Chapter 16 – High Hopes
"I remember it now, it takes me back to when it all first started
But I've only got myself to blame for it, and I accept it now
It's time to let it go, go out and start again
But it's not that easy"
High Hopes - Kodaline
Rory's POV
What the hell is all that noise? I crack an eyelid...and why is it so flippin' bright? My skull… feels like it is two sizes too small… and not because I'm smart. I think I can actually discern the two sides of my brain, each is fighting for more space. I can't quite focus my eyes in the bright light, but hear some indistinct banging downstairs. I suspect Vick's down there. Maybe he's making eggs...at the thought of food my stomach does a somersault. I attempt to ignore everything and try and go back to sleep.
I hear muffled voices getting louder, followed by a soft knock on the door. I grunt in acknowledgement. I don't know who would be worse to face now, Ma or Gale. It's Gale... and Katniss, thank god. That's better than Gale by himself, for sure. She even has a glass of water for me.
"Good Morning! How ya doin'?" Katniss starts, looking at me sympathetically and handing me the glass without waiting for my response.
"Mornin', not quite sure if it's a good one yet," I mutter.
"How ya feelin', Hot Shot?" Gale inquires loudly, which immediately earns him a sharp glare from Katniss.
"Like shit, thanks for asking," I answer bluntly.
"Well, it's the price you pay when you pull a stunt like you did last night," Gale wastes no time getting up in my proverbial grill, despite Katniss' continuing nonverbal guidance to back down.
"It's none of your damn business what I do!" I retort.
"Like Hell it isn't!"
"Fuck off!"I say, and it's the first thing that's felt anything close to 'good' this morning.
Katniss prevents Gale's anticipated response by grasping his forearm and getting his attention. Apparently he's veered from the plan they decided on this morning. It just takes a second of an intense eye-to-eye smack down from Katniss to get him back on track. His focus is back on me again.
"Listen, I'm not your keeper, but you're better than this!" he says frustrated.
"Whaddaya mean?"
" You don't need to drink, or smoke, or whatever you're doing to escape!" Gale's voice rises. He drags a hand down his face trying to calm himself.
"You're so freakin' high and mighty. Why don't you tell Katniss about your big night with alcohol?" I counter.
He snorts, shaking his head and side stepping verbally, "That's got nothin' to do with this. Nothing."
We're at an impasse. I rather crawl under a rock and die than talk right now, and Gale's certainly no eager beaver to give up the details of his night on the town.
Finally, Katniss interjects and tells me, "Fine, how about he'll tell me about it if you promise to give us more details about last night and what's really going on."
"Sounds good to me," the less I need to speak right now, the better.
Gale's clearly pissed, but eventually acquiesces to Katniss' silent demand with a thin lipped nod and a roll of his eyes.
He begins, "Well, to be honest, I don't remember much about that night. I was with Bristol and Thom. We started with beers and rumor has it we progressed to mugs of moonshine or something."
"Yeah, yeah, okay, but tell her what you do remember," I prod.
He grits his teeth and shoots me a look to kill before he continues. "So the evening's pretty blurry we started at Bris'. Thom said we made it to the meadow, I've got no reason not to believe him. But I come to in the morning, and find myself outside of the Landers' place," he pauses here, like he's done.
I clear my throat, indicating he needs to add more detail.
"In the Landers' wash tub... " he says slowly.
I clear my throat again.
"….In the Lander's wash tub …buck naked. Well, except I did have my boots on," he adds, like that makes a dust of difference.
Ha! The shocked look on Katniss' face is the prize I was aiming for.
"Hilarious! Ginny must have been thrilled," she surmises.
I must look confused because she adds for my benefit "You didn't know? She had a huge crush on Gale."
"Well, I didn't hang around long enough for her to find out about it. I grabbed Max's baby blanket for cover straight off of that back porch rail and ran home as fast as I could."
We're all enjoying a moment picturing Gale in our mind's eye stumbling home through the Seam clutching Max's blankie like a diaper.
Katniss is still snickering as she asks, "And so Mr. Alcohol, what was the big occasion you all were celebrating …with your boots on?"
Good question, I have no idea. I had never thought to ask. I always sorta got hung up on the boots-only 100 yard dash. At this Gale switches from good humored and slightly embarrassed to serious and melancholy. He looks out towards the window when he admits, "No celebration, trust me." He pauses steeling himself and says, "It was the night you accepted Peeta's wedding proposal on television."
Katniss immediately deflates. Gale misses the range of emotion that Katniss cycles through because he can't quite bring himself to look at her. She, however, can't miss his gritted teeth, like he's about to be cut open without a slug of whiskey.
"Oh Gale... I..I'm sorry!" she suddenly looks like she's on the verge of tears.
As for me, I'm just feeling like Panem's number one jackass, because all I wanted to do was to embarrass Gale, but now I'm trapped here with them rehashing this fun little drama to the loud drum beat of blood circulating in my head.
"I didn't know what else to do!" she claims, somehow defensive and desperate still. "You know I really thought I could protect you from Snow by doing that."
Gale shoots her a look that encapsulates both disbelief and disgust.
"I know, I know! You didn't want or need to be protected. And I know, it didn't work any way. But please know I did it to keep you safe. I didn't see any other way!"
"Me? Wasn't this all about Prim?" he questions.
"Yeah, no. Prim. Uh, I told you... Oh... but it was that day, that God-awful day! The day when we met Thread."
Even in my state I put it together, the 'Whipping day'.
"What? Which part of what did you tell me?" he questions.
"You know, that Snow visited me before the Victory Tour, sat in that house, and said he knew about our kiss, you know, the first one. You know I couldn't admit it to myself, but Snow knew how much..." she falters here, "how much you mean to me."
She's lost in her little time capsule reliving some horrific interaction with Snow, which honestly does sound scary. So she, in turn, doesn't see the flash of relief (or is it elation?) that flashes quickly across my brother's face.
"He knew it wasn't just Prim he could use against me... I guess Coin worked that one out too."
She looks defeated and a little confused, like she just figured something out. She takes a few minutes to sort things out in her head, but then she gets her bearings, looks at me and says with a weak chuckle, "Okay, good work in getting us off track Ror, ... How about back to you?"
"What about me? That was much more interesting," I feign. I'm caught, but that did buy me the few minutes I needed to try and feel almost human again.
"What about you? What's going on?" Gale asks, much calmer now.
I shrug, trying to minimize any movement of my head.
Katniss tries a different approach "Last night, why'd you have so much?"
"I dunno, it felt good at the time. A little relief..."
"What do you want relief from?" she asks, like she doesn't know.
"I don't know."
"You can probably think of at least one thing." Geez, did she take lessons from Ma?
It's painfully quiet, while they watch me squirm.
"Life! It's meaningless. It's unfair!" I finally blurt out.
Katniss agrees,"Yeah, I know it is. Life is cruel and it's unfair."
"I mean ... why Prim?"
"I don't know..." she murmurs quietly.
The silence stretches out as each of us deals with our thoughts and considers what is worth saying now.
After a minute, Gale interrupts the silence by clearing his throat, "I don't know if I even have a right to speak here, but it's not just unfair, it's wrong. But it's also reality."
"Well, it's a reality I'd rather not deal with," I tell them.
I can tell Gale is thinking of something, and turning it over in his mind whether or not to say it. He is always one to consider what he says before he speaks.
Finally he decides to share, "Well, I wish she was here too, but she's gone. I would switch places with her in a heartbeat, but me being dead, or either of you, won't bring her back. So don't even think about it." He pauses and looks both Katniss and I in the eye, each in turn.
"So, what I do is I focus on what I'm going to tell her about how I lived more like her if in the off chance I end up in the same place as her when I die."
I look over to see if Katniss agrees with me, that he's losing it, but she's hanging on his every word.
"Prim may have only been thirteen, but she was wiser than her years. I'm not saying that makes it okay that she's gone. She was an amazing person that impacted so many people. I don't know if she helped more people with her healing skills or with her sunshiney disposition. It's not surprising that she loved working in the hospital in 13. You know, she told me her favorite thing was to assist during operations. She confided in me that she made it a little game to anticipating what the surgeons would need even before they asked. Once she told me that, I could see that in her character every day, in so many of the things she did. She never pushed anything, but she always listened and observed enough to figure out exactly what you needed, a lot of times even before you did. It could be handing you a back up pencil before you went in to take a test, having the water boiling for stew when you're late back from hunting or an extra dessert when she knew you felt like your world was falling apart. We probably can think of a dozen examples each. " He pauses long enough for each of us to remember a at least one time when Prim pulled that.
"That's something I've missed since she's been gone, and I think the world can use more of it. So I've tried to take it on myself. I'm no Prim, but it's a little something I work on to keep her in here," he says as he raps the left side of his chest with a loose fist.
He looks at me, "You should really think about what you'll tell her when you meet her, 'cause they way you're going, Rory, it's going to be sooner than later."
Okay, if I didn't feel like a jerk before, I certainly do now.
"I guess we'd all be better off if we acted more like Prim," Katniss concedes.
"What would it take for you to stay clean?" Never one for beating around the bush, Gale is back on track too. I say, "I don't know." and really, I don't.
Katniss interjects, "Okay, maybe we need to break it down into steps. How about this - what's a good reward for being clean for 2 weeks? For a month? Or how about 3 months?"
"I don't know," I repeat. I don't have an answer. I can still barely form a thought over the pounding of my head.
Gale perks up, then grins wildly at Katniss. "I know what you want! How about this? You prove to me you're clean for 6 months and I'll give you my ILV."
"Uh, what?" Your ILV? Are you kidding me? Give it to me? That's huge! My own wheels?" That means freedom. I don't even have it in me to bargain for anything more.
He sees I'm interested "To prove I'm serious, once you're clean for a month I'll teach you how to ride."
Katniss is beaming now. I don't know if she's happier that Gale offered the big bait or that I bit it.
Once they kindly leave and I wake again from another bout of sleep I am more clearly able to analyze the interaction. I'm grateful that Katniss is here, I can imagine how rough that would have gone without her to temper Gale. It's not the first time I've said it, nor probably the last, but she seems like the only person that can talk sense into him and keep him in check. Honestly, he's just a whole lot more pleasant to deal with when she's around.
