Running Scared

Haymitch was in his room before he'd really realized he'd sort of run away from the kid. He'd lamely excused himself and left, feeling completely overwhelmed with the situation and all of the thoughts it was forcing to the surface. The kid was one thing - he was sure she would be fine, he'd find some way to make the situation work. He doubted she'd be here terribly long, after all it was her first placement and he was sure a go-getter social worker like the impatient Miss Cardew would find something else quickly. However, he wasn't sure he'd be sane by the time that happened. That kid would eat his food, bother his clients, and probably make too much noise for a week or two, then be gone and forget him. Haymitch would spend the next year or two trying to forget all over again everything he'd thought he'd forgotten already.

The throbbing behind his temples got harder and more painful, and he pressed his thumbs against them while his fingers rubbed his hairline. He'd been living a plainly unremarkable existence for more than a decade now, full of enough liquor to make him sleep each night and just enough money to keep the power bill at the gym paid up. He may only be just further than forty one, but he was secure in the knowledge that he'd live the rest of his life ordinarily, lonely, and most likely pass out of this world with a bottle in his hand and little fanfare. What he didn't need was some kid coming in and interrupting this solitude. Making him think. Thinking had never gotten him too far.

Haymitch looked at his bed for a long moment, snatched up one of the pillows, and left the room. Left the apartment entirely, in fact, as he headed back downstairs into the gym. He passed through the main training space, ducked into his office, and flung the pillow down on top of his desk. It crinkled some papers, probably some important ones, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

He settled heavily into the chair behind the desk, listening to the familiar creak as he then leaned over and pulled a half-full bottle of cheap whiskey from under the desk. Downing half of what was left would help him sleep, probably badly. Finishing it would knock him out and he wasn't sure when he'd be up in the morning.

He cursed colorfully and took burning swallows, stopping when his eyes watered and there was still a fourth of the bottle left. With hands that were a bit loose in grip but thankfully not shaky, he capped it, settled it back under his desk, and leaned forward onto the pillow. His head felt sloshy and his tongue was numb, and he was sweating with a sudden rush of fire up and down his back and arms from the alcohol. He grasped onto the familiarity of the feeling and drifted into a fitful sleep.

Katniss' eyes snapped open in the early hours of the morning, a thin and sombre light filtering in through a clean spot on a window at the far end of the room. She sat up, remembering slowly how she came to be in this musty old place, under blankets that were admittedly warmer and comfier than the ones she had on her bed at home, smell aside. She slid out of bed and went to the window, opened it wide, and left it that way as she slipped out of the room entirely.

Everything was so quiet, her ears seemed full with it. She padded up the frigid hallway, her arms wrapped around herself, and peeked in an open doorway. Bathroom. Further down, she was dumped into the kitchen, and around the corner was the living room. She wondered where Haymitch was, and where his room was for that matter. She headed to the doorway down the stairs to the gym, thinking maybe Miss Cardew was right: maybe Haymitch really did live in there. However, she noticed a door she hadn't seen the night before, on the other end of the living room next to the old TV set. It was ajar enough for her to see a bed and dresser, but Mr. Abernathy was conspicuously absent.

She started to wonder if she'd been left alone in the apartment. It certainly wouldn't be the first time she had been left alone at someone's home, but she hadn't really expected it in a foster place. Then again, Mr. Abernathy wasn't exactly the picture of a foster parent.

Feeling a little more relaxed now that she knew she was alone, Katniss took her time in his kitchen. She luxuriated in the unusual experience of having both dinner the night before and breakfast now. In the end, her hunger won out over her guilt about taking so much food, just as it had plenty of times before. She ate until she was full, really full, thinking it wouldn't be such a bad idea to put on as much weight as she could in the short amount of time she expected to be here.

Eventually, she wandered back to her room, put on her clothes and shoes, and re-plaited her hair into some semblance of normalcy. She'd forgotten a hairbrush, and she sure didn't want to go rifling through Mr. Abernathy's things to use his.

If he even owned one.

By around seven thirty, she was starting to wonder if he'd be back at all. She actually went down the stairs into the gym this go around, thinking it looked worse in the daylight. The place was more rundown than she had thought, although the ring, at least, seemed to be in alright shape. She walked through the open training space, toward the front door, and wrinkled her nose when she passed a locker room. She paused when she heard snoring coming from a dark doorway, stuck her head into the room, and groped around the entryway for a light switch. If possible, she thought this place smelled worse than the locker rooms behind her or the musty apartment upstairs. She figured out why as soon as the light was on: the place was somewhere between a dirty clothes hamper and a distillery. And maybe a trash service on the side.

Mr. Abernathy was slumped over his desk, clutching a miraculously clean pillow to his unshaven face. He was the source of the snoring she'd heard. There were empty bottles of various liquors littered all over the office, and some half empty ones in easy reach of the desk. There were even two unopened bottles of amber liquid clustered among what looked to be awards of some sort on a back shelf. She spared a wary glance at the sleeping man, his breath blowing a lock of his hair around his face with every exhale, and judged it safe enough to walk over and look.

Surprisingly, these boxing trophies all had his name on them, not guys presumably trained in his gym. She didn't think he looked in good enough shape to be recently retired, but then, what did she know about boxing?

She reached up, wiping dust off the inscriptions, and her brow furrowed. Maybe she did know a little something. 1965, 1966 - none of them were recent. And for what was probably the span of one or two working years, there were a lot of awards. She went to pick up a small golden pair of boxing gloves, but her hand bumped against one of the bottles, sending the whiskey crashing to the floor. She jumped as it shattered, and Haymitch came awake violently. He yelled loud enough to scare Katniss practically out of her own skin, and she was halfway across the room in an instant when she saw him come up swinging from his sleeping place.

Maybe he was old and not in fighting shape anymore, but she didn't want those fists to connect with any part of her. She needn't have worried, though, as his attention was more on the mess just behind his desk chair than it was on her.

"Jesus christ, what the-"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to knock it over," Katniss said, backing toward the doorway.

Haymitch looked up at the girl, his grey eyes narrowing, and gestured to the mess on the floor.

"That is a waste!" he all but growled. "What the hell were you doing in here, anyway?"

"What are you doing in here? You said you'd wake me up for school," Katniss fired back, folding her arms and matching his glare.

Haymitch stared at her, not sure if he was annoyed or pleased when she didn't back down an inch. She met his eyes with just as much ire as he was giving her.

"No alarm clock down here," he said, finally looking away to check the hanging clock up on the wall near the door. "Jesus, it's not even eight. Why aren't you in bed?"

Katniss couldn't help being up early when she was always up early, to make sure Prim was awake and dressed and out the door on time, and her mom had something clean to wear on the few times a week she dared to venture from the house. But she wasn't about to let Haymitch know that.

"Couldn't sleep. Room smelt bad. Not as bad as this room," she granted.

"You know, princess, why don't you get off that high horse of yours and make yourself useful? Go outside and change out the water in the goose pen. There's a hose in plain sight," Haymitch ordered, looking with irritation down at the wasted bottle of liquor. Now he had to clean it up and replace it, and having all that alcohol on the floor probably wasn't about to help the stench in the room.

Katniss did feel kind of bad about wrecking his stuff, although she was glad it was just booze rather than one of those trophies. She turned to go do as he asked, thinking the geese might make better company, anyway.

When she was gone, Haymitch sighed to himself and went to fetch a broom and a mop. Maybe he'd underestimated just how annoying this little babysitting operation was going to be. He'd had difficult foster kids before, but then, he'd also had a wife around who was basically a saint and knew how to work with difficult sorts. She'd had to be, to be with him.

Haymitch tried to steer his thoughts away from her. It still hurt too damn much after all this time, so he just decided not to think about her, which was how he liked to handle most everything that ever hurt him. Instead, he went about the chores concerned in opening the gym for business for the day; the last minute wipe downs that he should have done the night before, putting out equipment, and shutting his office. The only thing he didn't do was actually open the place. Instead, he went outside through the front door, lit a cigarette, and walked around the alleyway. He wondered if Katniss had just left the office to get away from him, or if she'd actually done what he told her to.

He was fairly surprised to see her standing out by the geese, watching them stretch their wings and peck around for food. She didn't talk to them, like Haymitch himself usually did, but she seemed pretty intent upon overseeing them. And, he was pleased to note, the water in their basin looked fresh. He watched her watch them for a few minutes while his cigarette burned down.

She seemed mouthy the few times she had actually spoken to him, but he liked that she had some fire in her. It was better than having a broken kid delivered to his doorstep that he couldn't begin to know how to help heal, anyway. And maybe it would be nice to have somebody around to keep the place from feeling too quiet during closing hours. Well. It would be interesting, if not nice. Somehow he couldn't apply that word to the girl who'd insulted him every other time she opened her mouth in the last ten hours.

He felt the swell of sentimentality fading away quickly enough when Katniss caught him watching her. She made a point of scowling at the smoke from his cigarette, and turned to fairly stomp up the stairs into the apartment. Maybe he was seeing through rose colored glasses about the kids they used to foster or maybe he was just remembering younger ones, because, really, teenagers were pains in the ass. She slammed the door, and Haymitch turned to his geese.

"I think I prefer the honking," he told them.

Later that morning, Katniss almost couldn't believe she was at school at all.

"So you're not kidding. I don't even get one day off?" She'd asked Haymitch incredulously at one point.

"That's the funny thing about when awful stuff happens, sweetheart: life is still there, waiting for you, and you've still got to live it."

His response was less than helpful and not at all what she had wanted to hear. She got ripped away from her home and her sister and she had to go to school now and pretend things were perfectly fine, and try to focus on math and history? It seemed completely unfair.

She was late, of course. Haymitch had had the address of her school, sure. But between not knowing that neighborhood all too well and having a slow junker of a pickup, they hadn't made good time. Katniss barely waited for the truck to stop moving before she was out of her seat and dashing for the front doors of the school.

The only saving grace when she took the tardy slip from her homeroom teacher was knowing that few, if any, of her classmates had seen her in Mr. Abernathy's cruddy truck. As if she wasn't liable enough to embarrass herself already.

She sat through the last ten minutes of homeroom and bolted out the door as soon as the bell rang. She kept her head down, going right to her locker - and was glad to see a familiar and friendly face when Gale was already there, leaning up against it.

"Didn't see you this morning," he said, standing straighter when she came over. "Prim oversleep again?"

"No. Things are a little more complicated," Katniss sighed, opening her locker. "But I plan to fix that soon enough."

"Cryptic," Gale said, only half teasing as she rifled through her books and papers. When she wouldn't look at him, he rested a hand on her shoulder. "Hey. Really. Is everything okay?"

"Not really," Katniss said, staring unseeingly into the back of her locker. She hoped it would give her some sort of answers, tell her what she needed to do to fix everything as quickly as possible. Sadly, nothing was forthcoming. "Nothing's great but it won't last. I know it won't. I've been through worse."

Gale was starting to get truly worried. It was odd for Katniss to even admit in so many words that anything was wrong. She just had too much pride and stubbornness, and she liked to fix every problem she and her whole family had, all on her own. She sure didn't like to talk about it, either. His dark brows furrowed, and he nudged her around a bit until she turned to face him.

"At least meet me at lunch? Tell me what's going on?" he asked, his tone turning serious.

She shrugged with one shoulder. It wasn't much of an answer, but he was sure it was about as much of one as he was going to get from her.

The warning bell dinged and Katniss shrugged him off. "I need to go, if I don't want detention," she said, waving her bright pink tardy slip at him on her way down the hallway.

The phone in Haymitch's office rang, the shrill bell cutting through the open door and breaking up the muted sounds of boxers training. Haymitch would have greatly preferred for the rhythmic thudding of fists against bags, mitts, and people not to be disturbed.

But, for all he knew, it was something to do with the gym. So he pulled himself away from the aging heavyweight who had him wrapped up in an interesting if repetitive conversation about their past wins, schlepped into the office, and pulled the phone off the cradle.

"Fulvia Cardew," Haymitch heard Katniss' social worker saying before he'd even pressed the phone to his ear.

"Hello to you too," he said acerbically. "You lettin' me know to pack the kid up?"

He wouldn't be surprised if Katniss was going right back, or if she only had a few more days at his place. After all, she'd never been taken from her home before now. They were probably just correcting a single urgent situation and warning her mother. The threat of losing the children for good was one the system wasn't afraid to impose.

"Actually, I'm letting you know that Katniss' mother, Deirdre Everdeen, has been committed to a mental institution."

Haymitch was drawing a blank. Of all of the possibilities, that was one he hadn't really expected.

"Mr. Abernathy?" Cardew asked.

He blinked, and sunk down into his chair.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm still here. Christ, what is she locked up for?"

"I am not aware of the details of her case," Cardew said in an obvious tone. Of course, he should know about confidentiality. Obviously. And while he was at it, maybe he should just go eat worms.

"Well then, do you know how long she's gonna be in there?" Haymitch asked impatiently.

There was a sigh on the other end of the line, a rare pause from miss Cardew.

"I don't know. I couldn't really say. It could be anywhere from six weeks to six months."

Haymitch leaned his elbows on his desk, his unoccupied hand pressing against his forehead while the other kept the phone to his ear.

"I will try to find Katniss a new placement. I will do so as quickly as I can. But I wasn't kidding about the overcrowding in this city. Frankly, at the rate this is going, we're going to see a lot of perfectly innocent children in juvenile detention soon."

Well, that was sad, but those kids weren't Haymitch's problem. Just one kid was.

"So, what. How long do you think it will take to place her? Two weeks?"

"A month. Minimum."

Haymitch swore colorfully, and he could hear Fulvia's annoyed sound on the line.

"Sorry. No. Fine," he all but growled, tugging a little on his hair in frustration. "No. Don't find her a new placement. It's fine."

As much as he hadn't really bargained for this, Haymitch thought it was a little too cruel to go bumping the kid around from place to place like that. A couple of weeks, that might have been fine, but a full month or longer? To give the kid time enough to settle down here and get a little more comfortable with him and then to yank her away from even that small familiarity was absolutely off the table.

Fulvia was silent for long enough that Haymitch almost wondered if she hadn't hung up on him now that she had no more work to do for him.

"Hello?" he grunted.

"Are you positive?" she said.

Haymitch didn't hesitate.

"Of course. Do I sound like the sort of guy who makes a habit of saying things he doesn't mean?" he scoffed.

"No, Mr. Abernathy, I suppose you do not," Cardew said. Haymitch imagined he could see her rolling her eyes. "I will be checking in on you. You have my number if you change your mind."

Then, Haymitch really did hear a click and knew he'd been hung up on.

Katniss had known on some level that she wouldn't see Prim when she was at school that day, seeing as she'd been taken someplace uptown. But there was a difference between knowing it, and actually going the whole day without seeing her sister in the halls or being greeted with a big hug right as the bell rang.

That last letdown had really made it sink in for Katniss. Things were bad, really bad. She couldn't just let the situation continue to spiral out of control without trying to get everything back to normal. She had to find Prim, and after that… Well, after that she didn't really know. She didn't have any other plan. But she had to connect with her sister.

Rather than waiting for Mr. Abernathy after school like she'd been told, Katniss said goodbye to Gale and headed in the direction of the diner. So far she had been able to guide the conversation away from the night before or that morning, only mentioning that things with her mom weren't good right now. That was the understatement of the century, of course, but she didn't want to tell Gale about being taken from her mother and Prim before she had a plan - he was good with action, but tended to go a little off the rails when faced with injustice or bad news. She didn't blame him, but it wasn't the most productive way to handle things.

When she was out of sight of the school, Katniss turned toward the library nearby.

Once inside, she found the references and records. She didn't know where else she might be able to find a city map. Panem didn't exactly see a lot of tourism outside the Capitol district.

There was a small book of maps in a quiet corner of the references, one specifically for California, and Katniss flipped through until she found Panem City. The map folded out of the book and she was able to find her current location, and trace a few streets to the school and to her apartment. Further to the north, the entire capitol district was displayed with street names. This was exactly what she needed, and she wasn't going to let lack of a library card get in her way.

She looked around to see if anybody was watching, carefully ripped the page out of the book, and folded it back up. She tucked it into her inner jacket pocket and slid the maps back onto their shelf, then made a hasty exit from the library entirely, in the direction of the nearby park.

When she got there, she walked right past the rusting playground equipment and toward a wooded area that was even more overgrown than the rest of the park. A lot of Seam neighborhood parents wouldn't let their kids come in here, since little ones were likely to get ticks in the wild grass, and older ones were likely to get drunk with their friends. Katniss was pretty glad more kids didn't end up in here, as it left the muddy creek for her and Gale's almost exclusive use. She was sure other people knew that you could find fish and crawdads here, but for most, they weren't worth the effort.

Best of all, it was very quiet and very private. She dropped her school bag at the base of a tree and settled into the grass herself. The autumn air was a bit chilly, but smelled so good she didn't really mind that too much.

She retrieved her library prize, spread it out over her lap, and thought about the drive in Fulvia Cardew's car the other night as hard as she could. She'd been pretty focused on Prim, but maybe she could remember more of the drive than she thought. She found the street with her apartment on it and tried as best she could to trace the roads with her finger, going in the general direction of where she thought Prim had ended up. After careful consideration, there were two neighborhoods she thought Prim might be in, both in the Capitol District. It wasn't too specific, but it was more information than she had had an hour ago.

Maybe if she could figure out where the sixth graders went to school in each of those districts, she could try to find Prim there. It would be easier to check a handful of classrooms than it would be to go through a whole high-rise building, anyway.

She felt better now, having a plan. It made the whole situation seem a little less hopeless. She folded the map back up and slid it in between a few of the books in her school bag.

She had to find her way out of the wooded area mostly by memory, since the treetops blocked out the fading light of the sunset. It was much easier to see when she was back in the open area of the park. She hit the sidewalk and started back toward school, hoping she'd get lucky and Mr. Abernathy would have gone back to the gym to wait for her to walk home. She rather expected she wouldn't be, and that he'd still be there waiting for her, but it was a nice thought.

Her luck was, in fact, even worse than she had expected it to be, as she saw two police cars with Mr. Abernathy's truck at the school. Even from a few streets back, she could see him talking animatedly with an officer. She thought Principal Coin might have been in the small huddle too, but at this distance she couldn't tell if the gray head of hair was familiar or not.

"Katniss!" she heard from somewhere above her, after she'd stopped to consider whether going to the school was a good idea after all.

It was Madge Undersee, the daughter of a couple of the teachers that worked in the school. She was hanging off the fire escape outside what Katniss could only assume was her bedroom window.

"What happened? Some guy came into the school. I heard him yelling about you while I was helping my mom grade the little kids' projects," she explained. Katniss felt her face heating up.

"Please, don't say anything," Katniss said, taking another look at the scene in front of the school and making what was probably another bad decision. "Will you kick the ladder down to me?"

Madge looked slightly undecided, but eventually climbed down far enough to help Katniss up the fire escape. She was only two floors up, but Katniss was glad for any distance she could put between herself and the scene at the school. She'd had enough of cops for a lifetime.

"If you're going to hide out here, you at least should tell me what happened," Madge said, climbing in the window of her bedroom. Katniss followed after her, taking in the tidy, homey space. It was nicer than a lot of Seam kids had, although she supposed the area directly next to the school wasn't so much Seam as the rest of the neighborhood. Both of Madge's parents had tenure teaching there by now, so she thought they must live a little more comfortably than most.

"I… I don't even know where to start," Katniss said, settling awkwardly on the window seat. There was a great view of the street from here and several books nearby. Katniss guessed Madge had probably just been sitting here with her homework when she happened by.

"Who was that guy?" Madge prompted, sitting on the bed.

"Um… My foster dad, I guess," Katniss said, even a semi-parental title feeling strange in her mouth.

Madge looked a bit dumbstruck. She recovered quickly enough to start asking questions again, and pulled the tale from Katniss answer by answer until she thought she'd gotten the whole story. By now it was truly dark outside, the streetlights having come on halfway through their conversation. Katniss was pretty sure she'd heard her name being called a few times. She didn't dare to answer.

"That's awful, Katniss, I'm so sorry," Madge offered quietly. "What are you going to do?"

Katniss shrugged. She had one plan, but she wasn't about to tell it to a teacher's kid. She had less of an idea what to do in the immediate, though.

"Can I just… stay here for a little while? An hour or two, while I figure that out," she said bitterly.

"Well, you'll have to be quiet," Madge said somewhat worriedly. "It's my parents, you know, I'm an only kid. There's a lot of attention on me."

A door opened somewhere else inside the apartment, and Madge said apologetically, "My dad's home, I'm gonna go say hello. You can stay, but I can't promise you won't get caught."

Katniss nodded, and Madge left the room. She was left alone in yet another unfamiliar place.

She looked out the window once more, saw the police starting to knock on doors down the road, and felt her heart start to thud away in her chest. She was suddenly very aware that there was a bed in juvie with her name written on it. She shouldn't have come up to hide in Madge's room, she should have just gone to the school when she saw Mr. Abernathy there. She could never find Prim if she was locked up. She couldn't even get a message to her if she found out where she was.

She sat in the dark in Madge Undersee's bedroom, trying to decide whether to run away entirely or to make up some story. She could try for a dramatic play, begging the police to let her stay with Mr. Abernathy. That was probably a bad idea. She had always been an awful liar and a worse actress.

She was saved the decision when she heard voices down the hall. Madge was obviously trying to get her dad to stay away, but it wasn't working. Katniss stood, shifting on her feet as she tried to decide where, exactly, to go. She didn't think she'd fit under the bed, but the closet was on the other side of the room. In the end, the door opened and the light turned on before she could do anything at all.

"Madge, I don't understand what's wrong with you. I just want to put these books on your desk so they're not cluttering up the living room," he said, looking over his shoulder at Madge who was behind him in the hallway. She looked almost as ashen and nervous as Katniss was sure she herself looked.

Katniss had one leg out the window and a tenuous grasp on her school bag by the time Mr. Undersee turned around and saw her.

"What in the world is going on here?" he demanded, in a voice Katniss knew fairly well from her history classes. He was decidedly unhappy, and she was in a good deal of trouble. She wondered if teachers could give detention outside of school. Sadly, she was not quick enough to avoid being snagged about the arm by Mr. Undersee, who pulled her back in through the window and deposited her on the bed behind them. Recognition dawned on his features as soon as Katniss looked up at him.

"Please, Mr. Undersee, I can explain -"

"They've been looking all over for you!" he cut her off, looking red faced and cross. "Why, we all thought you'd been kidnapped. This is unacceptable, miss Everdeen, and not the kind of shenanigans I would have expected from a girl like you." He gave Madge a sharp frown, one that Katniss would remember and feel badly about after the fact. She hadn't wanted to get anybody else in trouble. "Or you, for that matter, young lady."

There was little else to say, as Katniss was escorted into the front room. While the Undersees kept an eye on her, Madge was sent downstairs to call for an officer. There were enough of them on the block, after all.

And that was Katniss' fault.

Surprisingly, the officer that collected her and spoke shortly to Mr. Undersee did not seem to be upset with her. He didn't even seem annoyed. He simply walked her to the school, and called off what had apparently been a pretty large search through his radio.

That one particular officer might not have been mad, but Principal Coin and Mr. Abernathy certainly were. When they came closer, Katniss could even see Fulvia Cardew had joined the party. Though she only looked as peeved to have to attend to Katniss as she had last night, she was the person Katniss was most afraid of. She was the person who could put her away in Juvie.

Katniss stayed silent as the officers slowly dissipated. Apparently with no actual missing person to account for, it ceased to be their problem and was placed solely in the hands of the state and her foster family. Miss Cardew was as blunt as ever when she let her principal know that, since the disappearance happened after school hours, it was none of their business and the resolution of this matter would be conducted elsewhere. Katniss almost, almost cracked half a smile at the look of pure indignation on Coin's face.

That disappeared quickly enough when it was made apparent to her that she would be getting in Miss Cardew's car, rather than Mr. Abernathy's old clunker. She wondered if she'd even be allowed to keep her school bag in juvie. If she was going directly there, she sure wouldn't have time to get her stuff from the apartment over the gym.

Miss Cardew surprised her, however, by following Haymitch's truck. She was even more shocked by her words, however.

"Did you run off because Mr. Abernathy was cruel or inappropriate with you?" Fulvia asked.

Katniss spluttered in shock for a second.

"What? Of course not! He was fine!"

She wondered what in the world had given her that idea.

"Are you dealing in drugs, or gang activity? Something illicit that could get you into trouble if it isn't dealt with?"

Katniss blanched. Who did this lady think she was?

"No!"

"Alright, so you were rebelling against the goodwill of a man who obviously wasn't expecting you, but took you in anyway. Not to mention, ignoring the work I did to find you a placement at all. But other than that, there's nothing else going on."

Her bland tone didn't necessarily seem offended to Katniss, but the simple statement of fact made her ears burn with embarrassment. She would rather have been shouted at.

"I guess."

"Then let this be a warning, Miss Everdeen," Cardew said, her tone clipped. "If you behave in a way that once again involves the police or requires me to come to wherever you are to do damage control, you will lose your home placement and go straight to a detention center. Maybe ten years ago I could have focused on your problems, but right now I have too much work to do to devote any of my time to silliness. Am I very clear?"

Katniss worked her jaw for a moment, biting down the litany of sarcastic comments that wanted to slip from her mouth.

"Yes," she eventually bit out. "We're clear."

They pulled up to the curb in front of the gym, just after Haymitch had turned his truck in at the alley, and Katniss grabbed her things. She opened her own door before Miss Cardew could, and darted out.

Mr. Abernathy came around the corner with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a stormy look on his face. Now that Katniss knew Juvie wasn't an option and the school really had nothing they could do about her disappearing act, she guessed this was the appropriate time to worry about the reaction she might get from him.

He didn't say anything to either of them, simply went to unlock the front door. When Katniss made no move to follow him inside, he looked over his shoulder.

"Well?" he prompted, his voice gruff. "Are you coming in, or are you gonna have a little slumber party with miss Cardew?"

Katniss scowled and squared her shoulders, making a show of confidence she didn't exactly feel at that moment as she brushed past him into the gym.

He said a few short words in parting to Miss Cardew that she didn't pay attention to, and locked the gym door behind him. Katniss felt what little bravado she possessed slipping away when she turned to look at him.

Frankly, he looked terrible. While he may have been a little tired that morning when he drove her to school, he now looked exhausted. He was haggard and more unkempt than usual; his hair looked a mess. He ran a hand through it even as she watched, and she figured he'd been doing a lot of that.

Their walk upstairs was silent and tense, and Katniss was very ready to escape to the bedroom with her things, so she could sleep and forget this entire day. She went to do exactly that when they were in the apartment, but a heavy hand on her shoulder stopped her progress toward the hallway.

"I don't think so," Haymitch snorted, and nudged her toward the kitchen. She was almost as relieved to hear him speaking to her as she was annoyed with his demeanor.

"Sit. You and I are gonna talk. Because this," he gestured vaguely to her, "cannot happen again."

"Can't we talk tomorrow?" Katniss groaned, slumping down onto a kitchen chair and dropping her bag on the tabletop. "I want to go to bed. And you should go to bed. You don't look great."

"You know, fear will do that to a man," Haymitch said acerbically. He stood, watching her for a minute, while she refused to look anywhere near him.

Fear? Katniss suddenly felt exponentially more guilty. She had expected him to be angry with her for wasting his time… Not afraid for her safety.

Eventually, he sat across from her, leaning his elbows heavily on the table.

"Let's start at the beginning, then. Where were you?" he asked.

Katniss shrugged with one shoulder. She may feel bad about worrying him, but Mr. Abernathy's feelings were less important to her than finding her sister.

"Around the neighborhood."

"Doesn't cut it," he fired back immediately. "I can be here all night, girl. You're gonna tell me where you were and what you were doing, or you're gonna sit here at this table until the sun comes up."

That she didn't want to tell him only made Haymitch a lot more nervous. He'd had kids come in from rough neighborhoods before, and the Seam was definitely one of those. If she was in trouble, with drugs or money or anything else, he didn't want her trying to handle it on her own.

"I was sleeping," she lied shortly, her eyes darting up at him only to give him a quick scowl.

"Sleeping where?" he asked, a dubious expression on his face.

"In the park, alright? Now will you leave me alone? I wasn't doing anything bad. I just fell asleep," Katniss said, slumping back and crossing her arms.

There was a long pause, and Haymitch rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand.

"Fine. You were at the park. Sleeping in the park. Why would you go sleep in a park?"

Haymitch wasn't sure he believed her. What kid goes to a park after school to sleep?

"I didn't mean to fall asleep. I just sat down, it was quiet… I dunno."

Haymitch ran a hand through his hair, several times, trying to keep his temper in check.

"So how did you get into that teacher's apartment?" he asked, recalling the conversation with the officer who had brought Katniss back to the school. He'd found her only a few streets down.

Katniss had the grace to look shamefaced. "I saw cops at the school when I was walking back. I… hid from them."

The sound of frustration that came from him then made her jump in her seat. It was something close to a growl.

"You knew we had cops out trying to find you and you still hid from us?" he demanded, his voice raising a little in disbelief.

"It was stupid, okay, I'm sorry!" Katniss said, her own voice escalating. "I panicked! I didn't want to talk to any cops!"

Maybe she lied about her first errand and what she'd really been doing at the park, but this was the absolute truth. Those cops had scared her.

"Were you doing something illegal?" Haymitch asked, reining his own temper in to try and keep her from going off the rails in reaction. "Were you turning tricks in that park? Because if you were, you don't need to do that anymore. You're here to be safe-"

"God, no!" Katniss groaned, covering her mortified face. "I wasn't with anyone, I don't do that stuff. Oh my god."

Haymitch leaned back heavily in his chair and was silent for a moment, his brain working. He guessed he could well understand why the Panem City Police were not her favorite group at the moment, why she might be scared to see them. But he'd been scared too, when she didn't show up after school and didn't even walk out with the stragglers an hour later after detention let out. She already came from a bad situation, he didn't know if she had people at home or school who might be angry or need to protect their own secrets if she was suddenly living in somebody else's home and liable to blab.

"Listen to me, kid, and listen good," he said, sitting up straighter. "And look at me, alright?"

He waited until she complied, sullen but meeting his eyes.

"This will not happen again. I can't have you spiralling me closer toward heart failure every day. You're going to come to the front of the school every day, right after you get out, immediately, so I can pick you up. No more disappearances. You got that?"

He'd hoped that would be the end of the matter, but he was wrong. She narrowed her eyes.

"What if I want to hang out with my friends?" All one of them, she thought to herself. But it was a matter of principle.

"Consider yourself grounded for now," Haymitch drawled. "When I can trust you a little more, then you'll ask before you go running off. I need to know where you are. This is really basic stuff here, princess."

Katniss' mouth dropped open for a second, before she snapped it shut. He couldn't ground her, her own mother never grounded her! With a new fire in her belly, she sat up straight and was ready to argue, but Haymitch held up a hand.

"I don't want to hear it. It's late, I'm tired, and you need to get up for school in the morning. Go to bed, kid."

"But you-"

"Go to bed, Katniss," Haymitch interrupted her.

She huffed and shoved herself back in her chair, snatched up her bag, and stalked off down the hallway in a flurry of annoyance.

Haymitch had a pounding headache. He'd signed himself up for a couple of months of this, at least. He hoped her stay wouldn't be quite so turbulent from here on out.