Author's Note:
An early update! I crammed to get this done (and edited it from my iPhone, so bear with me...) because I wanted to get it posted. I know I promised to try to get back to a regular update schedule, but that was before I remembered that I was going on vacation - and I felt guilty when I considered making my readers wait until I got back. So if this seemed a little rushed, that's part of the reason. This is also my attempt to funnel some detailed scenes into a description of a longer passage of time, not something I do very often, so it reads a little weird to me. This was originally going to be several more detailed chapters, but that would have been just... Well, refer to the last 29.
So, as i shall be briefly dropping off the face of the earth, the next one will take a little while, but it will be worth it I swear! ;)
The day that Katniss is scheduled to arrive back in District Twelve, I am given a few hours of leave from the mine. I am, after all, the cousin of the victorious Girl on Fire who famously promised the Capitol that they would get their show, so naturally I have to be there. Not because anyone cares that I might be glad to have her coming home alive, but because the reporters want another sound bite.
I wish I could tell them, in detail, what I think they should do with that microphone.
I also wish I could decide whether I'm looking forward to this, or dreading it. Since the end of the Games, the sharpness of my anger and sense of betrayal has worn, allowing a little more room to think that maybe she wasn't really giving up; perhaps she was proving to all of Panem that she would rather die than let the Capitol force her to do something despicable, because killing Peeta Mellark (regardless of what I think of him personally) would have been exactly that. But then again, leaving behind the sister that relies on you is a high price to pay to just make a point. And, Peeta did offer to let her win, to die without making her take responsibility, and she wouldn't have it. I'm happy that Katniss is coming home, but it's going to be hard to see that she didn't really survive the Hunger Games.
The kids have been given the day off school as well, along with Prim of course, and they are getting impatient for the train to arrive. Even though we are edging into autumn, it's peak-of-summer hot today and there's no breeze to speak of, which isn't helping. Vick keeps leaning as far as he can over the edge of the platform to get a view down the track, and it's driving my mother crazy. Posy keeps asking Prim if she knows whether Katniss will be wearing her jewelry dress when she arrives, as if she expects her answer to change after the first dozen "I'm not sures," which irks Rory to no end because it means she is stealing half of Prim's attention.
The Mellarks arrive along with a few other people from town (Cousins? Real Cousins? Friends of the family?) and they exchange brief, polite pleasantries with all of us standing here but they do not linger very long before moving further down the platform. I expect that any circumstance where the baker's family and the Everdeens will have to interact – and it'll likely happen a lot with the way the Games ended – will be unbearably awkward a best. Mrs. Mellark makes a point not to look at anyone as she stands behind her husband and sons, and for once I almost feel bad for her; she might be awful, but it can't be easy standing here after your dying son announced that your husband wanted to marry another woman on national television. Especially when that woman is waiting here with you for her own daughter.
Minutes later the reporters make their entrance, followed by the Head Peacekeeper, the Mayor, and a few other officials who have never merited enough of my attention for me to remember exactly what it is they do. And trailing along at the end of the line, with a handful of bright orange flowers, is Madge Undersee. I try hard not to stare, finally decide to hell with it, and settle with just being discreet. Her golden hair is pinned into an artfully messy knot behind her head, and while I miss the easy tumble of her ponytail it does flatter the graceful lines of her neck and shoulder. The bright sunlight makes her eyes glitter under long lashes. She moves like the ripples on a pond.
She is beautiful, and I wish it was any other time than now, because all I can think of is how badly I want to mess it up.
"Miss Madge!" Posy notices her and darts that way, thrilled to have someone new to pester.
Madge smiles brightly and drops to a knee to hug her, then places the cluster of flowers into her little hand. "I had a feeling you'd be here," she says, "so I brought these for you."
"For me?" Posy chirps ecstatically.
"Yep. And I thought you could give one to Katniss, too," Madge suggests. "You know, the Girl on Fire."
My sister gasps. "You're right," she says, utterly serious. "I'm going to." She skips back to Prim, and then my mother, to show off her gift.
"They're beautiful!" Mom says, and then she looks to Madge. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," She says with a shy smile, and then her eyes find mine. She watches me carefully for half an instant, and something in her smile changes in a way that says she means it for only me. It twists me up inside, and you'd think by now I'd have gotten used to that but I haven't. Then, because she always sees me so clearly, always seems to know, she moves on along the line to say hello to Mr. Mellark.
Finally, once someone catches sight of the train in the distance, the photographer from the media team starts arranging all of us strategically. The Mayor and all the officials to one side, Madge with them, Mrs. E and Prim and the Mellarks in the center so they can get the best photos, my family and the baker's friends at the back and out of the way. The rush of air that comes with the train is a welcome relief and he starts shouting instructions at us as the engine roars into the station, but no one can really hear him and we're all too distracted to care. It takes a few minutes, but people start pouring out of the open door; I recognize the Tribute Stylists from television, a half dozen assistants, a pair of men who look like government officials.
Then, I hear Effie Trinkett before she even steps outside. I wince at her shrill, affected voice; when I come across something in the woods making noises like that, I do the merciful thing and kill it. "I knew they had it in them!" she says cheerfully. "They were pearls! Just pearls!" She bustles out into the middle of all of us, a neurotic swirl of pink hair and blue eyeshadow, and starts in to a new round of (unfortunately audible) instructions. "Alright everyone! Mr. Abernathy…." I tune out, afraid that if I listen too long I may start bleeding from an ear, and concentrate on the fact that she can't drag this on forever.
Haymitch Abernathy appears after a moment and the Media Team, along with some of the Capitol people that just came off the train, ready their cameras the same way I draw a bow while I sit in a tree. Haymitch doesn't look quite sober, but at least he isn't fall-down drunk like he was on Reaping Day, and waves the District Twelve Tributes onto the platform without preamble. Katniss and Peeta step forward, hand-in-hand, into a flurry of flashes and applause and tears. Katniss looks healthier than she did at the end of the Huger Games but her frame is still too thin, her face too hollow, her eyes too haunted. I have to look away from her for a moment and give myself a chance to reign in the white-hot anger that burns through to the surface all over again; I can't stand to see what they have done to her. Then, when she looks at Prim, she breaks into an ecstatic smile as tears start to spill down her cheeks and she drops Peeta's hand to run over and throw her arms around her sister. Katniss chokes a little as she speaks. "Oh, I missed you, little duck!"
I watch her beam at Prim, and feel a tiny spark of hope. Maybe there's still a little left of the Katniss that I knew, after all.
Her mother embraces her, the most affection that I've ever seen shown between the two of them, and tells her that her cousins are excited to see her, too. I worry as the faintest hint of confusion flickers across her face when her eyes land on me and my family, but she has the good sense to play along. The last thing she needs is to rouse the suspicions of everyone watching. Katniss smiles at us, and makes her way over to trade hugs with Mom and the kids, narrowly dodging the orange flower that Posy shoves in her face. She saves me for last and when she leans her head against my shoulder, she whispers, "Thank you."
I am on the brink of actually feeling happy, relieved, even a little sentimental, but her words pitch me back over into anger. For what? I want to ask. For holding up my end of the bargain while you conveniently forget that there ever was one? But this is neither the time nor place to berate her for her decisions. There may never be a time or place. I remind myself that I'm not standing here with a girl but the remnants of a person who may never quite remember what she used to be. She doesn't need my resentment or disappointment. So, because I love her, because she is part of my family, because I don't break promises, I say nothing and force what little of a smile that I can.
….
I am certain that with Katniss here I won't ever see Gale again except when might drop by with strawberries or something else to sell. I had begged and begged for my father to pull me out of school so I could be there when she returned, and was ecstatic when he relented. But as happy as I was to see her again, it was difficult to see her with Gale that day; there may be nothing romantic between them, but it was plain to see that he was hers in ways that he will never be mine. Even though I try hard to remember how he had looked at me before he left last Saturday, as if dangerously close to tipping the scale from friendship to something more, I can't shake the feeling that without a void to fill he will forget whatever was happening between us.
But he doesn't forget. At the end of the week, when I hear a knock at the back door I rush to answer it first, just in case. My reward is a tall, tired, miner worn and ready to collapse, and there is nothing more that I could want. He smiles through the weariness when he sees me and asks if I need a break from my houseguests for a while. He could have asked me if I wanted a break from an eight-course dessert-only dinner and I'd have said yes.
"You have no idea!" I declare in my best Effie Trinkett, and it makes him laugh so hard that I fear that someone inside might discover us, and he complains that it hurts. I wish that we could go back to the meadow again, but it's a long walk and then he'd have to walk me back, and I don't have the heart to make him do it as exhausted as he looks. "You don't want to come in right now, believe me," I tell him. "Let's sit outside tonight. Give me just a minute." Inside, I take a moment to peek through the doorway into the parlor to make sure that everyone is busy enough that I won't be missed, then snatch two peaches from the basket on the table as an afterthought.
"I wasn't sure you'd come back," I admit when I return, but he looks at me so oddly that I almost believe that my doubts were unfounded. I shoo Gale off the porch toward the garden, and immediately rethink sitting on the bench there – the spot can be seen from almost every window on this side of the house, and everyone inside knows who he is. "No, no, not here. If they see you, they'll want to talk to you again…. Nobody will bother us back by the trees." He follows me to the tall elms clustered at the back corner of the yard behind the vegetable garden, and we each choose one to lean against as we sit down.
"Have a peach," I say, tossing him one of the fruits. I bite into my own, finding it far riper than I expect; juice gushes – gushes – down my chin and, since I fail to lean over quickly enough, the front of my shirt.
I am thoroughly embarrassed, but Gale finds this to be rather funny. "Can't take you anywhere," he says with a snicker.
I glare at him, and I'm sure the mess I've just made of myself somewhat tempers the effect. "Well, it's a good thing you didn't then, isn't it?" I grumble.
He takes a bite of his peach nonchalantly, without incident, and looks at me appraisingly. "How could I?" he asks, a faint hint of mischief in his level tone. "I mean, do you even own a hairbrush?"
My mouth drops open at this insult, and he can no longer maintain his cool expression as a grin twists his lips. To be fair, my ponytail isn't exactly perfect at the moment. But that's not the point. He didn't have to say so. "Do you even own an iron?" I retort immediately, incensed. "I mean, your mother does laundry for a living, for crying out loud!" I actually know for a fact that the Hazelle has an iron. She'd been using it the day I had dropped by with Prim to share Mr. Mellark's cookies.
"Hey, I've been working all day," he says, still amused.
"And I've been stuck waiting on a houseful of people with a combined IQ equal to the rabbit-eaten cabbage we fed them at dinner!"
He chuckles a little harder. "You are so much fun to piss off," he says, and for some reason it makes me smile.
"You're lovely company yourself," I say.
"You fed them a rabbit-eaten cabbage?" he asks, his voice weak from laughter.
"It's not like I'm going to feed them one of the good ones!"
He laughs so hard at this that he nearly tips on his side. "Quit!" he pleads, clutching his ribs with his free hand. "It hurts again!"
"Yes, that will encourage me to stop."
We banter back and forth in the shade until we lose what is left of the daylight, and he gets up to go home. I tell him to jump the fence rather than risk a stroll past the windows again, and he wishes me luck with explaining the state of my shirt.
"Easier to explain than coal dust," I tell him.
He looks at me through narrowed eyes as if making a very careful decision, and I get that familiar, enticing half-smile of his. "No, I'll go easy on ya tonight," he says as if he's doing me an enormous favor, "since you don't have the place to yourself this time."
As I watch him walk away, I wonder (hope) if this will become something of a routine. Maybe he can still be mine in some ways, even if they are small. Wanting that is unwise, I know, because in the end it will never be enough, and I'll only end up lovesick and brokenhearted and full of doubts. But he is such a beautiful kind of misery.
Through the week I count the minutes until Saturday again. School passes the time, and I am even allowed to attend a few of the special events planned for our Victors. I get the chance to talk to Katniss more, because of everyone surrounding her save Peeta and Cinna, she knows me best. She is struggling with all of this, it is clear; she has come back to Twelve, but she hasn't really been allowed to go home yet. So I try hard to act as if there is nothing different between us. There isn't really, I suppose, not on the surface. Not that she knows.
Katniss' eyes follow Peeta protectively whenever he is not at her side, though I'm not sure that she realizes it, as if still worried that something awful could yet happen to him as he hobbles about and practices walking with his cane. Still she mentions Gale once or twice, when we get a few moments alone between the prying questions of Capitol officials, and how she just wishes that she could trade her dress for her old jacket and bow and go hunting with him in the woods where she could be herself. Hearing her say his name with such affection brings a pang of jealousy each time, and I am ashamed of it. I decide not to tell her how friendly he and I have become; it seems like it would be too uncomfortable.
Cinna and Portia, the genius stylists that set into motion the events that changed the Hunger Games this year, make the Capitol presence in our home bearable. They are intelligent, down-to-earth people and I quickly learn why Katniss and Peeta are so fond of them. Portia asks if she can borrow me as a model a few evenings a week, so that she can play with the new hairstyles that Cinna had shown her.
"There isn't much to do with hair when your Tribute is a boy," she tells me. "Cinna gets to have all the fun!" I happily agree, glad to have something else to do to occupy the hours that trudge by. It becomes clear that her offer is simply a ploy to share the news that she and her partner have heard from the inner circles of the Games. It would be too suspicious for a pair of stylists to spend inordinate amounts of time in meetings with the Mayor when there are so many other officials milling about – but an hour or two of girl talk here and there is innocent enough. She tells me that Seneca Crane's days are surely numbered while I watch her braid my hair creatively in my vanity mirror.
"They're a little upset about that defiant little stunt they pulled," she says with pride. "He's in deep for not standing up to them. They're saying that they're already talking about Heavensbee taking the reins in case the position needs filled."
By the time the weekend rolls around, it feels like someone managed to cram a few extra days into the week, and all day Saturday feels like a whole week all on its own. While I wait for the knock on the back door (which I am still not sure will come at all) I make a point to pin my hair up neatly, and make sure that not so much as a strand escapes because, you know, just in case. Sure enough, Gale appears on the porch again, and he suggests that I bring an apple this time because it will be less messy. We sit under the elm trees again until sundown, and I tell him a silly story about how I used to pretend that they were a real forest when I was little because I never got to see the real thing, and he tells me about the first time he ventured outside the fence. Then, when I turn from him after I say goodnight to let myself in, I feel half my hair spill down my back. I freeze for a second and sigh in annoyance (must something embarrassing always happen?), until I feel his fingers slide several pins into the palm of my free hand. "I was only teasing you, you know," he says softly, a smile in his voice. "No more of that – you don't look like yourself." And he disappears before I can fight through the wave of vertigo.
Gale still comes by on a few Sundays, but he doesn't miss a single Saturday evening. Often, we sit outdoors, and occasionally we stay in when everyone else goes to the Justice Building or Victor's Village. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we argue playfully, sometimes he listens to me play the piano, and sometimes we just enjoy the quiet. Sometimes he flirts with me, and others he needles me relentlessly, but his silver eyes always watch me so carefully as if I am some mysteriously happy surprise. Once, seemingly on a rather uncharacteristic whim, he embraces me before he leaves and smiles at the mess it makes of my shirt. There are days that I wonder what he's about, and others when I am all but certain that there is a chance that he could be mine after all. Always it is comfortable between us, and as the weeks pass, the just in case fades away. He is always there.
Until the last of the Capitol visitors leave, and things begin to return to the way they were. I sit and wait at the kitchen table, sit and wait, sit and wait. The certainty that I had allowed myself to entertain only makes for a longer, slower, more painful fall. There is less of a void to fill now and this Saturday, Gale finally forgets.