Chapter 11 - Peeta
I stare at the amber colored liquid in the plastic glasses and swallow another mouth full. It's harsh, burning my throat on the way down, but after the third glass, it's not as bad. The roar of the crowd around the bar picks up as a woman in a frilly pink and white dress climbs up onto the bar. She's maybe fifty-years old-with gray streaked blonde hair done in curled pigtails. They start a new song and the woman sways to the music. I ignore the whole thing and focus on my little plastic glass, running a finger down the rigid on both sides.
I was too hard on Haymitch. Drinking is good. It numbs everything up nicely.
Like the fact that you're dead. Or that Gale Hawthorne has somehow hijacked your future.
I eye the dozens of bottles perched around the inner rim of the large rectangular bar. They come in almost every color from clear to blue to blood red. I wonder if any of them could wipe my memory completely.
I spent the morning sitting in a folder chair next to Francis while Jen pretended to be Katniss and fake Gale—Liam—walked off into the sunset. Together.
It took them a while, because Jen didn't know the script, but they got through it. It wasn't the same script with Gale inserted, no happy frolicking children, no kiss. But from the script fake Gale—Liam— lent me, Katniss and Gale have gone their separate ways for years and this is their first meeting. Not much happens, but there are a lot of meaningful looks and glances.
I hated it.
While Jen went off to record the voice over part, fake Gale—Liam—dragged me to this dark, hot, underground place, populated by sweating people who would fit in well in the Capitol.
I look over at fake Gale and try to make the two pulsating images become one. "Do you think she's happy?"
Fake Gale, turns away from one of the pretty girls from the film crew—most of the people here seem to have had something to do with the movie—and looks at me. Everything white glows in the throbbing lights of the lounge and for a second, the white of fake Gale's eyes and teeth blind me. "What?" he calls over the music.
"Do you think she's happy," I say again, forming the words around a tongue that seems to have gone limp.
"Who?" fake Gale asks.
"Katniss!"
Fake Gale scraps his chair closer to my and leans over me and I'm forced to look up to meet his eyes.
"Josh, you can quit it with this gag. The two of you could never prank me and it's not going to work now."
A pair of high white boots suddenly appears in front of me. I look up to find that the boots are attached to the woman in the frilly pink costume. She unhooks her top and throws it the short distance to me. I catch the lace and bow-covered thing before it hits me in the face.
"There's no frowning during my dance, Doll Face," the now topless woman says, wagging her finger at me. "Besides, I was always Team Peeta." She blows me a kiss and the bar erupts in wild cheers and whistles. Team Peeta?
She winks at fake Gale and he waves her over, slipping a crumpled green piece of paper—some kind of money I guess—into her waistband of her skirt. She collects her top from me and lightly pats my cheek as she leaves to gyrate at the other end of the bar.
Seeing my first topless lady should probably have had more of an effect on me, but the whole week has been so bizarre it's just another one of those things.
"She reminds me of my aunt," fake Gale says conversationally and I laugh, not sure if it's funny or perverted. Or maybe I'm just drunk.
I'm thinking about ordering whatever is in a green bottle in front of me when Jen comes in surrounded by a gaggle of other people I don't know. She spots us, hugging fake Gale before turning to me.
"We need to talk," she says. She grabs my hand and half pulls me out of the chair, down a hallway, and into another room. It's quieter here, but not by much.
"Something's wrong," Jen says.
"Yeah, I think I might pass out," I say. The abrupt standing and walking wasn't a good idea. The room keeps tilting at sharp angles and I have to hold onto a wall.
Jen leads me over to a plush purple velvet couch. I collapse into it and she sits down next to me.
"What happened this morning—that wasn't how the movie was supposed to end. Yesterday at the read-through, the epilogue ended the way it was supposed to, but now no one remembers it." She pauses to take a breath. "And I think Josh is in the book."
"Huh?" I ask. Her words come faster than my muddled mind could process.
"You were right, okay? Josh is in the book, you're here. Some kind of freaky Friday fuckery happened and I swear to God if anyone had sent me a script with this plot I would've chucked it in the garbage in a heartbeat."
"So you don't think I'm Josh anymore?" I ask.
"No, and I think Josh is changing shit in the book and that's why you weren't in the epilogue," she pulls out her mobile phone. It's just like the one I—Josh—has, but with a different case. "I downloaded the first book to my phone and things are different."
She holds the phone out to me, but the tiny type is impossible to read. Right now, words in general might be impossible for me to read and I shake my head. "I can't read it."
"I don't have time for your sensitive guy, emo bullshit about not wanting to know the future, Peeta!" she yells.
The yelling actually sobers me up a little— that and the fact that it's the first time she's called me by my real name. "I meant I can't see the words. You might have noticed I'm not in top form at the moment."
"But what were you doing drinking anyway, you're like sixteen," Jen chides. "Rotting your liver is for those of us over twenty-one."
"I've got a license that says twenty-two," I say. "But I don't drink, not usually." The cushions on the couch are so comfortable, I sink into them and close my eyes.
"No, you're not going to sleep," she says, shaking me back to wakefulness. "I'll read it to you. She takes the phone away from me and starts reading Katniss' words.
I stroke the hair out of his eyes as he lays in bed, unconscious, his head angled in my lap. I'm sure that this is his strategy, pretending to be insane. Or maybe he is insane. No sane person would run headlong into a force field or even try to escape, knowing what would happen to any family or friends at home.
And he claims not to be Peeta Mellark at all. Part of me hopes he isn't. If he's not Peeta, if he's not the boy with the bread, I owe him nothing. He would be just another tribute standing between me and going home.
"Is she in bed with him?" I ask. "Because she sure didn't get in bed with me. Not unless you count sharing a sleeping bag in the arena."
"That's not the point," Jen grouses. "The point is this didn't happen before and the Peeta in the book claims he's not Peeta."
"Did he say he was Josh?" I ask.
"No, but Katniss doesn't always remember names. Some characters never get identified."
"Katniss is really stuck on that bread thing from when we were kids, isn't she? I can't believe she calls me 'the boy with the bread' in her head."
"Yeah, that is kind of weird," Jen agrees and then groans. "We have to focus! Josh is changing things and it's going to get him killed. Or you. I can't keep that straight."
"It's him, since he's the one in Panem. Why is he changing things if he knows what I did?"
"Maybe because doing what you did means bone-deep sword wounds and monster wolves chomping off hunks of your.…" Jen reaches over and pulls up one pant leg and then the other before looking at me. "If you're from the book, one of those is not supposed to be there."
"I'd wondered why I didn't have any scars from the mutt attack," I say. That last night in the arena, I knew that leg couldn't be saved, not after the sword injury and the mutts. I reach down and rub my left leg. Not supposed to be there. The alcohol in my stomach churns and I have to force myself not to throw up. "I still have my leg because Josh is changing things?"
"I guess," Jen says. "I'm not an expert on this stuff. All I know is that we have to get Josh back."
"And I have to get my leg chopped off," I whisper.
"Oh, Peeta…I didn't," Jen says.
"No, it's alright," I say. "At least I managed to stay alive. Whatever Josh is doing, it's going to get him killed."