Author's Note
After a couple of long, intense chapters, here's something shorter and (I suppose by comparison) less intense. I hope you are not too terribly disappointed. There are actually a lot of important things happening here, they're just not as much fun as a not-kiss :) So I couldn't skip this part. Also, for those of you who follow along regularly (thank you again!), I will likely be unable to update until after the first of the year what with all the December holidays and such. Fear not! I shall return! Until then, Happy-Whatever-You-Celebrate!
Sunlight wakes me. Or rather, a change in the darkness. The sun isn't up yet, but it's on its way. Birds are starting to chatter in the trees, the world is coming to life again. Full awareness crashes in like a rockslide as I sit bolt-upright. My clothes are damp with morning dew, my mouth sticky with what is left of the mint leaves from last night. Grateful to not have choked to death in my sleep, I lean over and spit out the soggy green remnants. Yuck. At least there was no one else here to see that. Though I'd thought about sleeping in the meadow overnight, I hadn't really meant to. Rest had been elusive as I had lain here and watched the moon pass across the sky. The way my mind was swirling I didn't think sleep would come for days. Apparently it snuck up on me.
I get to my feet stiffly as I gauge the light in the sky. It's not often that the sun beats me to it; there is no way I'll have time to check my lines and still get to school on time. I consider whether to do it anyway, and it isn't much of a debate. My family needs to eat, and I'll be done with school in a few weeks, so it's not like they're going to care much at this point. I immediately stomp that thought into submission because it means that I'll be taking a job in the mine soon. Even as much as it will help my family, since it will earn me a (pathetic) paycheck, I don't like thinking about it. The darkness. The confining tunnels. The ever-present grime.
The girl from town that will come to her senses.
Damn it. I'd been doing pretty well so far not thinking of her. I made it all of, what, five minutes?
I consider going straight to the woods from here, but my bag is still at home and a change of clothes would be nice, so as I walk back, I try to remember what I had almost sorted out last night just before I dozed off. I had it all figured out, in that narrow space between sleep and consciousness. Now, the harder I chase it the farter it gets from me, like a dream upon waking. But last night was no dream. The spark in her, her smile, the way she looked – really looked – at me… that was real.
When I walk in the door everyone stops to look at me, and I freeze, too, because I am unaccustomed to so much business in the morning. I am usually up and long gone before my mother has to get the boys to school.
"What are you doing here?" Mom asks, surprised. She must not have realized that I never made it home last night, and just assumed I'd already departed before dawn.
"I overslept," I say. I don't really feel like going into detail.
"Where?" she asks, eying me curiously as she goes back to fixing Vick's shirt, which he has buttoned crooked all the way down.
"The meadow," I say a little more defensively than necessary. I realize after it's too late that there was no specific accusation behind the question, just curiosity as to where all the dirt came from. My tone rouses her suspicions, and I kick myself for it.
"Why," she asks, but her inflection implies more demand than question.
Rory saves me. Sort of. "Oh, that's where he goes when he's worked up over something."
"Oh?" She finishes Vick's shirt and gives him a piece of toast to keep him busy.
"Yeah. You missed the part where he and Madge were fighting like cats and dogs," he says casually before he takes a mouthful of his own breakfast. He makes a point not to make eye contact with me. Not that it matters. The look I get from my mother makes up for at least three people.
"Gale…." Her voice takes on that warning edge, the one that says I have enough to worry about already without you being an idiot. She's never actually called me an idiot, but I'm pretty sure I've tempted her over the years.
"He's exaggerating, Mom," I say flatly. I move toward the bedroom in the hope that it will end the conversation.
"That girl has been nothing but good to us, and you can't be civil to her for more than five seconds in a row. What is it with you and her?" she says.
That's the million dollar question, isn't it? And I had been so close to answering it last night. I don't hate her, she doesn't look down on me, and… it doesn't make a damn bit of difference. We're pretty much where we started. Except, last night…. "Nothing," I answer, even though I'm not sure whether I'm lying. "We're okay now." I pray that she'll let it go at that.
I change into a clean pair of pants, and am half-way through buttoning a fresh shirt when I hear the bedroom door open behind me. I look over my shoulder to find Rory standing there, and I'm ready to give him hell but the look on his face stops me.
"Get out here. You gotta see this."
….
I feel like I'm sleepwalking as I plate a spatula-full of eggs. Even though I played on the piano last night until I could barely keep my eyes open, they refused to shut as I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Funny that now that I have to be awake sleep hangs over me like a fog.
I stare blankly at the plates on the counter before me, trying to remember what I'm supposed to do with them, and finally snap out of it at the sound of Rose's voice. "You feeling okay?" She's in early today to help with breakfast, since the media team has to be up earlier than usual to catch their train. Thank goodness. If the morning meal had been left up to me, I might have inadvertently burned the house down. Although, with any luck at all, the reporters might not have escaped.
"Just tired, Rosie," I say with what I hope passes for a smile.
"Are you sure?" she asks with motherly concern. "Because that's the third time I asked you."
I nod again. "I didn't sleep very well."
A sudden commotion in the parlor gets our attention, and a knot of worry replaces the pall of exhaustion. Because that's where the television is. Where they're watching the Games. I drop what I'm doing and poke my head into the doorway where I catch Tangerine's eye. She waves me over excitedly and points to the screen.
Utter bedlam is the only way to describe the scene. Tributes scramble hysterically through the woods. One girl collapses in a bone-wrenching seizure. A second one falls moments later. Katniss shimmies down from her tree and looks woozy and panicked.
"What happened?" I ask.
"Turns out Twelve's Eleven may be worth her salt after all," says Lima Bean. "She just dropped that tracker-jacker nest on their little hunting party."
"Got a couple stings herself though," adds Tangerine. "Look."
As Katniss zigzags through the forest her strides look wobbly, and it becomes apparent that the winding path she takes is actually the closest she can manage to a straight line. She jumps into the little pool where she had been resting yesterday, head swiveling crazily to spot any pursuing wasps.
"How bad is it?" I ask, "How many got her?"
"A few," Tangerine says, "but she pulled the stingers out right away, I think. "She'll feel it, no doubt, but it won't be as bad as the others."
The camera comes back to the two thrashing girls and alternates between close-ups of rupturing boils and rolling eyes and clawing, bloodied fingers. The scene cuts briefly to a view of the other Careers diving for safety into the lake before coming back to Katniss. Who is staggering back to the place where she dropped the nest. Is she out of her mind? I feel stupid the moment the thought crosses my mind. Of course she is.
"I can't believe she's going back…" says Lima Bean, as if he can't decide if she's incredibly brave or completely insane.
"The bow," I gasp before I can catch myself. All eyes turn to me, and I know I can't tell them why she's after that particular weapon, so I try to make it sound good. "That girl was the one who shot at her last night. She had a bow and arrows. Katniss doesn't have a good weapon – only a knife. She probably thinks this is her best chance to steal one."
"That's true," says one of the cameramen, whom I have dubbed Pincushion for the odd metal jewelry that adorns his face and neck. "A better weapon will help her odds…." Even after all the time he's spent in our home, it's still hard to look at him.
We watch my friend tromp unsteadily through the trees while the remaining careers regroup at the lake shore. Several of them head back toward the woods, presumably to hunt her down, and I am relieved to see that Peeta is among them. Maybe he'll lead them away again. Katniss battles terror and revulsion as she finally drops to her knees next to the girl with the silver bow and fights clumsily to wrench it from her grip.
"Hurry," I whisper, because the Careers are getting close. I glance at the media team around me, and they are staring wide-eyed and breathless, too. When Tangerine begins to pantomime pulling the strap of the quiver free of an imaginary corpse's shoulder, I realize that they are rooting for Katniss, too. Actually cheering her on. Wanting her to succeed. This is perfect. This is what she needs – what we need. As long as she survives.
Then, just as Katniss frees her weapons, someone crashes through the underbrush.
...
Katniss Everdeen is alive because Peeta Mellark got there first. I roll the thought around a few times, flip it over, take it apart, put it back together while I sit in a tree and wait for game to pass. This process is usually pretty effective when I want to try to figure out how something works. But it fails me at the moment.
It probably has something to do with the end result potentially being Changing My Mind. Which is honestly one of my least favorite things to do. Right up there with Apologizing (also potentially necessary at this point) and Feeling Guilty. Hell, I'd rather fletch all my arrows again, because then I would at least be doing something constructive.
But deep down I know that even that isn't the biggest reason it's so difficult. It's not being able to deny the fact that I hadn't given Katniss half a thought this morning until Rory called me out to the television. The feeling that I had somehow betrayed her by being so distracted. Loving her aside, that makes me a sorry excuse for a friend, doesn't it? And I do love her. But I want to take Madge apart, see how she works, put her back together piece by beautiful, infuriating piece… what does that mean? Especially since it would seem that she's already begun doing it, with astonishing skill, to me? And there it is, the guilt that never quite loses its edge. Trifecta.
Out of the corner of my eye I see a fox slip out of sight in the undergrowth and I curse myself for such a lapse in vigilence. It's lucky to see one so late in the morning, and I'm stupid for letting it get away. Hunting is all I have right now, and I can't even do this right. Its pelt would fetch a handsome price at the tanner's, far more than the rabbits and raccoons, and Rory is about due for a new pair of shoes.
Thinking of my brother brings on a new wave of anxiety, one that I know has been coming for a while but have been trying to avoid. Since the day he caught that carp we've been tense, strung tight. This morning he'd finally plucked the string, and even now it's like it's still humming.
Thanks a lot for bailing me out there, I had growled sarcastically on my way out the door while my mother was out of earshot. He had stared hard at me, and said I could do a better job of covering for you if you'd teach me to shoot so I could take over the days you don't make it to the woods. Never mind the fact that it wouldn't have really helped him cover for me; that wasn't the point he was actually trying to make. I compromised by telling him to catch me another fish and walking away before he could push the issue. Because I don't know how to get him to appreciate that I could technically be executed for hunting and trapping in the forest. How to get him to realize he shouldn't be so eager to grow up. Been there. Done that. So he wouldn't have to.
Thinking of Rory fishing for bait reminds me of Madge again, and that just refreshes all the confusing emotions she elicits, especially the guilt. And the guilt makes me think of Katniss, and I'm back where I started. Katniss Everdeen is alive because Peeta Mellark got there first. And I can't even be angry about it, because that would mean I'd rather he didn't, and that would mean she would be dead. There are no words for how grateful I am that she is alive – injured, sick, but alive. But I can't shake the sense that I've still lost something along the way.
Katniss Everdeen is alive because Peeta Mellark got there first.
….
"Oh, I can't believe we have to leave now, of all times!" Tangerine shrieks. She and the rest of the team are flung into a tizzy by the events of the Hunger Games. The baker's son from District Twelve just saved his true love from certain death, sustained a grievous injury for his trouble, and now may die as a result. How perfectly, tragically romantic. It has the makings of a front-page story.
Never mind that the entire scenario is sick and twisted. He shouldn't have to be saving her life in the first place.
Lima Bean scribbles furiously in a notepad. "Do you think we have time to –"
"We're the only ones taking the train back, right? I'm sure we can get them to delay our departure time…."
Oh dear God no… anything but that. "What is it that you need?" I ask innocently.
"We need time to talk to people," Tangerine says, as if it ought to be obvious. "This is the perfect time for interviews with the tribute families." She turns to the rest of her team like I have disappeared altogether. "How close are we to the baker's?"
A debate ensues as to whether it would be better to go to the Mellarks' home first because it is here in town, or last because it is closer to the train station than the Everdeens'. Pincushion takes it upon himself to snatch up a telephone and contact the justice building to find out how to change the train schedule. Lima Bean suggests that the decision should be made after they find out how much time they can have. "We don't want to get stuck here," he says, and with a sidelong glance my way adds, "No offense." I smile sweetly and think of the last load of their laundry which mysteriously shrank.
Tangerine is right; they will be the only ones on it when the train leaves, so I can't believe they think it would actually leave without them. Where do they think they are? But, if it keeps them moving out the door and away from District Twelve, I'm not going to suggest otherwise.
Still, I can't stand the thought of them terrorizing the Mellarks, whose son might not survive past the end of the week as a result of his heroic actions, or Prim, whose sister is alive but lying in the bottom of a pit hurt and hallucinating from mutant insect venom. They won't get what they really want from the tribute families, anyway. I know what they're after - What they need is the reaction of a Capitol citizen, someone blind to the horror and swept off their feet by the romance and tragedy of the Star-Crossed Lovers from Twelve, just like they are. And that's what Katniss and Peeta need, what a rebellion needs, too. I'll be despised for this, I know it. The Mayor's daughter is already too close to the Capitol as it is. But this isn't about me. Everyone already hates me anyhow.
"Claudia," I say, "Interview me."