Chapter 3: Miss Calculated
Effie Trinket pulled her Cadillac into the closest legal spot and killed the engine. Her car was pink. Of course it was pink. Effie was a sales consultant for Flickerman Cosmetics, the top seller for the Panem region no less. Katniss had learned every excruciating detail over the past 35 minutes, the time that it took to get to her therapy session. "Plum is absolutely the perfect shade for your olive skin," Effie had said over the steering wheel. "I've got samples in my trunk. Remind me to give you samples."
Of course she sold cosmetics.
Plutarch was occupied with a lecture that afternoon, leading to a "Girl's Afternoon Out," as Effie cheerfully called it upon delivering the news. Katniss would rather be back in prison.
Katniss unsnapped her seat belt before the car was fully stopped and jerked her car door open. She was halfway to the main entrance when she heard the click of Effie's heels hurrying behind her.
The building was covered with dull, yellow looking bricks, the style that was popular in the 1970's, and only a few thin shrubs accented the grounds outside. Katniss wasn't sure what she had expected, but it certainly wasn't this. P.I.T. had lavish, polished stone structures and beautiful, lush gardens. It carried an air of prestige that demanded recognition and respect. This building blended in with the medical park beside it. It was plain. It was dirty. It was forgotten.
Effie paused at the entrance, her hand hovering above the handle with hesitation. She reached into her purse to retrieve a handkerchief, her chin trembling with moderate disgust when she pulled the door open. She waited for Katniss, gesturing for her to proceed, but Katniss couldn't move. She could only stare at the delicate lace material that separated Effie's hand from what she found to be undesirable. What precautions Effie would take is she was ever forced to touch her?
Katniss grabbed the handle on the door beside it with her bare hand, and ripped it open with such force that it made her shoulder snap. She stared Effie down, challenging her to make the next move with a lifted eyebrow. Terror flashed from beneath Effie's frosted eyelids, and she passed through the entrance without a word.
The air was stuffy inside, probably from mold hidden within the sloping drop ceilings. The hallways were wide, with speckled linoleum tiles that were sealed with a chrome trim. Katniss dipped her finger into one of the seams along the beige, cinder block wall, smoothing over the rough surface as she followed Effie up the various hallways that led to Haymitch Abernathy's office.
The Secondary Education Achieved Merit Program, also known as SEAM, wasn't a college or university. It was an initiative, run by the state, which offered high school students the opportunity to learn a vocational skill or earn certification in lieu of a college degree. It was there that Haymitch Abernathy taught Psychology and Life Skills, whatever that implied.
His office was on the third floor, up three flights of of open riser steps. At the top of each landing was some sort of potted plant with sun faded cloth leaves. Even though they were designed to "live" forever, they looked wilted, and dead.
This floor was carpeted, a neutral shade of brown with a faint pattern that was not intricate enough to hide the water stains that bled over the heavily traveled surface.
Effie and Katniss twisted down a few more hallways, and Katniss began to feel disoriented, trying to mentally retrace the path that they had taken to get there. Her eyes searched for an 'Exit' sign. She hated not knowing her way out.
"Here we are," Effie said, stopping abruptly. "Mister Abernathy is just wonderful. He's very passionate about his work." She tapped against the door. "A few sessions with him and you'll be as good as new." There was no answer. "He's very busy though. Very." Her smile tightened and she knocked with more force. There was still no answer. "One moment," she told Katniss, but the politeness in her voice struggled against her frustration. She twisted the knob and forced the door open with her shoulder.
This time even Katniss cringed at the odor.
The room was dark, with light barely trickling through the closed blinds. It looked like a tornado had passed through. Stacks of paper lay in a toppled mess on the floor and there were more books piled on chairs than tucked onto the nearly bare bookcase.
"Haymitch?" Effie called, her hands tucked carefully beneath her chin to keep from touching anything.
Something moved, and Katniss jumped back towards the door. Her heart beat in her ears. She inspected the floor with a more critical eye. She didn't like to be startled in unfamiliar places. She didn't like to be startled at all.
There were a pair of boots peeking from behind the cluttered desk, the body attached to them was covered by a blanket of what looked to be reports.
"His work can be quite exhausting," Effie explained apologetically, but it was obvious by her widened eyes and trembling jaw that she was mortified by the situation. She kicked the sole of his boot and he grumbled in response. "Haymitch, your appointment is here. Remember? We spoke the other day with Doctor Heavensbee and her lawyer." He groaned something incoherent. "She's here right now, Haymitch."
It took a few tries, but eventually, he was sitting up. He brushed away the reports, sending them in a flurry of crumpled pages and ripped staples. He dragged himself into his desk chair and swiped a hand through his thinning, greasy hair. His jaw was rough with gray peppered stubble, and his face sagged with deep set wrinkles. Katniss wondered how old he was. Certainly older than Effie. Maybe older than Plutarch, although they did go to school together.
"Katniss, this is Haymitch," Effie said. Katniss and Haymitch eyed one another suspiciously and then nodded in acknowledgment. Neither went to shake the other's hand. Katniss liked that. Effie stood awkwardly between them, her tight smile fading behind her eyes. She handed Katniss's file to Haymitch and said, "All right then, I'll be outside."
When they were left alone, Haymitch gestured at one of his book covered chairs for her to take a seat.
He scanned over the first page of her file. "A little trouble with the law, huh?" he said with a chuckle.
Katniss tipped over the chair and let the books fall to the floor then sat down.
"You hit a cop?" he sounded pleased.
She nodded.
"Atta girl," his sloppy grin widened. He reached into the breast pocket of shirt and pulled out a tarnished flask. He took a drink then tipped it towards her. Katniss stared at it for a moment. The spiral track that held the cap in place hadn't been washed in some time, and had rusted into a dull shade of green. She shook her head.
He took another drink, frowning when only a few drops trickled out. Katniss watched as he ruffled through his desk drawers, grumbling obscenities beneath his breath. When he slid open the bottom drawer, it chimed with the sound of bumping glass bottles, and he grinned, content. He pulled out the one that he was looking for – the only one that wasn't empty, and ripped the cap off with his teeth. Setting down his flask, he attempted to fill it, mostly covering his desk with the amber liquid. This wasn't the first time either, Katniss noted, as she spotted various puddled stains in the shape of his flask across the tabletop.
Katniss leaned back into her chair and rested her elbows on the arm rests. She let out a sigh. This was a joke to him, this court ordered therapy. A chance for him to drink an hour away, while she sat idly and watched.
But wasn't that what she wanted? She didn't want to talk about her feelings, or have some stranger use her plight for his next great book. She wanted to be left alone, really. Or did she? Maybe it wasn't that she didn't want somebody to talk to. Maybe she just didn't think anyone cared to listen. Haymitch certainly didn't.
"Aren't you supposed to be asking me questions?" Katniss said, shifting uneasily in her chair. Haymitch lifted his eyes with disinterest, dripping whiskey onto her case file so that it stained the pages. "Tell me about all my mother issues and then give me some sagely advice?"
"Want some advice, sweetheart?" he asked, leaning across the desk so that his chest and elbows were slouched against it. He looked at her gravely, his gray eyes narrowing to slits. "Stay alive."
She held his gaze. What did that even mean? His eye became unfocused and he crawled with his hands to sit up straight. His jaw clenched and unclenched before he collapsed behind his desk, vomiting violently.
Katniss wasn't sure if there was a garbage can hidden behind it, but she didn't want to find out. Without a word she stood from her seat and walked out the door.
There was a small sitting area by the staircase, where Effie was perched carefully on a mustard yellow chairs. Her eyes widened with alarm at the sight of Katniss barreling towards the steps, and she stood to stop her. "Is everything all right Katniss? Your session only started a few minutes ago."
"He wasn't feeling well," Katniss muttered, brushing past her.
Effie frowned, gesturing for Katniss to wait. There was a flash of something foreign in her usually vacant eyes. A fierce determination. It wasn't fitting of the Effie that Katniss had come to know, but Katniss was intrigued. She sat in the chair that Effie had vacated.
"Why don't I go check up on him then?" Effie said, and then disappeared in the direction of Haymitch's office.
Katniss heard a door slam, followed by muffled shrieks that were distinctly Effie Trinket. There was silence for a moment and then the door creaked open and Effie was back. "He thinks he'll be feeling better on Tuesday," she told her.
A faint smile twisted the corner of Katniss's mouth and she nodded, Effie smiled too. Then the moment ended.
After therapy, Effie drove back to the P.I.T. campus, where she showed Katniss to the research lab. It was accessible only by a magnetized ID card, one which was issued specially for Katniss with her picture on it and everything. The lab was separated into two rooms. One had lab benches with various pieces of test equipment and experimental setups. The other side was lined with computer stations, each separated by a partition. There were twelve in total, and all were occupied but the one closest to the door.
"This will be your desk," Effie said, and pulled out the chair for Katniss to sit. "The log in information is on the keyboard, and your e-mail should already be set up. Do you know how to use a computer?"
Katniss arched her eyebrows. "Um, yes." She transferred schools too many times to earn a valuable education, but she'd at least learned how to use a computer. Plus, she used them often at the library.
"Good. I'll leave you to get settled then." She turned to leave. "Oh, right." Effie paused outside the exit and opened her purse. It was perfectly organized with slots and zipped off compartments, all seeming to have their own designated purpose. She tapped her brightly polished fingernail along each pocket, until she found the one she was looking for.
"Here you go," she said, extending a Blackberry. "Doctor Heavensbee's projects require complete dedication, and given the nature of scientific discoveries, can often be spontaneous. As his research assistant he'll need to be able to contact you at any time, day or night. Your time will be at his disposal. We thought you should have this."
"My own phone?" Katniss held it in her hand skeptically, flipping it over to weigh the device in her palm.
"A work phone," she specified. "The university will handle the billing."
"But I can use it?" she asked too eagerly.
"That's the intention, yes." Effie let out a faint,amused chuckle, and Katniss couldn't help but feel mocked. She bowed her head and dropped the phone on the table, feigning disinterest.
It was stupid to care. Caring about things revealed weakness. Katniss hated feeling weak.
She waited for the door to click shut, her eyes jumping around the room to ensure that she was alone, before she picked up the phone. It was short and wide with tiny little keys that her thumbs were too broad to press. She squinted to locate where the numbers were hidden in the maze of keys, and ghosted over the sequence that would connect her to Peeta, never pressing any of the buttons.
She hadn't spoken with him since her release. It wasn't that she had been avoiding him – she had been busy settling back into the swing of things, and while talking with Peeta on both occasions had been nice, it hadn't been a priority. That's what she told herself at least. The truth was, she wasn't used to "nice," and had been agonizing over the ways that things would go horribly wrong. He would grow tired of her and leave her once the novelty wore off. Nothing was permanent. She'd learned that the hard way on several occasions.
Yet the thought of him haunted her. He demanded attention in her dreams, and even in her waking moments she couldn't ignore his presence. It was becoming impossible to never know him, no matter how hard she tried to resist it.
Tapping her phone against her chin, she took a deep breath. She stared at the keys again, and dialed the now familiar sequence of numbers. It began to ring, leaving her staring at the time bomb in her hands.
"Hello?"
She brought the phone to her ear. "Hi, it's Katniss," she said.
There was enough of a pause for her heart to drop in her chest. "New number?" he said.
"New number," she confirmed with a nervous grin.
"You have quite the effect you know," he began, his voice taking on it's usual, playfully serious tone. "You would not believe the number of telemarketers I've spoken to in the past week hoping that one of those mysterious numbers would belong to you."
"Sorry about that." She bowed her head and rested her cheek in her palm.
"No, it's fine, I've grown to be quite intimate with some of them. Charlie for example. He hates his job, as you could imagine."
"I bet," she said wryly.
"So how's it going?" She could still picture his easy smile behind his words. How could she still picture his smile? She'd only met him once. "How's the prison job treating you?"
"Oh." She blinked. "I don't work there anymore. I'm a research assistant now. At P.I.T.?"
"Wait. What?" he chuckled. "That's random. I thought you didn't go to school."
"I don't," she said, nervously chewing on the inside of her lip. "It's sort of a long story."
"P.I.T. though. That means you're just around the corner, right?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Maybe we can get together sometime. Lunch or coffee, something like that."
Her mouth quirked into a smile. "We could do that."
"What are you doing now?"
Katniss had unlocked her computer and was mindlessly clicking through her e-mail to catch up download the articles that Plutarch had already sent her. She skimmed through the abstracts and then scrolled through them to glance at the summary of results.
"Nothing really," she said dully. "I just started."
"Would you like to get lunch or coffee now?" he asked. Katniss's eyes widened at the request, and she began listing various excuses in her head to get out of it. "Or is that coming on too strongly? I mean I've been awfully patient. It's been weeks and I haven't even gotten a valid telephone number, so you really can't blame me for jumping on the opportunity when I have you on the line."
She pressed her lips together. Even on a subconscious level, she must have anticipated this to be the outcome of calling him. She wanted to spend time with him. There was no reason to avoid it.
"What did you have in mind?"
"Oh I'm not taking any chances and finding a way to disappoint you," he teased, his voice brightening. "Ladies' choice."
Katniss lifted her University ID from her desk and flipped it between her fingers. It would grant her access to the building after hours, but it would also give her discounts at the bookstore, and entry to the Student Life Center. P.I.T.'s facilities weren't too elaborate. They had some Division I sports teams, but none of them were overly competitive, so their SLC was mostly aerobic machines and weight lifting equipment.
Capitol University on the other hand, housed former Olympic athletes. They'd never win a football game, but they were top ranked in crew, wrestling, and archery, and their indoor sporting facilities were among the finest in the country. Katniss had passed by a few times and always wondered what it was like on the inside, especially their state of the art archery range.
"Does your student ID allow for a guest?"
While the outskirts of Panem, where Katniss lived, were only accessible by bus, the inner part of the city was connected by an underground subway system. P.I.T. and Capitol were both off the main Red Line, and only three quick stops apart. The trains ran often enough that Katniss didn't have to wait long, and soon she had left the modernized style of the P.I.T. campus, and was standing in the Colonial warmth at the heart of Capitol Square.
This was where the lines of city and university blurred. The shops and restaurants were frequented by students, tourists and citizens alike, even though it was nestled into the center of the Capitol University Campus.
Katniss and Gale used to go to a bar in the Square often, when Gale had been "sort of" dating a bartender, Johanna. That's why Katniss was so familiar with the area. Johanna was studying arboriculture at Capitol at the time, and lived on campus – an apartment that Katniss had crashed at quite a few times when Gale had been "too tired" to drive her home when the buses had stopped running for the night. Of course he wasn't too tired to do whatever Katniss had heard through the thin walls, but it wasn't anything Katniss hadn't tried to sleep through before.
Katniss walked up the main drag to where she knew the athletic buildings were located. It was warm out, late enough in the Spring for the last of Winter to melt away. There was a group of students tossing a Frisbee along the stone path in front of her as they walked towards their next class. The green lawns that surrounded her were covered with lounging coeds, who had rolled their tee shirts over their belly buttons to bathe in the heat of the sun. It was livelier here than at P.I.T. Students mainly stuck indoors there, to do work in the environmentally controlled laboratories. Sometimes Katniss wondered if they ever saw the sun.
There was a quad in the center of the lawn with a bronze statue of Apollo surrounded by a stone bench. That was where she found Peeta. He was sitting beneath the shade with his elbows resting on his thighs, fidgeting with something on his cellphone. Katniss bounced on her heels, wondering how to approach him, but he made that choice for her, when he glanced up and their eyes met.
She had to remind herself that this wasn't the meadow where they met in her dreams. This was real. Peeta was real.
"Hey," he said, his grin holding a touch of shyness that made her smile too. He stood from the bench and tucked his phone into his pocket. He was wearing a white tee shirt that stretched tightly over his broad chest, and shoes and gym shorts that had matching Nike logos. At his feet was a black gym bag and he bent over to swing it over his shoulder. "How's it going?"
She chewed on the inside of her lip and nodded. "It's going, I guess."
"So the gym, huh? You trying to tell me something?" he said. He pinched at his sides, pretending to grab flab that didn't exist, and then nervously combed his fingers through his hair.
"Oh no. I'm just using you for target practice," she said with a smirk.
The shooting range was in the basement along with the locker rooms and weight room. There was an equipment rental too, where Peeta took out two bows and a quiver of arrows. The archery range was similar to a pistol range, with solid targets on a track to adjust the distance to target. It wasn't a popular arena to use, and was completely empty since the team wasn't practicing at the time.
Katniss set her target to the farthest setting and tested the tension of the string by plucking it a few times. She picked up an arrow and slid it across her finger to find its center of balance. It was closer to the tip than she had anticipated, and she lifted the bow with the arrow in place to gauge the proper positioning.
"Is everything okay?" Peeta asked, watching her routine with faint amusement.
"It's different than my usual bow," she said.
"It's okay if you miss. Trust me, you don't have to impress me, I'm already in complete awe of you."
Katniss aimed the arrow, pinching the end between her pointer and middle fingers, and then shifted her gaze to Peeta, their eyes meeting in challenge before she let the arrow go. She heard it strike, but wasn't quite done looking at him yet. He wasn't done either, apparently, and his eyes darkened from behind his thin, black frames, the blue nearly disappearing.
Her cheeks felt warm. A heat that spread from her chest to the tips of her fingers, which still held the bow. It was too much, and finally, she looked away, her eyes following to where the tip of her arrow had pierced the bull's eye.
"Not bad," he said.
She picked up another arrow, and it followed the same path, and then another. She nocked a fourth arrow and began to aim, but then paused. "Do you want to try?" she asked Peeta, who watched beside her.
Peeta stepped up to the range and accepted an arrow. Holding it into place he glanced over his shoulder. "Is this right?" he asked her.
Katniss inspected his stance. "Relax your bow arm," she said, and it eased slightly. "Lift your string elbow," she added. He did, but he lifted it too high. Tentatively, she placed one hand on his shoulder and the other on his elbow to adjust his pitch. His tee shirt was soft against the pads of her fingertips, and she could fell his muscles tense and then relax from beneath her touch. She liked it.
"Now you want to keep this arm rigid. Draw back with this muscle." She traced the line behind his back along his shoulder blade. He turned his head to follow the path of her finger, then his eyes flitted up to meet hers. Her chest felt heavy, making it hard to breath. Her gaze fell to his lips. She pulled her hand away and took a step back. "And look out when you let go. Your bow's rigid and the energy from the release is going to jerk in your hand."
"Hand jerk, got it. I'm a pro at that one." He nodded, lifting his chin back to the target and narrowing his eyes in concentration. He drew back the string, poised to release it, but then paused. His weight shifted abruptly onto his leading foot, pressing down the pedal that triggered the track to slide the target to it's closest setting. Close enough to lean forward and press the arrow into the middle of the center ring without releasing the string.
"Looks like you've got some competition," he said with a wink.
He readjusted his target for a medium range and they shot a few more arrows, drawing the targets back to retrieve the arrows that had stuck. Katniss was checking the tips when she found that Peeta was leaning against his bow, watching her with a half grin.
"It's really not fair," he said, his fingers idly plucking the string of his bow in a rhythm she found to be oddly fascinating. "We keep meeting on your turf so that you can show off. I haven't had the chance to impress you yet."
She dropped the arrows back into the quiver. "And how would you do that? What are you good at?"
"Here? Wrestling," he shrugged. His eyebrows lifted thoughtfully and he chuckled to himself. "That's probably more appropriate for a third date activity though. There's lifting too, but the grunting? The faces?" he shook his head and she could see a blush darkening his cheeks. "That'd probably be for a third date too."
"You sure are excited about this third date," Katniss said flatly.
She had never dated before, but she could understand the implications. Peeta wanted to have sex with her, and he was making no secret about it. It was different though, unlike the guys she had slept with in the past, he seemed to be looking for something more. If he weren't, he wouldn't have been waiting around by the phone for her. He was certainly attractive enough to find someone else. But he hadn't. He had waited for her. She didn't understand what he saw in her.
"Who says you're going to get a second?" she asked.
"I'm a glutton for punishment, I guess." She looked at him curiously. "Kidding," he said, grinning at her.
She tried to scowl at him, but laughed instead. He didn't seem to take anything seriously. The good? The bad? It was all a joke to him. She wanted to hate him for it. He was just some rich kid, after all, who was laughing at the real world. But there was something so genuine about him that she couldn't.
And then she pinpointed it. The way he was acting. He didn't judge her, he didn't even treat her like his equal, he treated her like she was better than him. And although she knew it wasn't true, she believed him.
"You want to get some coffee?" he asked after they had returned their equipment.
Katniss hated coffee, and cafes were even worse. "Sure," she said.
"I'm just going to change, okay?" He nodded towards the locker room and held up his gym bag.
Katniss looked down. She was wearing jeans and a baggy tee shirt beneath her Army jacket, the same clothes she had been wearing on the street and then at the range. Yet he was the one acting like he was embarrassed.
She waited for him upstairs, walking along a corridor with glass walls that overlooked different types of courts. Basketball, a swimming pool, tennis courts. She paused in front of a window for a game that she didn't recognize. It was two players holding oddly shaped tennis racquets, standing in front of a wall, where a net should have been. One served a blue rubber ball against the wall and it snapped back with more speed. The ball bounced between the players' racquets and the wall, moving faster and faster. Katniss began to calculate the angles to optimize the velocity, wincing when the player made contact too soon. The ball had picked up so much speed that it was only a blur as it moved, too fast for her eye to follow. Then it stopped. Striking one of the players in the gut. He hunched over in pain, lifting his tee shirt enough to reveal the welt the ball had left behind.
Katniss found if fascinating.
"You ready?" Peeta asked, stepping up beside her.
She kept her eyes trained on the court below. "What is this?"
"Racquet ball or squash or something. I don't really get the rules."
The player who had been hit, stretched his sides then moved to serve the ball again.
"You ready?" Peeta asked again, and she nodded, finally looking away.
They passed several coffee shops along the way, but Peeta seemed set on a particular destination. They walked briskly, him with his hands tucked in his pockets and her with arms folded across her chest. Finally they stopped at a cafe called Victor's. He opened the door for her and she stepped inside.
All the names on the menu were for drinks she didn't recognize, and the line moved too fast for her to read the descriptions. When the cashier asked what she wanted, she panicked. "Coffee," she said. Peeta ordered a tea. He paid, even though the bill was only $3.
They waited by the counter where the drinks served, standing idly against the wall where it wasn't crowded. Victor's was filled with antiques, much like The Hob, but in this case, the antiques looked to be actual treasures, rather than garbage one would find at a garage sale.
"Do you like the art?" Peeta asked, gesturing towards some paintings on the far wall.
Katniss hadn't noticed them before, but now that she had, she couldn't look away. She took a step closer so she could take in every detail. Each piece was wildly different, but they were all connected by a similar theme.
There was a figure, always smaller than the elements around it, and surrounded by chaos. Screams, darkness, snapping winds, rough waves. She wasn't sure how the artist had captured these things, but she saw them vividly. So much so that she felt anxiety by just looking at the scenes from a distance. The figure was always unaffected though, watching the events with a neutral, passive stance. It was at peace.
"Who's the artist?" she asked.
Peeta smiled sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders. "Me."
"They're incredible," she said. "I'm impressed."
"Finally," he laughed, adjusting the frames of his glasses behind his ear. "Mission accomplished."
When they're drinks were ready, they found an empty table and sat down.
Katniss reached for the sugar dispenser and tipped it over her mug until her coffee was closer to a sludge. Peeta took note, his eyebrows quirking with amusement in a way that made Katniss feel silly. She couldn't help it, she hated the ashy, bitter taste.
"Sorry," she mumbled, pushing the dispenser to his side of the table in exchange for the pitcher of cream.
"No thanks," he said, lifting his tea to take a careful sip. "I'm not really a fan of sweets."
"What? How?"
"My parents used to own this bakery, and I got caught stealing a cookie off the cooling rack. My mother made me eat the whole batch as punishment. Haven't had the taste for them since."
Katniss scoffed, incredulous. "How is that a punishment?"
"You'd be surprised," he said, bowing his head with an uneasy laugh.
"I could eat an entire cake in one sitting." She should have laughed then, but she couldn't, she felt ashamed. There were days when she was struck with a craving that was so intense, it turned into anxiety. She would bake a cake, ice it and decorate it as if it were special, and then eat it slice by slice until it was gone. If she didn't eat it all at once, someone else would. At the time she never felt full, or sick, or embarrassed. It felt completely normal. That was her relationship with food.
Peeta leaned over the table to look her over. "Where does it all go?" he asked, revealing every one of his perfect, pearly teeth when he grinned.
She pulled her chair closer to the table so that her body was mostly hidden beneath it. "We didn't have dessert often, I guess."
"Strict parents?"
Shrugging a shoulder, she deflected the conversation by taking a long sip from her mug. She hesitated to place it back on the table, waiting for him to pick up the conversation again, but the silence stretched.
The truth was trapped with the air in her chest. It was too harsh to tell him that she didn't have a family. That she had been abandoned, bounced around and beaten through a series of homes that didn't give a shit about her. Those weren't the types of things you told someone who was nearly a stranger. He would pity her. She didn't want him to pity her. Pity was selfish. A coping mechanism others used to make themselves feel better about a situation. She liked the way he teased her, the way he looked at her, the things he saw in her that she couldn't see. She didn't want for that to change.
He drank from his tea, and the steam bellowed over the porcelain lip to fog his glasses. He slipped them off his face to polish the lenses, his eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks as he worked. Katniss had barely noticed them before because they were pale, and usually obscured by his frames, but she was mesmerized by them now. They were impossibly long, tangling together into a fan of golden threads. He caught her staring, his round blue eyes peering up at her from beneath his soft lashes. He was perfect.
"Not exactly," she said. "They're more health nuts. Want to live off the land and keep things all natural."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, they live in this log cabin in the woods, up by the lake," she said. She kept her eyes downcast at the table as she recalled the house she grew up in. "My dad built most of it himself, although he never finished it. My mother had this huge garden that we got our fruits and vegetables from, and then meat from whatever haul my father brought home."
"Haul?" his eyebrows furrowed curiously. "What do you mean by that?"
"Deer, rabbit, fish," she said. "Whatever was in season. We could get all we needed from that, except milk and eggs. My sister wanted to get a goat to make cheeses, but they never went for that. My dad isn't crazy about an animal with a heartbeat."
"You have a sister?"
Her breath hitched in her throat and she looked away. "Prim," she said softly, the name ghosting off her lips. "She's sixteen. But this was all from when she was a kid."
"Wow, that's amazing though," he said, leaning against the table to listen intently. "Why would you ever leave?"
Katniss could recall the winter that her father died. It was sudden, and unexpected. So much so that he'd knocked out the exterior wall to the master bedroom the morning of his death, leaving only a thick plastic sheet to protect the house from the elements. It was cold that winter, even wrapped closely around the hearth of the fireplace. Katniss knew how to light a flame, but nobody had taught her how to build a proper fire. That was her father's job. She tried to pile the wood just as she remembered him doing, but when she touched it with a match, it would never catch. Only bellow with smoke before choking in the cold air.
Her mother had left them too. Her body remained, unlike their father's, but her mind was broken. She sat in the open wound of the house, legs dangling in the open air as her lips turned blue and her teeth chattered. She was unresponsive to her daughters' needs, and Katniss especially, who shared her father's coloring, seemed to push her further from reality.
There was no one to take them to school. The lived off a dirt road that buses didn't travel on and the bus stop was over a mile away. Katniss and Prim had tried to make the trek, but had barely made it halfway before their socks were soaked through their boots by the dirty slush along the path.
Their school was the first to intervene, due to their unaccounted absence. That's when Social Services was called.
"I got sucked into the city, I guess," she frowned. "And never found my way back out."
"Well I hope your sister gets her goat," he said.
She puckered her lips and finished her coffee. Even the sugar and cream couldn't hide the bitter taste that it left. "Me too."
Peeta offered to drive her home, but Katniss chose to take the subway back to P.I.T. instead, where she'd catch the bus she usually took to work. He walked her to the station, pausing at the steps that led to the underground tunnels.
"Can I see you again?" he asked, gripping the handrail that ran parallel to the stairs.
Her eyes darted between his eyes, obscured by the glare off his glasses in the setting sun, and his earnest grin. She could have kissed him then. That's what people were supposed to do in scenarios like this. But what would happen then? She liked this. She didn't want to lose this.
She smiled instead.
As she sat on the bench downstairs, waiting for the train, she frowned into her hands. She should have kissed him.
A/N: Thank you for reading, reviewing, following, ect. The feedback is always encouraging. As always, catch me on tumblr (absnow)