"So how are you and Peeta?" Mom asks, cutting up the vegetables for dinner.
I might have sort of not really told her that we broke up. Reed knows, of course, because I tell him everything.
I take a sip of my water, shifting myself on the counter to grab the icing from the cabinet above me and a spoon from the drawer beneath me.
When I don't answer, she stops chopping and looks at me. "Katniss?" I take a spoonful of the chocolate icing.
"Um…"
Reed comes walking into the kitchen. "What are you guys talking about?"
"How Peeta and I are doing."
"Oh." He says. He shoots me a stern look.
"Well? How are you guys doing?" Mom asks again.
"We um…broke up about a week ago."
She whips around to face me. "Why?"
"It wasn't working out. All we did was hold hands, Mom."
"Katniss, you can't just…just…I thought you guys kissed!"
"For like two seconds. It doesn't count. It was a heat of the moment kind of thing and I'm not going to count it as my first kiss."
"Well you can't just not count it." She says.
"Sure I can."
"Well Madge would disagree. Have you told her this?"
"No."
"And why not? She's your best friend."
Kale walks in then, takes the spoon from my hand and uses it to get his own scoop of icing.
It's not disgusting. We do this all the time.
"Um, because I don't have my phone, I haven't seen her in, like, almost four months and I don't know her number by heart."
She sighs, gets my phone from the junk drawer and tosses it to me.
"Call her, invite her for dinner and tell her she's more than welcome to stay the night. I want to hear what she has to say about this."
So I unlock my phone and dial Madge.
"Katniss, oh my gosh, how did you get your phone?"
"Well...did Reed tell yo what happened?"
"Yeah, he said you moved to California. I've been to your house since you left, you know."
"Well um, I'm kind of home now..."
"Really?" she asks.
"Yeah, listen, do you want to stay the night?"
"MOM AN I SPEND THE NIGHT WITH KATNISS? SHE CAME HOME!"
I hear her mother shout something in response. "Will I be staying for dinner?"
"Uh, yeah."
"Okay, I'll be there in a couple minutes. Do you want to go to the beach tonight? We need to catch up!"
"Um, yeah, I guess. Let's just og to the pier."
"Okay, I'll see you in five."
"Alright."
"Okay love you."
"Love you too." I hang up.
Madge and I, we have that Tumblr relationship. We hug all the time and we hold hands and we do everything together, but when we're apart for a long time, it doesn't affect us, because when we see each other again, we go right back to normal. I give her piggy back rides and we can run around town in our bikinis with her on my shoulders or vice versa. We can get completely naked in front of each other and change and not be disgusted. She sits in the bathroom with me when I'm in the shower and we take each other clothes all the time.
As a matter of fact, the shirt I'm wearing now is hers. We don't even min wearing matching clothing, and sometimes we plan it.
We have no problem sharing a bed, either, and she sits on my lap and stuff when we don't have room in the car.
Madge and I are just inseparable.
"Don't bring Peeta up here. I'm going to tell her later. We're going to go to the pier, okay Mom?"
"Sure honey, by the way, that money you made over summer, you don't need to save for it college."
"I don't?"
"No, Haymitch and Effie decided you did to punish you, but that was stupid. You don't need to. Go crazy."
"Awesome." I say.
It's not five minutes later that the door slams and Madge comes running into the kitchen. She's still the same Madge. Her light blond hair is up in a high bun, and she's wearing a white crop top with flowers on it. The bra is built it. Then, she has on short shorts with rips in them, a long necklace with a cross on it and white braded flip flops. "Oh my god, I can't believe your back!" she squeals and I grin and hop off the counter and she flings herself in my arms and we hug for a good minute or two. "Oh my gosh, this is like the best day ever!" she pulls back and looks into my gray eyes with her peiring blue ones. "Did you make any friends?"
"Yeah."
"Any boy friends?"
I freeze for half a second too long. "Oh my god!" she grabs my wrist. "We'll be upstairs! Call us for dinner!"
"Madge." I groan.
"Shut up Kat." She pulls me off of the counter and then pauses to take the spoon from Kale's hand to get her own scoop of icing, and then she pulls me upstairs. "Where, take a lick." She says. I take a lick of the icing and then she opens my blinds, slams my door and flings herself onto my bed. "Who is it? Did you date? Is he cute? What's his name?"
Can we please talk about this when we aren't home?"
She sighs. "Fine. Get changed for the beach."
"Okay." I laugh.
"How are you doing in school?" she grabs my bod feather pillow and flips to the end of the bed, her feet in the air, her ankles crossed. I take off everything but my underwear. "Damn." She says, looking at my boobs.
"What?"
"I was just hoping you'd have a hickey or something."
"No Madge, no way. It wasn't like that." I shake my head and she sighs.
"School. How are you doing? You better graduate, bitch, I thought we were supposed to go to UC together."
I get a white crop tops with spikes over the breasts and a pair of very short shorts that are two shades dark than Madge's. "I have a 3.2 GPA and straight A's." Actually, they're the same shorts as Madge's but mine are darker.
"Oh my god!" she says happily. "I am so proud of you!"
She was mad at me for a while because I was screwing off in school. Also, she hated the way I treated my Mom.
"And how are you and your Mom?"
"I feel like a bitch for the way I treated her."
"So...?"
"So I called her sobbing after a nightmare I had that she'd died in and I realized I loved her."
"I hope you graduate with a high GPA."
"Oh, I plan on graduating with a 5.0."
"That's the Katniss I know and love!" she sings.
I laugh and put on the same flip flops she has on.
...a...
"Can you please tell me what guy you met?"
I sit down at the end of the pier and hang my legs off the edge.
She sits down next to me.
"Okay, well I told you all about Johanna, Annie and Finnick."
"Yes."
"Well there was this other guy. He was part of the group. His name was Peeta Mellark. Ou know that guy that I said was always at summer camp?" she nods. "Well, that was him. He told me one night on the beach that if I held up eleven roses in the mirror, I would be looking at the twelve most beautiful things in the world." She gasps and clamps her hand over her mouth. "A month of school passed and we got really close and the chemistry was really strong. He came over one day when I really missed home and I was crying and everything and well, we kissed."
She squeals. "Oh my god!"
"Wait." I sigh, and she forces herself to be quiet. "Kale was there because that was when my Dad showed up." She wrinkles her nose. She can't stand my Dad. "He saw and our lips were connected for like, two seconds before he screamed. Peeta asked me out and I said yes and then we were dating. I got really homesick after everyone left and then about a week ago he showed up at my house and we broke up. We didn't even do anything. We talked, yeah, but it was awkward."
"Man." She sighs.
"But the thing I don't understand, is I cried. Why did I cry if it was hardly a relationship in the first place?"
She links her fingers through mine. "Kat, I think you cried because he was your first boyfriend and first kiss. You liked him and he ended it."
I shrug.
"Well, how about we go up there for your birthday? And I can meet him and Johanna and Annie and Finnick. Maybe for college we can just get an old apartment somewhere and go to school online."
"Maybe." I whisper.
"Do you miss them?"
"No, I missed you much, much more."
She laughs, let's go of my hand, and then throws her arm round my shoulder. I lean against her. "I missed you too."