Why hello! I apologize for the super long wait for this chapter, but if it helps anything, it's almost twice as long as normal. I'm really iffy on it (again), but there was an attempt.

Thanks so very much to everyone who favorited, reviewed, and followed. As always, many thanks to MaidenAlice, Thundarrgirl, VMars lover, the Guest (this chapter is longer, so hooray!), zotic14, jackyb, ShadowCrystal26, Beautiful Lie 5105, Calliwishis, Thynerdgurl, Scrivener50, Guest (#2), Chanceawakening, rayleen14, mommatime, Opaque, ignitetheballoon, and mackie80.

A quick warning: Obviously suicide is a major theme of this story. This chapter will look at it from more of a psychological, clinical view, briefly explaining a particular motivation for suicide. I think it could potentially bring up bad feelings for some people, so if that's a concern of yours, just message me or send me a tumblr message and I can tell you what happened or send you the chapter without the stuff that could be an issue.

Suzanne Collins owns Hunger Games. I also took two direct passages from Abnormal Psychology by Richard R. Bootzin and Joan Ross Acocella.

XXX

I don't see Peeta again before break. Our Government teacher cancels our last class before break, and I catch a flight down to North Carolina where my mom's supposed to pick me up.

She's late, so I end up sitting on a plastic bench, watching people reunite and sprint to make flights. While I'm there, a little boy screams his head off all the way across the food court because he can't find his toy car, and a wheel falls off of some businessman's suitcase.

All in all, I've never felt more invisible.

No, that's not true. After Dad died, then Prim, my mother and I spent weeks quietly shuffling around the house. The first time, I really tried to make things better, just because I knew it meant something to Prim. I sat by my mom on the couch, put a plate of food in front of her for dinner, screamed at her to wake up. But she just looked through me, not unlike the people bustling through the airport right now.

So the next time, when all the pain and resentment and grief swallowed us whole, I didn't try. Without Prim, there wasn't any point.

I lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes. It's too loud and busy for me to doze off, but it doesn't matter. Soon my phone starts to vibrate, and I lift it to my ear.

As expected, it's my mom. "Katniss?"

"Hey."

"I'm on my way now. I was just with a patient who needed—"

I pinch the bridge of my nose. "Don't worry about it."

"You sound tired," she says after a slight pause. I can't help noticing how ironic it is that she can stay late counseling a stranger, but she misinterprets my anger.

With a flat, "I'll meet you in front of McDonalds," I turn the phone off and stash it in my pocket.

XXX

She lives in an apartment by herself just inside the city limits. The place is a lot smaller than our home in New York, but she couldn't afford to help me in college and pay off our house at the same time.

I like the apartment. It has a room for me, it doesn't take much cleaning, and there aren't any of the old ghosts here to haunt us.

When I emerge from the guestroom, I find my mom pacing in the kitchen, telephone pressed to her ear. "I'll add a timeslot tomorrow for Marcie if she needs it. The holidays can be…"

Tuning her out, I shuffle through the cupboards for a cup. Once I grab one, I fill it with water and move back to the main room to sit on the couch in front of the television. There's a short wooden bookcase against the wall a few feet from the TV, and I squint at the titles.

Psychology and You. Abnormal Psychology. The Psychology of Adolescence.

She has a few neatly colored and organized tabs that mark various pages inside the books. I notice one section's loaded with a different color on nearly every page, but I can't bring myself to see what subject was so interesting for her.

I stand up, leaving my glass on the small table in front of the couch, and retreat to my room.

XXX

She works every day. Twice a day she reminds me that she doesn't normally work this much —once when she hurries out the door and once when she comes home at night to collapse on her bed. She says she usually takes Saturdays and Sundays off and sometimes runs home for a nap if she doesn't have a patient scheduled.

"There are plenty of things to do around here if you leave the apartment," she tells me one morning as she puts her coat on in front of the door. "Either way, I'll stop back here for lunch around noon."

I nod, eyes glued to the bowl of cereal in my hands, and she leaves.

I'm not surprised when she doesn't come back for lunch. But it's not until one o'clock rolls around that I realize I was actually waiting for her.

From my familiar spot on the couch, I glance at the doorway one last time, then my eyes settle on the bookshelf. It's stacked to the top with guides to psychology, mental illness, therapy, counseling. All of the subjects she's spent so much time studying and using to help other people while she leaves her suicidal daughter alone in an empty apartment.

I go in the kitchen to eat something by myself. There's a boxed pizza wrapped in plastic in the freezer, and I open the silverware drawer for a knife to open it with. That's when I realize she doesn't have anything more than a dull butter knife.

Next, I move to her room and sift through her desk drawers for a pair of scissors. I come up short, and I marvel at the possibility that she doesn't keep anything sharp in her house.

Just before I shut the desk and try to tear open the pizza covering with my bare hands, my fingers brush against something square and smooth. I pull it out and find myself face-to-face with an old family photo. In it, I've just started junior high, Prim's in Ms. Arlie's fourth grade class, Dad's still in shape, and Mom is smiling.

Something inside me snaps.

I shove it back where it was, so quickly the corner rips. Guilt floods through me, and I start to shake. I close the drawer too quickly, catch my index finger, and swear as I pull it out. For a split-second, I can see the picture again, and before I'm aware what I'm doing, I lock myself in her bathroom.

I run my hand along the shower curtain, which has protective plastic on one side, a pattern on the other. Her sink is embedded in a small brown cupboard. I feverishly rip open the cupboard doors, lowering myself to ground.

There's an unopened set of cheap razors. She has two fluffy towels stacked, one on top of the other, and cleaning supplies. Bleach, Windex, toilet bowl cleaner.

My movements come to a sudden stop when I feel the tiny, white, round bottle at the back of the cupboard. I grasp the Advil and pull it up to eye level. It's in a miniature size, and already opened with a number of pills missing. There aren't enough.

I put my head in my hands, leaning against the bathroom door and forcing myself to breathe. My throat closes, tying in knots, and my breath comes out in rapid gasps. I can't breathe. I hear an ugly choking sound passing my lips, but there aren't any tears. I might feel a little better if I did cry, but I can't.

Throwing the Advil to the side, I tear open the package of razors and hold one up, looking it over. I'm so focused on the object in my hand that I almost miss the sound coming from the bedroom.

Ringing.

I'm so startled that I drop the razor, and it bounces off my leg to the ground.

I toss everything back where it was, then stumble out of the bathroom on shaky legs. On top of that damn desk with the picture, my mom's laptop is on. Cautious, I move towards it and see that Gale's calling my mom.

I'm just about to ignore the call when I see that he already messaged me twice, saying, "You there?" and "My mom said you'd probably be around. Unless you decided to leave the apartment after all."

I frown. Hazelle and my mother have been talking about me. If I ignore the call, I better have a good excuse or they'll figure out I screened it.

Sighing, I take a few seconds to calm myself down as much as possible, then pick up. The picture loads, then Gale's face splits into a tiny smile when he sees me.

He isn't much of a smile person, so I feel a small flicker of warmth flare up inside when he does.

"I thought you weren't there," he says.

"Sorry. I was busy."

He raises an eyebrow. "So where've you been the last month?" I shrug, and he shakes his head. "Second time you've gone missing since I've been in Brazil, Catnip."

My face falls. Luckily, Gale seems to miss it as he adds, "Don't tell me you joined a cult."

I give him an absent smile, thinking about what he said. The first time I stopped talking to him, I was in the hospital after an overdose, then in a group psychiatric home. More recently, I stopped talking to him because I was too distracted trying to keep up with school and Peeta and live in the real world.

It's been almost exactly two months since the bad night. Three months since I started at Bohm. A month and a half since I met Peeta. And it feels like so much longer than that. Like I'm a different person.

I don't know how that could be. Or why. I'm not trying as hard as I could be. I still hurt myself, even when I try not to. I still blame other people for the way I am. And yet, I can't shake the feeling that something's changed.

But it hasn't. I haven't. I just proved that to myself. The pain came back and I locked myself away, like always.

Then you opened the door and talked to Gale instead, a voice reminds me in the back of my mind. I ignore it, turning my focus back to Gale. He's telling me some story about his roommate, and I'm way too distracted to follow it.

"Gale," I interrupt, and he cuts off.

"Yeah?"

"Do you miss Bohm?"

At first he gives me a look like he thinks I'm teasing him. But I don't say anything else, and he decides to answer. "Not really. I already lived there for two years. At least this place is different."

I swallow as he turns to look over his shoulder, then stares at a spot somewhere to his right. "I'm ready to come back, though. Rory's being a pain in everyone's ass and Posy looks different every time I see her."

"Her birthday's coming up," I say, because I can't come up with anything better.

He ignores me, continuing like he didn't hear me. Coughing once, he finally glances back at me. "It'll be good to see you again, too."

For the first time, I wonder what it would've been like for him to hear over Skype that he'd be going back to Bohm without me.

Would he have left Brazil right away? Would that mean all that money he spent for his semester abroad was for nothing?

The next through comes from nowhere.

What would Peeta have done? He could've ended up with someone a lot more fun to be around than me. Or someone a lot worse, though I can't imagine what kind of person that would be.

Scratching my forehead, I tell Gale, "I'm ready for you to come back, too."

XXX

Thanksgiving comes a week after I arrive, and my mom and I almost have lunch together. It's a frozen turkey she put in the oven, mashed potatoes, and a pumpkin pie she bought from the grocery store during her lunch break yesterday.

Then, since her work number is programmed to forward to her cell, she gets a call from a teary patient who keeps repeating how much he hates Thanksgiving. The man's speech picks up until I can't understand him, and she leaves the table and crosses to her bookshelf, opening one of the books and flipping to a bookmarked page while he talks.

I'm not sure what he says to her, but it isn't long before she walks outside and aimlessly paces through the complex's yard, listening to him. Her phone's glued to her ear the entire time. I watch, convinced I never had half the attention she's giving him now.

Rolling my eyes at myself, I stand up and move to sit in front of the bookshelf. I pull out the same book she did and start to leaf through it, searching for the same blue tab she just found.

Something stops me.

I find the section she's so diligently marked, underlined, and highlighted. She has no new notes or thoughts of her own, but that's not what matters. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I realize it's an entire sub-chapter about suicide.

Maybe it's a selfish hope that she didn't forget what I did as easily as I thought, but something tells me this wasn't marked to help with one of her patients. This section's for me.

There's one sentence that's highlighted and marked with a pink tab: "In short, the vast majority of suicide attempts are made by people who on one level truly wish to live."

I stare at it for awhile, unsure what to make of this. My hands feel clammy, and they tremble as I turn the page. There, I find another tabbed paragraph with a few select words highlighted:

Egoistic suicide, a very different classification, results from individuals' lack of integration into their society. Loners with no strong ties to community or family, egoistic suicides are people who lack a supportive social network to see them through periods of stress.

I don't feel sorry for myself reading it. I don't agree, don't feel relief that I'm understood. Instead, with a force I haven't felt in a long time, there's anger. Extreme, radiating anger.

She might be an selfish, oblivious parent, but I'm not the person this book is talking about. Because…

Before I can stop them, faces spring to my mind: Gale, the ER doctor, Peeta, Witt.

I slam the book shut then scramble to my feet. Back in the kitchen, I toss my plate into the fridge to keep my remaining food, pull a jacket on over my shoulders, and head out the door.

My mom's so focused on her work that I'm not sure she notices when I pass her and head down the sidewalk.

I rub my face, waiting for the anger to dissipate. It doesn't, and I can't place where it's stemming from or who it's aimed towards. I scuff my foot against the concrete, kicking a small rock into the grass on my right, then I spot a park. With trees.

Unable to help myself, I break into a jog and hoist myself up one of the trunks. An almost-childlike energy, one that allows me to move from branch to branch, higher and higher, propels me upwards as I climb.

I know I'm not the person in that book. I have people everywhere.

They might not be there when I want them to be, and they might not help me as much as I want them to, but the faces swim in front of my eyes until I'm forced to stop on a branch, wrap an arm around the trunk to steady myself, and cry.

XXX

Mom drops me off at the airport on Monday morning. The plane is packed with people, all flying back to New York after the holidays, and I get a middle seat near the back of the plane.

I take a taxi back to school, where classes have technically already started. I'm too late for Calculus, but I can make it to Spanish if I try. But I have to pass Bon Café if I go. And if I do, there's a good chance I'll see him. Hope and absolute terror simultaneously well up inside me at the thought.

I decide to compromise. With my backpack slung over my shoulder, I move in the general direction of the foreign languages building, keeping my distance from Bon.

As I pass the café, I pointedly set my gaze on the buildings ahead of me. Then another set of buildings come into view, and I realize I'm not here for Spanish at all.

Trying not to think or worry or talk myself out of it, I move towards the student center with the counseling offices. For once, there don't seem to be many people there, and I automatically glance inside the glass window of Room 231—the Peer Room.

My heart almost stops when I see Peeta, sitting on the beanbag in the waiting room. He's too busy talking to the man who sits behind the desk to notice me. But one look at him and I feel the ache all over again. The one from the walk back to Bohm after we went to the hospital, the one after Gale and I hung up on Skype over break.

Just when I think I can't do this, that I should around and run back outside, a steady voice speaks up in the back of my mind; I'm doing the right thing. That he won't spend time with me anymore, probably won't even be allowed to, but it needs to happen.

Trying to seem Normal around him isn't much of an option anymore, either.

This isn't part of the plan, but I at least owe him an explanation. Maybe he'll even be happy about it.

I pull my phone from my pocket, type, "Can I talk to you outside student services in twenty minutes?" and press send. Immature as it is, I wait outside until he notices his phone light up, then I back away.

Just in case he decides to head outside now, I keep my head down and shoot fugitive glances behind me all the way up the stairs. Then, after promising myself I'm doing the right thing again, I duck inside the counseling office.

The first few minutes are torture, and I wince at nearly every question Witt asks, but it gets better after that. Then, with my arms wrapped around my middle, I leave. I check my phone in the hallway, and Peeta's agreed to come.

That's when I realize how long it's been. I was inside Witt's office for forty minutes, but it didn't feel that way. Now I'm late for Spanish and late for Peeta. I'm almost glad because I feel better after Witt. I'm not sure I want to ruin it.

In the end, I don't have much of a choice. Peeta's sitting on the steps, out front, doodling in the dust that's settled on them. He half-heartedly turns to face me when I open the doors, then his eyes widen as he jumps to his feet.

"You were waiting inside?"

I shake my head. "No, I just…" I suck in a breath, reminding myself why I texted him in the first place. "Sorry."

He stares at me, and I make an effort not to look so hostile. My arms drop to my sides, and I unclench my jaw. Then, I try again. "I'm sorry."

"It's not a big deal," he says casually. I frown, confused. "I don't have anywhere to be for another hour anyway."

Oh.

"I'm not sorry I'm late," I explain. "Well, I am, but I'm talking about the other thing." The other thing. If I wasn't so nervous, I'd almost laugh at how stupid I sound. "When I walked out on you."

He doesn't look so forgiving now. I shift uncomfortably and open my mouth to continue, but I don't get the chance.

"I wasn't helping much," he says.

I scratch the back of my neck, taken aback. "More than anybody else was."

He finally looks at me, and I'm surprised how soft his eyes are. "Why didn't you just tell me so I could—?"

The words well up in my throat like they did every day over Break when my mother was around. But this time, I can't stop them. Especially not after I spent the last forty minutes talking to Witt. "I didn't want to remind you why you were there."

He blinks a few times, nose scrunching slightly as he thinks. Then, he says, "I was there to study."

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I do. And I'm telling you, it wasn't about that. I was there to do homework and just..." He trails off, then he speeds up, sounding strained. "I already knew. What you were doing when you thought I wasn't paying attention."

My heart starts to pound, and I swallow hard. He continues, "I didn't—I didn't want to hurt your feelings." He lets his breath out in a whoosh, roughly running a hand through his curls. "I was worried that bringing it up would make you mad."

He braces himself, hands fidgeting and tapping against his leg, then looks at the ground. In a determined, clearly-rehearsed speech, he begins, "I thought about it a lot over break. And I'm not trying to rat on you, but I need to—"

"Tell someone." He glances up at me, confused by my interruption. I shake my head. "No, you don't."

"That's what I kept telling myself, but I was stupid to think I could fix it. I don't have a degree or firsthand experience or any resources to work with."

I didn't need someone with a degree or firsthand experience or resources. I needed someone to nudge me in the right direction. And he did, somehow.

"I already did it," I say, watching for his reaction. My face flushes as a sudden wave of embarrassment hits me. "I told Witt."