Note to all authors: If you have writer's block, don't just stare at the computer for four hours…you'll get major headaches later.
Or hide from a lie, I hate to turn outta the blue uninvited. ~Someone Like You, Adele
I continue to stare into the flames and wait for his answer, for an explanation.
"I don't know." He finally tells me. Lies. I can tell he's lying.
"So I don't even earn the truth from you? There's a reason, tell me." I press him. He sighs.
"I was busy, learning, going in the woods. I didn't want to bother you with that; I didn't want you to get hurt."
"So after that, the past four years, why did you still stay away?"
"Honestly, I don't know, I just, didn't think you'd want to hang out with me anymore." I turn to look at him now.
"Not hang out with you anymore? Every day I wished that maybe you'd come talk to me again. That maybe I really hadn't just been replaced that quickly. I guess I had been." I can't help it when my voice cracks.
"Replaced?" he asks, clearly confused.
"Nothing, it's stupid." I snap back turning my attention back to the fire.
"No, tell me."
"You'll say it's dumb."
"Promise I won't."
I sigh before I tell him, "I feel like you replaced me with Katniss."
Silence. That's his response, and I'm perfectly fine with it.
"It's getting late, you should get home." I finally tell Gale without looking at him.
"Ya, I, I'll see you around."
"Yea, tell the kids I say hi"
"Will do."
;;;:::;;;;
-Gale:
"I feel like you replaced me with Katniss." She tells me, not looking me in the eyes. I feel my stomach fall with guilt. I never thought she might have felt that way. I stare down at the picture in my hands. I remember when it was taken too, we were eleven.
*Flashback*
"Gale!" Denver shrieks as I chase her through the meadow. I'm closing the gap between us.
Finally I catch her and tackle her to the ground; we both fall into the fresh spring grass with a huff. I keep my arms around her as she rolls and tries to get me off of her.
"This is so not fair!" She complains to me when she finally just gives up. She lays on her stomach and I lay on top of her. I twirled her hair around my finger.
"Your pretty you know that?" I tell her, this makes her try to look up at me.
"Thanks, you're not bad yourself." She tells me, it makes me smile.
"Gale! Get off of her!" I look up at my mother's voice. I sigh and roll off of Denver, then I catch sight of Denver's father with a camera. Crap. "And both of you come over here, we want a picture."
"Do we have too?" Denver groans next to me.
"Yes you do." My father says as he appears next to my mother. I always listen to my dad, so I get up and take Denver's hand.
"Common' the sooner we do the sooner it's over." She nods and lets me help her up, I don't let go of her hand as we walk over. We stop in front of our parents, well my parents and her father. We are instructed to smile, I put my arm around her shoulders and smile for the camera, she does the same.
"God Gale you act like you're married to her." Denver's brother Kline calls over from his group of friends he's playing with.
"I may be someday." I point out to him, then for good measure kiss her on the cheek, there's a flash right when I do and our parents laugh at how cute that will be.
"Young love." My mother croons. Denver's face goes red as she bursts out laughing; I wrap my arms around her and grin widely at the camera. Denver hides her face in my shirt as the camera goes off again.
*Flashback end*
"It's getting late, you should get home." She tells me finally without looking from the fire.
"Ya, I, I'll see you around."
"Yea, tell the kids I say hi"
"Will do." I go and head out the door; I jog over to my house, its dark now and freezing cold since I don't have any gloves. I stomp the snow off my boots once I get inside and place them by the door alongside my siblings.
"Gale?" My mom calls from the kitchen.
"Ya, it's me." I answer as I scoop up Posy as she runs to me. "How was your day Pos?" I croon to her.
"Fun! I played with Vick all day!" she claps in my arms.
"I bet he just loved that." I laugh and give a pointed look to my brother, who looks exhausted on the couch. I put Posy down and go sit on a chair in front of the kitchen, I watch my mother as she finishes a load of laundry for someone.
"How's Denver doing?" she asks me worriedly.
"She's okay, I got her talking again. She got a job too" I don't hide my dislike at the last part of my sentence, this makes my mom put down a shirt and give me her full attention.
"She didn't go see Cray did she?" she asks horrified. I shake my head.
"Oh, no, she got a job at the mines."
"Ah, that's great, what does she do?" My mom clearly doesn't think that I mean actually mining the coal, she thinks maybe as a secretary or role call or something like that.
"She's going to mine. She's on the same crew as me too."
"Oh" is all she says, then her attention is turned back to the clothes.
I go back over to my siblings who all ask how Denver is. I tell them she's getting better and say she told me to tell them hi.
;;;:::;;;
-Denver:
A week later I change into a simple button down shirt and work jeans. I grab Kline's old pickaxe and hardhat and step outside to go to work. I don't even glance towards the Hawthorne's. Gale and I have been spending a lot of time together, but he snapped at me again yesterday about being a girl and working in the mines and I still haven't forgiven him for it. I glance down at the lunch I made myself, just a sandwich of bread and peanut butter. I packed a canteen of water too. I'm not a big eater; I'm used to being hungry, very hungry.
I pretend not to hear the footfalls catching up to me as I walk, I know who it is. When he catches up with me he just falls in sync with me and we walk together to the mines. We arrive in silence and I get many pointed looks from the other miners who are waiting for the whistle to announce the day's work to begin.
I easily find my brother's old space for keeping his jacket. It has Rowsell written above it in Kline's neat handwriting. I take off my jacket and shove it in, the cold air is freezing against my bare arms, but I ignore it and walk over to where Gale is standing with a group of guys by a shaft, they must be my crew.
I walk over and immediately all conversation among them stops. They just stare at me, quizzical looks upon their faces. It pisses me off.
"Ya I'm in your crew, ya I'm a girl let's just make sure we all know that. And I don't give a crap on whether you think I should be here or not. I'm here and there's nothing you can do about it."
No one says anything; they stare at me wide eyed. Finally a wide grin spreads across one of the men.
"I'll voice my thoughts you little bitch whenever I want, you shouldn't be here." He laughs out at me. I take my pickaxe and slam the side of it against the man's throat; I push up on his jaw with it.
"How about you watch your tongue before I chisel it out for ya?" I growl at him I let a stupid grin come across my face.
"You could've gone to Cray. I mean, you'd get good pay." Another man, closer to my age, speaks up as he runs his eyes over my body. I lower my pickaxe from the man's throat and turn on my most recent speaker.
"I don't want to go to Cray. Cause I'm not a slut, no matter how much I need the money. But thanks for the compliment." I don't threaten him with the pickaxe; I let it hang loosely by my side.
"Leave her alone, if she can work then she's fine, don't matter what sex she is." I nod my thanks to an older man; he must be at least fifty.
The whistle sounds and we file into the elevator that will take us down into the earth. I put my lunch pail in the same hand as my axe when the world goes black. I switch my headlamp on and sadly am met with Gale's eyes. I narrow mine at him. The elevator soon screeches to a halt and I follow my crew outside and through the tunnel until they stop and put their lunches down, I put mine with them.
Minutes later I'm striking away at the black wall next to my mining partner, who, surprise surprise, is Gale. We work away at the wall, each time my pickaxe connects with the wall coal breaks off, a good amount too. It's not as much that comes off from where Gale hits the wall, but it's close. Back, strike, back, strike. The motion is repetitive and soon it falls into rhythm. Once there's a good amount at my feet I gather the coal into a bucket. I barely manage to lift the heavy load and then dump it in the mine car. Once that's done I return to the wall. Back, strike, back, strike. Soon my muscles ache and protest every moment I command them to do.
I almost let out a shout of joy when we're told we have ten minutes for lunch. I walk with the rest of my crew down to our lunches and take out mine. I slowly sip the water, quenching my parched throat that had been screaming for water. I let my back slide down the wall as I sit on the cold floor with my crew.
"You're not a bad worker girly" the man who called me a bitch earlier today praises me. He offers me his hand since I'm sitting right next to him. "I'm Dalton." I take his hand and shake it.
"Denver"
"Okay, since it looks like you may actually stay I'll introduce the crew. This is Lucas." He motions to the boy next to him, the one who said I could go to Cray. They both look like classic Seam boys. "Then there's Drew." The next man down raises his hand in greeting; he looks about thirty and has pale skin and soft red hair. "You've spoken with Gary" The man who defended me gives me a smile; I notice now how his hair is already gray, turning white. "Then Ron and Andrew" Ron sits beside Gale, he's a merchant boy, I can tell by his blond hair and blue eyes. On the other side of Ron is Andrew, light brown hair that's gives off a shaggy look, it makes him look to be in his sixty's but he must only be in his forty's. "Oh, and Gale, but you know him." Dalton shrugs.
"Nice to meet you all." I say as I bite down on my sandwich. A stale sandwich never tasted so good. I almost don't notice when Gale holds something out for me.
"This is from Posy." He explains as I take it. I put my sandwich in one hand and open the note. A smile appears on my face as I see a little drawing of two stick figures holding pickaxes. Gale and Denver is written in Posy's sloppy handwriting above each one. Below it Posy wrote me another message. 'Tak care of Gale fo me Denver' I let a small chuckle escape my lips.
"What is it? A love note?" Dalton teases, elbowing me in the side a little.
"No, here, I want it back though." I inform Dalton as I hand him the note from Posy.
Dalton bursts out laughing at the little drawing. "Posy is five, right Gale?" he asks.
"Yeah"
The note gets passed around to everyone; from Dalton, to Lucas, to Drew, to Gary, to Andrew, to Ron, and then to Gale.
"Ya, make sure he doesn't stab himself with his axe girly" Ron chuckles.
Even Gale smiles at the drawing before he hands it back to me, I tuck it away in my lunch pail and make a mental note to thank Posy later for it. She'll get upset if I forget about it. After I finish my sandwich and then drink almost all of my water, leaving a little left for the walk home.
Then it's back to work. Back, strike, back, strike, back, strike, fill your bucket, dump your bucket, back, strike, back, strike, fill your bucket, dump your bucket, back, strike, back, strike. Over and over and over again I repeat the process. As the hours slowly tick by the rhythm of my work is off. Longer pauses, a longer walk to the mine car, less coal comes down with each collision of steel and coal. Each movement swing sends pain shooting down my spine and shoulder area. I can feel every muscle retract and extend with the effort. But I hang on till the end, when an overseer calls down to fill our buckets one last time.
After I empty my bucket into the car I take my place behind it alongside Gale, Dalton, and Lucas. Slowly we push the car up the tracks towards the shaft that will bring it, along with us, back up to the world above.
I almost kiss the ground when we finally make it into the open air and are done for the day. I take my water and gulp the rest of it down. Big mistake. I feel it as soon as the water reaches my stomach and I barely make it behind an office building when the water comes back the same way it went down. I lean against the building after, what I'm sure to be, all the water I had in my system comes back up. I welcome to cold, crisp air on my sweat covered skin. It keeps me wide awake for now, but soon I'll feel frozen because of it. I can feel the heat that radiates off of my body.
"You okay?" I hear a voice ask. I turn my head and see Drew standing there, all ready to go home, his pickaxe propped over his shoulder.
"Yeah," I lie; he eyes the puddle in front of me. "Naw, I drank too fast." A grin appears on his old wrinkled face.
"Happens to all of us at least once." He assures me, good, that's encouraging to hear. I wait a few minutes until after Drew has left to go and get my jacket. I grab it and sling it over my shoulder and let the pickaxe rest on it. The air still feels good on my skin.
I wince when there's a hard slap on my shoulders. "Good job girly, how ya feel?" It's Lucas.
"Terrible," I moan as I force myself to start walking towards home.
"That's great, you'll build muscle soon. Then you'll be even more irresistible." He raises his eyebrows at me and I roll my eyes.
"God I'd rather deal with Darius."
"Oh burn Luc, that's saying something there." I hear Gale chuckle, wow, I've never heard him this, happy, before. Lucas rolls his eyes at us.
"Fine, go walk your little girlfriend home."
"She's not my girlfriend!" Gale points out again.
"We live across from each other; I have to walk with him." I add on to prove our point that we're not dating, which everyone seems to be keen on convincing themselves that we are.
"I'm not a bad walking partner either. Am I?" Gale looks down and asks me. I make a face and pretend to think this over very carefully, Lucas starts to laugh.
"Naw, you're not too bad."
Omg while I was writing this I had just came up from dinner and then I heard Rue's whistle from the TV downstairs and I screamed "It's the Hunger Games!" So, sadly I leave for some place in the morning and I won't be updating till Friday But there should be one right when I get the chance since I'll write at least one chapter while I'm there. Hope you enjoyed! And remember, reviews = faster updates when possible!