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Living in town is one big puzzle. I’m getting better at piecing it together, but it’s hard when the pieces don’t exactly fit.
Take the smiles. Most of them are held up by invisible tape here. I actually used to think invisible tape was a real thing you could buy, common like soap or wool. I always figured the stuff must be dirt cheap in the Capitol if the sorry well-to-do in Twelve like my parents could afford it. But, no. It turns out the tape and merchant smiles are one in the same. Very costly and very not real.
Townies aren’t Capitol, but I think the tape might be one of the most Capitol things about them. I live in town, so I guess that makes me a them. But I try not to smile unless I really mean it, so I think that makes me me.
There’s no smile on my face right now, because the sun is going down and the sky is the best kind of orange, but I’m stuck in the bakery so I can’t watch it. Which sucks, because there’s a good view behind the shoe shop where the Cartwright’s fence hides the district and I can pretend I’m anywhere else. Plus, it stormed earlier, so I know Delly must be out there right now swimming in the lake. It’s not a real lake because District Twelve doesn’t have nice things like lakes, but there’s an old ditch in her yard that fills when it rains enough. Delly and I can’t swim, but we’re experts at pretending. She always lets me borrow her clothes so I can come home clean and dry without a beating waiting for me. Her parents think we’re getting a little old for it, but they still let us as long as we take our shoes off first.
I could be splashing around the anywhere-else lake in one of Delly’s dresses right now, but no. I’m wiping down the counter as the bakery fizzles to a close. Barley just cleaned the shop half an hour ago, but it didn’t count because it was before our mother gave the order. So now it’s my job while he and Rye wash up in the back and my father gets a head start on prep. All because I’m the best talker and it’s hard for people with money to say no when a kid tries to sell them something.
This sucks.
That’s what my brothers always say when they don’t want to do something. But they’re not the ones who risk a shiner when they say it, so I only think it. The words are pots and pans clattering through my head.
This sucks this sucks this sucks
One thing about being an expert at pretending is I’m pretty good at looking busy. I swipe back and forth on the counter mostly. Sometimes I circle in one spot, pressing hard with a wrinkled brow to make it seem like there’s something tough I’m trying to get out. Since I don’t hear anyone coming, I let my eyes peek through the window at the splotch of orange between the shadowy buildings and power lines. We don’t normally stay open this late, but money’s been tight. There are still grown-ups walking the streets, most of them trudging home as another long day winds down. If I look hard enough, I can count all the tired eyes and taped-up grins that pass by. It’s a game I like to play when things suck.
That’s how I spot them: the apothecary my father wanted to marry and the coal miner she ran off with instead. They walk right up to the bakery without any tape, so they stick out. I often wonder if the miner knows about my father; if he’d still stop to smile at the cakes in the display window or trade his game for our strawberries if he did. Something about his Seam-gray eyes tells me he would. It’s the softness in them, maybe. The kindness there.
The two look at the cakes none of us can afford to eat, exchanging words I can’t hear through the glass. I spend that time putting elbow grease into a stubborn, make-believe blob of frosting crusted up on the counter. We made cupcakes earlier with lavender buttercream, so I decide it’s leftover from that. The light purple frosting puts up a good fight, but I win because I started wrestling and I’m almost as strong as Rye now.
When I look back up, the miner and apothecary are still there, but they’re not looking at the cakes anymore. They’re looking at each other, eyes glowing with something I don’t even know if there’s a word for. The miner holds her hand like a precious gem for a moment, then presses his lips to her skin. I blink, expecting the kiss to end by the time my eyes open again. But it just keeps going. His mouth stays on her hand for what feels like forever. My stomach won’t stop doing these weird, warm somersaults even after it’s over.
I’ve never seen anything like it. I had no idea kisses could be meant for other parts. That they could last so long and smiles could be so real.
My parents kiss, sometimes. Quick pecks here and there. Sweet-looking things, but bland like sprinkles. They do love each other, I think. But their love is a strange knot I’m only just beginning to untangle. One I don’t want to understand, if I’m being honest.
They’re not much different compared to some other couples in town, really. But that’s just the town. The Seam is different; not always, but sometimes. I figure that’s the thing about not having much to lose. There’s nothing holding you back when it matters.
The apothecary was lucky enough to figure that out. My father, not so much.
But the glow outside the window is so real, it feels like I could reach through the glass and touch it. Hold it tight and never let it go. Watching the couple feels too much like spying, but I can’t bring myself to look away. I have to watch. I have to. How could anyone not, after a kiss like that?
Secretly, it makes me wonder if there’s a woman with hands my father would kiss, if his eyes could see past the married apothecary and the stupid line between merchant and Seam. And then a thought hits me — much harder than my mother’s hands ever have or ever will:
Maybe some kids don’t secretly hope their parents will split up. I sure wouldn’t, if my parents looked at each other in a way that glowed.
The realization leaves a welt on my heart that I know right away will never fade. Good, I think. My face winds into a smile, and there she is again. The coal miner’s daughter, soaring through my ears.
We’ve never even talked, but I can still picture her on our very first day of school. Red plaid dress. Two dark braids. There was a bad scrape on her knee, just above her soot-stained socks. Her father had walked her to school on his way to the mines while her mother must have stayed home with the baby. Her hand was so small in his. I hadn’t even noticed them until my father pointed them out while we were waiting to line up.
That was the morning I learned he’d fallen for the girl’s mother. Later that same day, I fell in love with her daughter.
It had nothing to do with my father, either. It was the enchanted birds in the window and the way her voice made me tingle. Not any part in particular — just the all of me. She stood on that stool and sang the valley song and before I knew, it I was tripping over my own two feet even though I hadn’t moved an inch. Good as gone.
That evening, as I tossed scraps to the piglets out back, I turned to my oldest brother and asked, “Barley, what’s it called when you don’t get the thing you want and take something else instead?”
“Same as us eating stale bread so we can sell the fresh stuff.” He sniffed and said nothing else, but his mouth clenched like he was tasting something awful and trying not to spit it out.
Rye was on the other side of him, frowning at the pigs. “It’s called settling,” he added quietly. “You’re already doing it, Peeta. We all are.”
A sharp whack on the back of my head snatches the memory away.
“What good are you standing around?” my mother barks. “Lock up, you useless thing! We shouldn’t even be open this late to begin with!”
I glance out the window as she flips the sign to closed. The orange sky is draining into a dark and muddy night, and the miner and apothecary are nowhere to be found now. Part of me wonders if I imagined them, but the welt on my heart aches more than the back of my head.
My father emerges from the kitchen with my brothers, holding a basket of thawed out bread from last month’s overflow. I can tell by the way the loaves thunk together that they’ll be extra stale even after we soak and reheat them. Barley hears it too and grumbles my exact thought out loud.
This sucks.
But we do what we always do. We settle and crunch through the musty stuff because we live in town and at least we have food to break our jaws on. The roasted squirrel helps it go down a little easier. My mother tapes on a sour smile and pretends not to question it when my father lies and tells her it’s turkey. But we all know. There’s a certain coal miner who hunts illegally outside the district fence, and a carton of our strawberries mysteriously goes missing every now and then. I know his squirrels when I taste them, and they don’t taste like turkey.
Most nights, the hunter’s daughter sings me to sleep without knowing it. But tonight, for the first time, her lullaby is accompanied by the dream of her hand pressed to my lips.
≻──────────≺
She’s gone when I wake up. The sleeping bag we shared is empty and sore. Even in the confines of the cave, the arena — our set — feels so much bigger than it did before she found me fading into the river. I’m oddly alert and realize my fever has likely broken, but the relief is instantly drowned out by her deafening absence. I try to recall any stirring from the night but know the effort is as useless as I’ve been. Sleep pulls me under so viciously now that the bone in my leg has felt the bite of a sword. I might as well have actually died last night. Who knows what could have happened.
I don’t even have time to worry that her killer might’ve found me when she appears at the mouth of the cave seconds later. That’s how lightly she treads. The feet of a hunter, just like her father. My immediate reflex is to sit up and reach for her, but my leg remains a mutilated inferno and every cell in my body protests.
“I woke up and you were gone. I was worried about you,” I say, too tangled up in fear to hide the catch in my voice.
She just chuckles, easing me back down. “You were worried about me? Have you taken a look at yourself lately?”
I know she’s trying to lighten the mood, but it’s really not funny and I’m lucid enough to know she doesn’t understand why. “I thought Cato and Clove might have found you. They like to hunt at night.”
This sobers her. “Clove? Which one is that?”
“The girl from District Two. She’s still alive, right?” Time has become such a muddled thing, it’s frighteningly hard to recall what cannons I’ve heard and who they’ve been for.
“Yes, there’s just them and us and Thresh and Foxface — that’s what I nicknamed the girl from Five,” she says. “How do you feel?”
“Better than yesterday. This is an enormous improvement over the mud. Clean clothes and medicine and a sleeping bag . . .” I start to fight a smile, then realize I don’t have to anymore. “And you,” I add.
The way she reaches for my cheek seems to happen in slow motion, but I’m certain it has nothing to do with my delirium. My body reacts before my mind does. I catch her hand and press it to my lips with what I can only hope is the same straightforward gentleness I saw in the hunter all those years ago.
We’ve kissed. She’s seen me naked. Hell, she’s even chewed up leaves and slathered them on my wounds. But even through the numb haze of my illness, something in me knows instinctively that this kiss is supposed to be different. I can feel those familiar somersaults trying to muster up strength in my stomach. They never manage to find it, but the whispers of warmth don’t go unnoticed.
I let the contact linger, wanting so badly to forget the circumstances that have led our paths to finally cross. Wishing the shoe shop fence was here to conceal the arena so she and I could be anywhere else together. Trying to ignore every nerve in my withering body screaming that this — the killing and hiding and dying and audience — wasn’t part of the dream. But I’m awake and the entire country is watching us through their government mandated screens right now. I’m not doing it for them, not at all. But as the warmth from her pulse flickers on my pale, cracked lips, I know that no one in Panem can look away.
And how can they, during a kiss like this?
A smile creeps onto her face as I pull back. I wonder if she even realizes the grin is there, nevermind that it’s not taped on. She slips her hand from mine with a strange look in her eyes, that same curious gray that’s been aimed at me so many times before. Like she’s dissecting me, trying to find what makes me tick. I know it because I do it, too.
The look surfaces only for a moment, then morphs back into the glaring concern she thinks she hides well. “No more kisses for you until you’ve eaten,” she says quietly.
Suddenly I am sitting up, propped against the cool cave wall, with a spoonful of berry mush in my mouth. The tang makes my head spin and stomach churn with acid, but I force it down. I do this mostly because she’s scared and I’m scared and cannons are so much louder in person. But a smaller, stronger part of me does it because this mush still, somehow, tastes better than every bite of stale bread I’ve ever eaten.
I do have to admit defeat and draw the line at the groosling she offers, though. For a reason I try not to dwell on, it feels like that might actually kill me. “You didn’t sleep,” I say, trying to shift our focus away from food and my impending death.
“I’m all right,” she tries to tell me, but the sheer exhaustion in her eyes betrays her.
“Sleep now. I’ll keep watch. I’ll wake you if anything happens.” She hesitates, and I can almost hear the internal war she’s waging with her instincts. “Katniss, you can’t stay up forever,” I insist. And by the disgruntled expression that follows, I can tell she knows I’m right.
“All right. But just for a few hours. Then you wake me.”
More than ever, I wish my leg wasn’t such a rotting mess, if only so I could die with the memory of her dozing off in my lap. But I watch with a smile as she smooths out the sleeping bag and cozies up on it at my side. She’s still vigilantly clutching her bow, which is loaded and ready to send an arrow through the first threat that has the misfortune of crossing her.
“Go to sleep,” I say softly, and my fingers find her hair before the rest of me has the chance to consider the gesture. Her muscles relax almost instantly at the contact, and the bow loosens in her grasp, just a little. That’s when I’m certain she doesn’t notice the smiles that slip out of her. Maybe I wouldn’t be aware of my own either, if I hadn’t clocked my feelings back when I was five.
The realization brings me a twisted shred of clarity. I suppose, if this is how it has to end, at least I had those years of loving her from a distance. All that imagined life we’ll never get to live for real — not together, at least. She will, though. With someone else.
Though I don’t dare let myself, the whole situation makes me want to weep. This fabricated world around us is ugly and wrong, but this girl is so beautiful and so right. It’s everything I’ve ever ached for and dreaded, all wrapped up in a game I never, ever wanted to play.
This sucks this sucks this sucks.
The pots and pans clatter through my head like always, but I hush them and reconcile it by telling myself that dying with Katniss Everdeen beside me is, at the end of the day, a damn good way to go.
I brush through the tangled hair that’s strayed from her braid and lightly stroke her face, wanting to soothe as much of her as possible in this jagged, awful place. My hand traces down her hairline to the back of her neck, then paints up along her jaw, chasing the warmth trying so desperately to stumble through me in what I’m certain must be my last days. I doubt it will ever reach me, but that’s okay. I decide right then and there. It’s okay. This has to be okay.
It doesn’t take her long to fall asleep. Free from the Games, in her own anywhere-else, she’s all fluffed up and edges sanded down. Her omnipresent scowl has been replaced by something younger and softer — happy, almost. I’m not sure if it’s real, but at some point under my touch, even with her eyes closed, I swear the hunter’s daughter starts to glow.
I cup her face so I can hold it for as long as our beating hearts will allow. And maybe that’s just for another day or two. Three if I’m lucky. And who knows, maybe it’ll be years. Decades, even.
The act of indulging in such a grand delusion is how I know the end is close. My bones feel it. I will be joining the hunter beyond the fences soon.
They say your life appears in flashes when you die. The big stuff; memories so full they spill over. All those colors flowing and shifting and bleeding together to create the whole that is you. If that’s true, I know my last heartbeat will echo the hues of a red plaid lullaby. There will be a warm hand pressed to my ashen lips. And no one will be able to see it but me.
Roses are red, love; violets are blue.
Birds in the heavens know I love you.
Know I love you, oh, know I love you,
Birds in the heavens know I love you.