, confusion; a hint of bitterness. "I don't like talking about this..."
I see tears prick in her eyes. "Just tell me who you are," I supply. "Let's start there."
"Well, I was the mayor's daughter, for one thing," she grins. "Don't know how you missed that." "Never went in to town," I reply. "I told Katniss that I didn't deal with townies. I knew there'd always be a few of you willing to rat us out for some extra money." She snorts. "Not like you needed it, anyway."
"Shit, Hawthorne, if you're just going to insult my childhood then get the hell out of here." There's a hint of humor in her voice. "You never went to school here either," I continue, nervously chugging my water. "Music school in the Capitol," she explains. Her voice is becoming hoarse. "My father told me that if I was going to be an annoying little brat with my damn piano playing that I might as well make something out of it." Something aches inside of me. My parents would never talk to me like that. "So I did. And he's just a poor little bastard hiding in 11 somewhere regretting ever having hurt me."
I flinch. "He hit you?"
"No," she says, though she hesitates. "But the words he used, they were enough."
I nod. "So you spent all your time in the Capitol," I say slowly. "Except summers," she says. "That's how I knew you. Katniss told me a lot about you. Told me about how she loved you. Told me how you acted with your family. I came home for the Games, of course, because I had slips in the bowl." I avoid making a comment about how she probably didn't have many at all. That's all over now. "Then when Katniss volunteered," she struggles to keep her voice steady, "I moved back home."
"Gave up school?" I ask, surprised. She nods. "Things were okay, I suppose. Took the time to memorize you." I almost blush. "Then when they announced the Quell, my father was under enough pressure as it was. And then, the whole uprising in 8." I nod. Where is she going with this? "Finally, one day, he just...exploded." She shudders. "Yelled a lot, called my mother a whore. And then he just - he...I went out. To go to the meadow."
"Didn't even know you knew how to get there," I smile. She does too, but it quickly fades. "But I stayed out too late. I came sneaking back into town when, because, you know...all the new Peacekeepers, and Thread...keeping watch." She abruptly pauses, as if she forgets how to speak. I shudder, thinking of the whipping. I almost feel the scars scrape against my shirt. "They saw the bruise," she now whispers. "On my face."
"So he did," I begin. "Shit, Madge..."
"No, stop," her voice suddenly raises. "It's fine." I know it's not, but I look back at her expectantly and wait for her to finish. "I-I broke. I confessed. They didn't charge my father, but they sent me to the Capitol. Then, when I was there, I guess...I just caught the attention of people. And that all became this." She gestures to the dressing room around her. It's not all bad. There's a soft orange rug against the hardwood floors. The mirror is slightly settled with coal. There's photos pinned to the walls; Madge as a child. Madge and a woman I can only think to be her mother. A photo of her as a teenager, holding what I can only assume to be her first album. Her with friends, her making silly faces. Her with Katniss, Thom, Bristel. My eyes linger on that one, and she takes it down. "They were so nice to me," she smiles. "This one's my favorite." I notice that all of them look the same as the one she took with Posy and I that night. "They always wanted you to meet me," she looks at me, her eyes rimmed with black makeup and red tear marks. "But I said no. I knew that wouldn't end well."
"Why not?" I choke out, clearing my throat. "Because I didn't want you to end up hating me." She smirks. "Woulda ruined my fantasy."
"Of?" I say playfully, raising my eyebrow.
"Of being loved."
Silence.
I take a deep breath. "How'd you know her nickname?" I ask again, the question feeling foreign on my lips. "You asked that already," she points out dangerously.
"A few weeks ago, Undersee."
"It's not important," she repeats. "So there's that, Gale. You know my dirty little secrets. Don't tell anyone or they'll have our throats."
"But why?" I ask. "Why can't you tell anyone?"
"The Capitol doesn't like wounded little girls who run away from their daddies to play a piano," she says bitterly, taking another drink from her flask. "They like a sexually empowered sweetheart who says please and thank you and knows how to walk in heels." She rolls her eyes.
"That interview," is all I blurt out. She looks at me, raising her eyebrows "That - you were talking about me, weren't you?" She doesn't answer, so I try again. "Scars, blood..."
"Don't flatter yourself." The remark is snippy, but her tone is soft.
"So you...is your stage thing an act?" The girl in front of me with her makeup smeared and a flask in her hand is not the girl Posy is infatuated with.
"No," she responds after thinking it over. "I...I was like that at first. Then I wasn't allowed to be myself. I had to be sweet and endearing and somehow still sexy and mysterious. I could do all that, but this became a round-the-clock deal." She empties the flask and throws it against the wall. I jump at the sound. "So I became less what I wanted to be, and more what they wanted." I nod. I know she means the Capitol. "So I started acting like my old self again after a few months of that hell." There's a new optimism to her voice. "And I'm still in that process. It's been years. I'm hoping if I act it long enough, I'll become it." The silence this time isn't awkward, but it's heavy, pushing the air out of my lungs.
"I really do appreciate all of it," she remarks after a while. "I love the crowds. The smiles, I have to force them sometimes," she admits. "But they're real, at least I think so, because I want to truly feel that way so badly."
I offer her a sad smile. "Your sister," at this, I look up. "I love little girls like her. I love people like her in general. She's the reason that I really love doing this. Not for money or to have my face plastered on a fucking billboard."
"She loves you," I say sweetly. "Almost had to tell her to cover her eyes the other night, though."
She laughs, a real, true laugh. "I didn't like that," she says, shaking her head and still giggling. I raise my eyebrows. "I did."
"Oh, go to hell, Hawthorne," she says, giggling. As she rises out of her chair, I do too, turning to leave. "Wait," she says, as she turns back to face me with the same camera in her hands. Without a word I stand next to her, grinning for real. She does too, snapping the photo quickly. I find my arm wrapped around her waist and quickly pull it away as the photo develops. The sight of it makes me grin again.
She takes a tack out of a pillow on her desk and places the photo by the others. "Anything else you want to say, Undersee?" I poke her ribs. I expect her to laugh, but instead she turns to me with a bittersweet look in her eyes.
"That was almost everything I've ever wanted to say to you," she sighs. "You have no idea, Gale." Her face suddenly looks tired.
It's later, after I get home, when I realize that she's always saying that. Almost everything.
What else is there?
A/N: I really like this chapter. Feedback? I've written up to chapter 7 and I think the story is taking a nice form. Next chapter Gale finds a way to get to Madge in the Capitol, and more of his backstory is explained. Gale/Thom interaction too. I really hope y'all like this, it makes me really happy to write it. AND CHAPTER 7 IS REALLY CRAY OKAY I'M SORRY I JUST UGH EMOTION! Can't wait to show you ;) all reviews are really taken to heart and they make my day! Merry Christmas!
