Chapter Text
He hates weekends—more now that it’s wet and downpouring outside.
It’s worse knowing his older brother Graham has a car and can come and go whenever he wants. Whereas Peeta—a scrape-kneed ten-year-old—spends most of his weekends stuck inside the bakery with nothing better to do besides homework and making footballs out of napkins with Rye.
"Okay, now hold your hands up like this."
Rye brings Peeta’s thumbs and pointer fingers together to create a goalie. Then, he flicks the tightly folded napkin resting on the table, but instead of watching it fly into the air, it pathetically skids across the laminate until it falls to the floor.
"Maybe we should add more napkins," Rye mumbles to himself, popping an animal cracker into his mouth.
Dad comes out of the kitchen and scolds them for wasting the napkins, giving them a disapproving look before replacing it with a smile as the bell above the front door chimes.
A man walks into the bakery with a girl trailing behind him. She rather pointedly glares at her muddy sneakers while playing with a pin on her girl scout sash, only flicking her eyes up when she nearly bumps into the display case.
Dad wipes flour from his hands and leans against the counter. "How can I help you?"
The man says he’s there to pick up cupcakes for the girl scouts, and dad slips into the back to grab them for him. Once the kitchen door swings closed, the girl speaks, glare still in place, "I’m not going to girl scouts. It’s for babies, dad."
Peeta tries not to be nosey. However, it’s hard when they’re the only ones in the store.
"I know it's a new place, Katniss, and you miss your friends.” Her dad places a hand on her shoulder. “But maybe this will help you make some new friends."
“I don’t need new friends,” she grumbles and finally acknowledges Peeta and Rye with a glance at their table.
He remembers Rye telling him that girls have cooties and are annoying—mainly because of their neighbor, Dahlia, who constantly teases him. But something tells him the girl— Katniss —doesn’t. Her frown deepens when she catches Peeta staring, and he quickly looks away.
His face burns a little, and he continues helping Rye fold napkins, hoping his brother hasn’t noticed. Knowing Rye, he’d make it worse by poking fun at Peeta in front of Katniss and her dad.
Dad comes back from the kitchen, holding a large white box. "Here are those cupcakes."
"—I said I don't want to go!"
One moment, there’s the sound of a shoe stomping against the floor. And the next, he feels something hard and tiny hit him in the face. His eyes land on Katniss in surprise, and she refuses to look up as her father tells her to apologize.
"I'm sorry," she mumbles before storming out the door.
Rye dabs a napkin against Peeta’s nose to stop the blood from dripping down and staining his t-shirt while Katniss's father apologizes profusely to dad. "I'm sorry, she's going through a tough time. We just moved here, and she's not adjusting very well."
Dad gives him a small smile, assuring him that accidents happen. Before the man leaves, he apologizes to Peeta, then walks out into the rain with his box of cupcakes.
"I told you girls are annoying," Rye mutters as he inspects the cut on Peeta's nose.
Later that night, while closing the bakery, Peeta finds a shiny pin on the floor near the booth he and Rye were sitting at. He picks it up, turning it between his fingers. There’s dried blood on a sharp edge—the tail of a bird—and he guesses this is what cut his nose.
Peeta initially doesn’t know what to do with it. He has no way of giving it back. So he keeps it, just in case.
When he’s back in his room, he stores the pin in an old shoebox under his bed.
He sees the girl again on the first day of school.
She’s quiet during class compared to when he’d seen her in the bakery. And when the teacher asks Katniss to introduce herself, she mutters her name so quietly that a few of their classmates lean in their seats to hear her.
Then she takes the empty seat beside him, and Peeta freezes up, wondering if she remembers him.
At first, he doesn’t think she does because she doesn’t talk to him the first few days of school, only offering him shy glances from the corner of her eye every morning whenever she claims her seat.
By the fifth day, he’s beginning to think he should say something—though he’s unsure what.
However, that day, he forgets his lunch at home, and Katniss surprises him ( again ) when she turns toward him with the other half of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich, encouraging him to take it.
“Here,” she says. “My dad makes the best PB&Js.”
Her mouth quirks when he takes it.
“Thank you.”
It seems his accepting her sandwich is the key to getting her to talk to him—and he finds out that she’s less shy than he initially thought.
“You know,” Katniss says while pulling out her lunch box, “it’s funny that you’re named after a bread.”
“Uh, oh.” Peeta looks down at his desk, suddenly feeling self-conscious about his name. “Is it?”
Katniss offers him the other half of her orange.
“Because your family owns a bakery,” she continues, and he watches her cheeks turn a shade of pink as she tacks on, “but I like bread, so it’s not so bad.”
She likes bread.
Peeta perks up at that. “I like your name too.”
While they’re walking home from school, he tells Rye that he’s friends with the girl that put a scar on his nose. Rye nudges Peeta’s arm, saying, “really? Girls have cooties.”
Peeta shakes his head. “Not Katniss! She’s cool.”
“Whatever,” Rye shrugs, then glances down at him. “Race you home?”
“Only if you say that Katniss doesn’t have cooties.”
Rye stops them in front of the Cartwright’s pale pink house with his hands on his hips. “How about this? If I win, then I say Katniss has cooties. If you win, we can invite her to walk home tomorrow. Deal?”
Peeta has never run so fast in his life.