After class was over, I walked as quickly as I could to the door, slinging my satchel over one shoulder and speed walking over to Madge's math class. "Katniss, whats up with you?"
Madge giggled as I slid to a holt in front of her. "I need help!" I managed to babble. "Oh, well if you want help with your course work, Im sure miss mclauren will let us stay here for a while."
Before she could turn, I caught her elbow to stop her and gave her an awkward look, knowing the cards would be in her hands beyond this point.
"I need… erm… I…" Madge laughed at me and pulled the end of my braid. "You need what?" "To talk because… because" Madge nodded her head slowly in encouragement and then all of my words brewed up and bubbled over at once. "Because-I-think-I-might-be-in-love-with-Peeta-Mellark" I blushed beet root and looked away as Madge clapped her hands and squealed like my sister when you tickle her under her chin, but of course I wouldn't tickle Madge, that would be much too strange.
"Finally!" she yelled, holding her arms to the sky as though thanking the lord for rain over a dry rice field. "would you keep your voice down!" I hissed at her as two town kids passed by looking away when they saw I had caught their eye, and laughing cruelly down their toffee nosed faces.
"Its just I never thought you'd like any one Katniss, well not this way, other than Gale of course…" she blushed at his name and I laughed in revenge. "Madge, I have never and I mean Never seen Gale in that way, if you like him that's cool, I could always put a good word in for you" Madge cleared her throat and pointed to signal we should continue walking, and that was when I realised we had suddenly stopped in the middle of the emptying grounds.
"That can wait for another time, today is about you! Now come on, we'll go to your house and get some things, we'll go see Prim for a while and then we'll have a super girly sleep over, and we'll have facials and manicures, and eat those cupcakes my dad just finished making with that batch of strawberries you brought in the other day, which are delicious by the way, its been so difficult not to eat them with them just lying there calling to me! Oooh – and the latest edition of vintage of Panem just arrived in the mail and-"
"Madge?"
"Yeah?"
"You should really breathe between lectures you know?" Madge rolled her eyes as I smirked. "Sorry" she sighed sarcastically. "Its just I've been waiting for my best friend to realise she's a teenage girl and not a mother for five whole years now –" I looked down and blushed at what she said.
Five years ago, nearly six already, my dad was still alive, that long since the mine explosion killed him, leaving my mother a breathing carcass and my baby sister a little skeleton with cracked lips and frail purple eyelashes, where no number of blankets was enough to keep her fatless body from shaking in winter, and her fevers were too high in the spring.
Madge gasped and covered her mouth, bambi eyed, when she realised what exactly she had just said. "Katniss – I'm so sorry, I – I didn't mean-" "No" I smiled sadly, exhaling a breath I hadn't realised I was holding. "It doesn't matter, that was then, this is now, He'd want me to be who you want me to be. Its time for me, as I think you say to have a make over?" Madge giggled. "Ok then, look we're nearly at your house, theres Prim" she waved, the canvas before us showing a happy picture.
One I never thought possible when my father died, but one I had still fought for and gained with my mother and sister always on my mind.
