Every afternoon since that fateful first day of kindergarten, Peeta would linger on the front steps of their little schoolhouse to watch the girl with the two braids and the sweet voice take the dirt road back to the Seam. The solitary type, she usually made the journey alone, without the companionship of any of her classmates. But occasionally her mother, and even on some very special occasions her father, would come at the end of the school day to pick her up.
Peeta paid very close attention on those days.
Mr. Everdeen was a rather tall and handsome man whom Peeta knew very little about, except that he made his living as a coalminer, that he once "stole" the affections of the woman Peeta's father once (still?) loved, and that Katniss adored him. The high-pitched squeal that erupted from (normally taciturn) Katniss's lips as she flung herself into her father's outstretched arms confirmed this. As the coalminer tugged playfully on his daughter's braids and enquired after her day, Mrs. Everdeen would stand quietly aside, baby Primrose cradled in her arms and her Merchant blue eyes shining with motherly pride.
The Everdeens made for a lovely picture together, Peeta thought. Katniss was every bit the spitting image of her olive-skinned, silver-eyed father, and golden-haired Primrose already showed signs of embodying the exquisite beauty of her mother. Most people in District Twelve—the Merchants, at least—would sneer at the obvious differences in skin tone. Relations between Merchant and Seam were highly discouraged in proper society. In fact, Peeta had once been told by his mother that Seam folk were violent and frightening. But Mr. Everdeen seemed nothing of the sort, treating his daughters and his wife only with the utmost tenderness and affection. The family's utter enjoyment of one another's company was palpable, even from Peeta's vantage point a few hundred feet away.
After listening intently to a surprisingly verbose Katniss describe the highlights of her day, her father would at last lift Katniss onto his broad shoulders. The little family would then turn back toward the Seam together—but not before Mr. Everdeen turned to his wife and clasped her hand securely in his own.
Peeta noticed how Mr. Everdeen would gently lift his wife's hand to his lips and kiss it. He had never witnessed such tender affection exchanged between his own parents, and for some reason that thought made his heart ache. More than once he wondered what it must be like to live in a home where the father and mother truly loved one another.
Most little boys don't spend their days dreaming of weddings and marriage, and neither did Peeta. But he did know that there was something very special about Katniss Everdeen and her family. And he wanted it. He wanted a life like hers, with a contented father, and gentle mother, and a home free from want of affection.
As he grew older, Peeta's yearning for that kind of life never went away. But instead of wanting it with his parents and brothers, Peeta began to imagine a new family. And in this dream, a fair-haired Merchant boy would kiss his dark-haired beauty on the back of her hand—and on her lips—as often as he pleased.
After the Everdeen clan was finally out of sight, Peeta would hurry in the opposite direction—to the Merchant quarter of District Twelve—knowing a date with his mother's rolling pin awaited him should he arrive even so much as a minute late.
After nine years of admiring Katniss from afar—and two years after the incident with the bread—Peeta noticed that Katniss had a new man walking her home from school. Gale Hawthorne, a boy from the Seam two years their senior and, at the age of sixteen, already known for his many conquests behind the slag heap.
Needless to say, Gale was not the sort of company Peeta wanted to see Katniss keeping.
Tall, handsome, and broad-shouldered, the physical resemblance between Gale and the late Mr. Everdeen was somewhat striking. Or at least it was to Peeta, who could not help but compare the easy manner in which Katniss conversed with the rugged huntsman to the way she had so easily opened up in the presence of her beloved father. Gale's presence seemed to elicit a side of Katniss very few people were privileged to see.
Even though he knew he had no right to feel that way—indeed, had forfeited that right every time he failed to approach Katniss in the school hallway—the bitter pang of jealousy still cut through Peeta like a knife.
The circumstances he had been born into had never made a romance with Katniss Everdeen very likely (he felt certain that his mother and perhaps the entire Merchant community would disown him, not that he cared). But after seeing her joke and smile with Hawthorne, Peeta's already slim chances seemed to grow even slimmer, if not non-existent. He would imagine Gale caressing the back of Katniss's hand with his lips (indeed, he imagined them doing many other things together) and shudder.
Peeta had a sinking suspicion that history was repeating itself. That the girl would once again fall for the dashing coalminer, leaving the heartbroken baker to pick up the pieces of his shattered heart. He could already see himself turning into his father, locked in an arranged marriage that brought him little joy, and the thought grieved him deeply.
Yet every afternoon, just like the many afternoons before, he would hang back on the front steps of school and stalwartly endure the self-inflicted torture of watching Katniss, Gale, and their younger siblings walk home together. He couldn't help but compare the sight to an image he had filed away in his brain, of a happy family walking back in the direction of the Seam. And Gale and Katniss looked so much alike, so very much like a family, with their matching olive skin and silver eyes and easy manner. They looked like they belonged with each other. Everybody said so. And in his lower moments, Peeta found himself reluctantly agreeing with them.
In those dark days, only one thing kept Peeta from descending into the bottomless depths of envy and despair.
The blue eyes of a little Seam girl named Primrose.
Because while a coalminer might have won the heart of the baker's sweetheart before, the fact remains that nearly a quarter of a century ago, two young people from opposite sides of town had defied the odds and social conventions and had fallen in love.
And Peeta desperately hoped history was about to repeat itself.