Chapter Text
Peeta
The late afternoon sun floods into my living room, settling on my canvas. I sit down at my easel with the bay window at my side, ready to commit my nightmare to canvas. The natural light in my living room is superb at this time of day, allowing me to see the paint colors differently than when I have to rely on the artificial, overhead light. So what if it means that my easel and cart full of paints and brushes clutter up the room? When you’re the single guy and all your friends and brothers are married, no one comes to your apartment.
I make steady progress depicting the images that torment my sleep. The sterile, white room comes to life on the end of my paintbrush, with its many lights—blinding yellow and flashing red—that still haunt me, three years on from my accident. I roll back on my stool so that I can take the painting in at a distance, checking the image for balance, when movement out on the street catches my eye. A young woman, dark haired and athletic, climbs into the back of a small rent-by-the-day moving truck.
Old man Haymitch must have finally sobered up enough to lease the upstairs apartment. Suddenly the thumping sounds I've been hearing overhead make sense. When I paint, the outside world falls away and I become utterly blind to time and my surroundings. I still register the sounds, but my brain waits until I stop painting to process them. I have burned so many loaves of sourdough, trying to squeeze in some painting time while they bake. It's embarrassing—baking is literally my career, and yet when I paint, even the loudest kitchen timer cannot pierce my concentration.
I roll on my stool up to the window, hoping to catch another glimpse of these new neighbors. Please let them be quieter than the last guy, I think. He was a late night gamer, with a habit of shouting at his television and throwing his controller to the ground when he lost, which was not ideal when I had the 5:00 AM shift at the bakery.
But I see only the woman. Is she alone? She pushes a large mattress wrapped in thick plastic out of the back of the truck and with no one on the street to catch it, it flops bonelessly onto the ground. Thank goodness she had that plastic. She hops out of the truck, stands the mattress upright, and begins to drag it across the lawn to the front door.
That won’t do at all. I raise the screen on my window so that I can stick my head out and call, “Miss? Hang on a minute, let me help you!” I hurry out into our duplex’s shared entryway, nudging the old cast iron garden gnome into place with my foot so that the door will stand open, and I run down the front steps to meet her, determined to help, even though it means giving up my painting time. I can’t sit by while she struggles.
The woman greets me with a deeply irritated scowl…and I stop short, with a hitch in both my steps and my heart. “Katniss Everdeen?” I can't stop a big, dumb grin from spreading across my face. God, it’s been twelve years since I last saw her, the girl who captivated all my attention in high school. She’s so beautiful—still powerful, but with a bit more to her curves than she had as a girl. Her hair, the color of the highest quality dark chocolate, hangs over her shoulder in a thick braid and her golden-brown complexion glows from the exertion of carrying boxes in the July heat. But it’s her eyes that are incomparable, smoky gray and as ineffable as ever. I feel myself begin to melt from the heat of her stare. “What are you doing here?”
“I would think it's obvious,” she grumbles, adjusting her grip on the heavy plastic.
“Of course.” Some things never change, I suppose. Katniss Everdeen can still render me simple minded with a single, sharp look. I grab the other end of the mattress to help her to carry it upstairs.
“And it's Katniss Hawthorne, unfortunately.”
So she had married him, just like everyone expected. Gale Hawthorne, two years our senior and her constant companion, was everything I’m not—the classic combination of tall, dark, and handsome, whereas we Mellarks are average height, blindingly pale, and ashy blond. He was lithe and lean; I’m built like a refrigerator, broad and solid. Gale was an accomplished hunter back in high school, with a measure of confidence that verged on cocky. I spend my time daydreaming about cake, or French impressionism, or questions of moral philosophy. I can work a crowd when I need to, but I’ve never felt a drive to prove myself to others…aside from my mother, but that’s a different matter entirely.
Without any more conversation aside from a few directions, we haul her mattress up the steep, ornate staircase of the old Victorian house, which had been ruthlessly chopped into a duplex by someone with a Victorian’s enterprising sense of capitalism but not their sense of aesthetics, having erected a featureless wall with a cheap hardware store door across the upstairs landing. We prop the mattress against the wall in the larger of the two bedrooms, and then Katniss turns to me and says, “It's good to see you again, Peeta.”
That stupid grin of mine is back. “I wasn't sure you even knew my name.”
Katniss snorts and heads back down the stairs. I trail behind her, my insides wriggling like an excited puppy, happy to be in her presence. “You're joking, right? Golden boy Peeta Mellark, state wrestling champ, homecoming king. All-around swell guy. Everybody knew who you were, Peeta, even the weirdos like me.”
Ohhh. I feel a twinge of sadness wash over me. Is that how she saw herself in school? Because it sure wasn't how I saw her.
Katniss hops back up into the truck. It's empty except for a few larger pieces; a second mattress, a shabby couch, a battered table, and a half dozen flat pack boxes of furniture to assemble. How would she have hauled all this upstairs by herself? I wonder, but I know better than to ask. If Katniss Everdeen has the will, then she'll find a way. I've always admired that about her.
“You were never a weirdo,” I say as I lift the twin-sized mattress around the middle. This one is far easier to handle, so Katniss picks up one of the smaller flat packs and follows me back inside. “You were edgy and cool.” She scoffs at that, but I won't permit her to sell herself short. “You hunted with a bow and arrow like a Roman goddess.”
Katniss shrugs, leading me into the smaller bedroom where we drop the mattress and flat pack. “Hunting season’s longer if you use a bow instead of a gun.”
“You stood up to bullies like Cato Stone.”
“Yeah, well, he was spying on ninth graders in the girls’ locker room. It was gross.”
“Katniss, he had a hundred pounds on you and you knocked him out cold. You were legendary. They should have written epic ballads about you.”
That finally pries a snort of laughter out of her.
It takes us only a few minutes to finish emptying the truck. Her apartment swelters in the July heat, but these old Victorians have their secrets. I show her the magical combination of windows to open that will funnel even the slightest breeze from the front windows through the whole apartment, and soon the heat and stale air dissipate. Katniss thanks me and it feels like a dismissal, but then I offer to bring her some iced tea and she can’t hide the eager look that flashes across her face.
My mind reeling, I race down to my kitchen and throw on the kettle for quick-brewed iced tea. Katniss Everdeen is going to be my neighbor! It’s almost more than I can comprehend. Once the tea is brewing, I dash into the bathroom and grimace at my reflection. Katniss Everdeen is going to be my neighbor, I repeat as I scrub the smear of green paint off my cheek. Or rather, she’s Katniss Hawthorne now, but she doesn’t seem happy about the Hawthorne part. If she’s married, why isn’t her husband helping with her move? I coax my unruly curls back into place and quickly brush my teeth.
I return to Katniss's apartment a few minutes later with a pitcher of lightly sweetened iced tea, two glasses, and a set of long-handled, ratcheting Allen wrenches, far superior to the kind included with the flat-pack furniture. “Put me to work,” I say, clapping my hands together. “I don’t have to teach for a couple hours yet.”
Katniss protests but I will not be deterred, so she passes me the instructions for assembling a coffee table while she begins to unpack the boxes labeled Living Room. We work in silence as I follow the wordless instructions and she fills the sitting room’s dark oak bookshelves. After several long minutes, Katniss asks, “What do you teach?”
“Oil painting technique at an artist co-op over in Merchantville. The pay is terrible; I do it mostly for fun. I find the more I teach, the better my own painting gets.”
“What do you do for work, then?”
“I manage the second branch of Mellark’s Bakery with my middle brother Rye, here on the east side.”
“I didn't realize your family had opened another location. I’ve been a bit distracted lately,” Katniss says. “When did you move back from Capitol City?”
Wow. I feel a swell of warmth, realizing that Katniss knew at least a little about my life after high school. “Just about three years ago, but I didn’t move into this place until last May. I lived with Rye and his wife after the accident while I re-learned how to walk.” I tap on the combination of metal and plastic that I wear in place of my missing lower left leg. Usually I hide the prosthesis under long pants—not because I'm embarrassed of it per se, but because I hate the way my prosthesis seems to enter the room before I do. It becomes the first thing new people know about me, fixing an impression in their minds before I even have a chance to say hello. But when I’m at home, alone, I prefer shorts because they don't snag on the metal joints the way pants do. Katniss hasn’t mentioned my amputation, has barely even looked at it, but I figure I might as well clear that elephant from the room.
“I heard about the crash from Delly Cartwright. I’m sorry about your fiancee, Peeta.”
What precisely had Delly shared—just that Glimmer died instantly, or the whole sordid story of heartbreak that followed in the wake of her death? “Thank you,” I say with a nod. This is the point in the conversation where I often throw out a generic platitude (“She's in a better place,” “Time heals all wounds,” blah blah blah), as a means to set the other person at ease, as well as to minimize how catastrophic a rift Glimmer’s death created in my life—but I know that Katniss would see right through it. People who have experienced real loss in their lives can always spot that bullshit. There are days when the impact of Glimmer’s death feels so raw that I forget to breathe. Time heals nothing. Only hard work heals.
But the lucky ones who have sailed blissfully through their lives without touching death always nod earnestly, as if I've said something profound. Not today. I keep my mouth shut and allow the discomfort to sit in the air between us for a few moments before I ask her, “Do you still hunt?”
She shakes her head. “Not as much as I’d like. There isn’t time, but my job gets me outside. I work for the county’s parks department, creating and monitoring the long-term wildlife conservation plans.”
“That sounds like your dream job.”
“It is,” Katniss says, and I look up just in time to catch the corners of her mouth turn up into the hint of a smile. “The pay is mediocre, but I get to protect the places that I love. Every time I catch a glimpse of the view off of Heavensbee’s Bluff, it takes my breath away.” She turns to find me arranging the coffee table in front of her ancient couch. Katniss takes a step back and regards it with a frown. “I hate this manufactured crap, but it’s not like I had weeks to scour The Hob for anything better.”
A sudden move. Regret over her last name. I survey the belongings she has unpacked—books, board games, two large baskets of knitting supplies—and see no sign of Gale.
Katniss clasps her hands and rests them on the top of her head, twisting to appraise the small room. A hint of yellow and green catch my eye. I reach out slowly for her left arm, giving Katniss a chance to pull away. “May I?” I ask, waiting for her nod before circling her wrist with my fingers, turning her hand—which does not have a ring—upward to look at the tattoo on the underside of her forearm.
It is a work of art in the style of Monet’s ‘Bouquet of Sunflowers;’ a dozen impressionistic yellow dandelions arranged in a vase. Van Gogh’s sunflowers get all the attention, but I prefer Monet’s take on the yellow flowers, and this reimagination is a masterpiece. The placement of her tattoo suggests that it's deeply personal, designed for her more than for anyone else to see, which I respect.
“Gorgeous. That’s one of the things I remember most about you, that you loved dandelions. I can still picture the little pops of yellow woven into your braid each spring.” I look up from the tattoo to give her a smile—and I’m startled by the intense look of astonishment in her wide, silver eyes. Her mouth hangs open slightly, her lips shaped in a silent oh. I am transfixed.
I’m transported back to the first day of kindergarten, when she climbed up on a stool in her little red dress and sang with a voice so clear that everyone, even the birds outside the window, stopped to listen.
Transported back to sixth grade, the day she returned to school after her father died, looking exhausted but defiant, daring anyone to cross her path.
To sophomore year, catching her eye across the lunch room as Gale Hawthorne slid into the seat next to her and draped his arm over her shoulders.
To homecoming our senior year—
My reverie is interrupted by frantic barking from Miss Trinket’s pack of pomeranians in the house next door. Those yappy little dogs are a menace. Katniss yanks her gaze from mine and I drop her hand. She turns away, clears her throat, and busies herself gathering up the crumpled newspaper padding and empty cardboard boxes. “You like ink yourself,” she says, nodding at my left arm.
What just happened? I stare at her a few seconds longer before running my hand over the half sleeve of tattoos on my left arm. They begin at my shoulder and work their way down to my elbow, chapter markers of my life’s story. Before I can respond, there’s a noise in the stairwell; little, pounding footsteps paired with a deep murmur. Katniss squeezes her eyes shut, her body tensing in preparation for the sharp knock that sounds on her apartment door.
“It's open,” she calls.
The door flies open with a bang. In strides Gale Hawthorne, still handsome but in a more mature way; a little less lean, with the beginning of a stoop and a few strands of gray peppering his short, dark hair. “A bunch of your crap from the garage,” he says, dropping a box onto the living room floor with a thud. His aggravated expression grows thunderous when his eyes land on me.
But Gale isn’t who draws my attention. No, I focus on the little girl of about five, another heart-stopping ghost from the past. She is dressed in red overalls with two dark braids running down her back and she bounds into the room saying, “Mama, look! Daddy bought me a new kitty stuffie!”