NOTES: Peeta, on Katniss. (Sorry, guys, not literally.) Goes with The Pan-American High School Scholarship Pageant Competition chapter 10.
Peeta can't explain what it is, exactly, about Katniss Everdeen—not completely. He just knows that she's the place his eyes always go, whenever she's in the room.
She's thin and she's pretty, under her short, choppy hair and loose clothes. But he's fairly sure it's not either of those things. Maybe it's the way the hollows of her cheeks and neck make her look fierce and vulnerable at the same time. Maybe it's the way she almost never smiles. Maybe it's just that she's different.
The first time he noticed her, it was because Bobby Cray pointed her out. He can't stand Bobby Cray; he's entitled and too loud and the way he treats the girls they hang out with makes Peeta uncomfortable. Peeta can't explain why exactly Cray sits with the group of them at lunch, actually. He just always has.
"Is that the new girl?" Cray had said, second day of school, midway through lunch. "Wouldn't kick that out of bed."
Peeta ignored him.
"Gross," Delly had said in response.
"That ass just makes me want to—" Thankfully, Delly elbowed Cray hard in the stomach before he could finish.
Still—that, shamefully, was what had made Peeta look. His eyes scanned the lunch crowd, looking for someone unfamiliar, and found her: thin, muscled legs under cut-off jean shorts, faded black t-shirt, messy black hair and long slim neck.
The new girl turned their direction and—Peeta couldn't have explained it if anyone had asked. She just—ensnared him. Feeling shot through him, left his fingertips tingling. He couldn't stop looking at her. He felt heat rise into his cheek and, quickly, turned his head away.
But it isn't just that.
What calls to Peeta about Katniss, he had realized after awhile, is how she doesn't seem to care. It isn't that she doesn't seem to care about anything. He sees how she is with Gale Hawthorne, the way they joke around, how pleased she looks when he slings an arm around her and ruffles her hair. He sees, too, how she stands up for the younger students, and redirects people like Cray's attention.
No, it's that she doesn't seem to care about high school. This place, these people—it isn't her whole world.
Now, Peeta, he cares. Just not the same way his friends do. They care because high school is the most important thing in their lives; he cares because high school isn't. He cares because high school is a haven, a place where he has control.
Katniss clearly has something bigger outside of school, too. But it is also clear that Katniss has something good—something that allows her to rise above the same petty schoolyard game he clings to.
Good but—he realizes, sitting there in the hard, cold seats of their school auditorium, watching Haymitch interrogate Katniss and listening, rapt, to her answers—not easy. He wishes she felt about him the way he feels about her. He wishes he were her friend, like Gale is her friend, so he could put his arms around her and tell her it's okay. He dreams about it, sometimes—holding her, taking care of her. Not because she needs it, but because she doesn't.
Except maybe, he's starting to realize, she does need someone to take care of her—just sometimes, just a little. Because it doesn't sound like she has anyone else to, not really. And that he understands all too well.