Chapter Text
Second grade
She watches as he horses around with Matt Campbell in the back of the classroom. She glares at him. For some reason that she can't put her finger on, she only blames him for the disturbance, and not Mark Campbell. Why can't he just sit quietly and pay attention, she thinks, instead of constantly forcing Ms. Dunphy to stop their lesson to reprimand him? School would be so much more fun if he would just behave.
She notices that his hair is always falling in his eyes, but in those moments when it somehow isn't, his eyes seem impossibly wide, like he's seeing something amazing for the first time.
***
Third grade
Some of her friends have crushes on him, while others prefer Matt Campbell. One day someone has the bright idea to organize a secret ballot to vote for "Cutest Boy" and "Cutest Girl". She abstains from "Cutest Boy” because she doesn't think any of the boys are good-looking, and instead she votes for her best friend Catherine, whom she thinks of as beautiful and not just cute. She's kind of proud of it, so when Davey Peterson asks her whom she voted for, she doesn't hesitate to tell him. "I didn't think you were that kind of girl," he says. "What kind of girl?" she asks. "You know," he shrugs. She doesn't, so she turns away.
When the votes are tallied, Matt Campbell and Sherry Olson win. For some reason, the ballot counters decide to show everyone else's tallies as well, and she's not surprised that Peeta Mellark came in second. She is surprised to find that Catherine only received one vote.
When she learns that she herself also received just one vote, she's sure it must be a joke. Probably Davey Peterson did it to make fun of her. She knows she's not cute. Not with her bone-straight, coarse black hair, her darker skin, her "Chinese" eyes.
She's not actually Chinese, but her mother is Thai, so although her eyes are her father's grey, they reflect the shape of her mother's. There's only one other Asian kid in the whole school -- Gale Hawthorne in the fifth grade, whose mother is Japanese -- and there is no doubt in any of her classmates' minds that she is destined to marry Gale one day.
Even though she and Gale are the only non-white kids in the school, she's not an outcast or anything. There was the time someone yelled "Chink!" from the back of the school bus as she walked home from her stop, and the "Ching chong chang chong" in her face from some red-headed, freckled boy who pulled his eyes into slits with his index fingers and then ran away, and the "Hola, Kemosabe" from idiotic Mitch Kennedy. But she's friends with most of the girls in her class, and she's at least respected by everyone else. It's just that sometimes even her friends ask her things like "Do Chinese people really eat dogs?" To which she says, for the millionth time, "I'm not Chinese." And then they say, "What are you again?" or "But your mom is, right?"
***
Fourth grade
This year, she's part of something called Gifted and Talented, or G&T, as the teacher calls it. Every Friday morning, she and the other G&T kids leave Ms. Struck's classroom and spend two hours in the library with Ms. Greene.
Catherine was selected for the program too, but her parents didn't want her to be part of it. Her other friends Melissa and Lizzie are in it though, and then there are two boys, Bobby Fitzpatrick and, strangely, Peeta Mellark. Since he never behaves in class, she's never thought of him as one of the "smart kids", like the other G&T kids or Catherine. She can't help but wonder if he was assigned to G&T so that Ms. Struck would have a two-hour break from him every week. She just hopes he won't ruin G&T for her with all his goofing off.
The first week, though, he sits quietly and listens to everything Ms. Greene says, moving only to brush his hair out of his eyes. When they do improv exercises, he seems to morph into each character he plays, and he watches intently while others perform their skits. When Ms. Greene has them do freewriting in their composition books, he writes furiously for the full fifteen minutes, and she's surprised to discover that she really wants to read what he wrote. It's the first time she's ever been curious about anything about him.
The second week, Ms. Greene gives them a homework assignment. They are to each pick a song that they will lip-sync in front of the others, solo, the following week. Melissa and Lizzie are excited about it and talk about who what they're going to wear, how they're going to do their hair. She hasn't even heard of the songs or the singers that they're talking about, and she's afraid to ask.
She doesn't know when she started getting left behind on the music front, but she knows that she has been. She doesn't have her own radio, or any sort of music player of her own, and all her parents ever listen to is Italian opera and show tunes. Her parents barely even have any CDs; most of their stuff is on records that they held onto from when they were young. She's heard some of the stuff that Catherine likes when she goes to her house, but she has no idea what the names of any of the musicians are, and she's always been too ashamed of her ignorance to ask. She already feels like she comes from a different world from the one that Catherine and everyone else at school comes from.
That afternoon, she sits down in front of the stereo in the den and tries to find something that isn't opera or show tunes. It turns out there are a few CDs of Thai pop, as well as some old Greek records that must have come from her father's mother’s family. Then there's an album that actually has English words on the cover, by someone named Loretta Lynn, who has long, wavy dark hair and is wearing a blue button-down shirt. This could work, she thinks. She has a blue button-down shirt, and she can put her hair in her mom’s rollers.
When she finally listens to the record, she finds that she likes the singer's voice. She can tell that the songs are pretty different in style from what she's heard in her friends' bedrooms, but at least they're not like opera or show tunes. And at least they're in English. She finds a song that's pretty slow and not very long, and after practicing it a few times, she feels comfortable with it. She even starts singing it to herself, while she's clearing the table after dinner, while she's putting away her laundry, while she's lying in bed and can't fall asleep.
That Friday, she’s picked to go first. She’s terrified, but also relieved, because she knows if she had to watch anyone else go first, she’d be mortified at how different her selection is. Mrs. Greene puts the record on the library’s ancient turntable for her, and she finds herself standing in front of everyone.
Once the song starts, her mouth seems to automatically know what to do, and she lets herself sway with the music. But during the last chorus, she’s mortified to find that she’s actually singing. She’s not sure when she started, but she clamps down immediately, lips unmoving for a few beats, finally recovering to lip-sync the last few words as the song fades out. She thinks afterwards she might have curtsied or something before running back to her seat, eyes on the ground.
Melissa goes next, and then Bobby, but she barely registers their performances. Her insides still seem to be thrumming, and her hands are still trembling. Then suddenly she sees Peeta going over to the turntable to hand Ms. Greene a record, and the cover in his hand reads “Loverboy”. He’s wearing a red button-down shirt, open down the front, over a black T-shirt and black jeans, with a black headband that looks awful but that does keep his hair out of his eyes. He smiles sheepishly as he waits for the music to start, and when it does, he grins. He’s holding a flashlight with both hands and mock-crooning into it, pumping it occasionally to the beat. As the song picks up momentum, the rest of his body does too, starting from his hips and reverberating up to his shoulders and down to his feet. His grin is ridiculously wide now, and Lizzie and Melissa’s giggles are bubbling out of them. When he finishes, Bobby, Lizzie and Melissa are cheering and Peeta is grinning, and then suddenly his eyes flit to hers, and she looks away and realizes that she is smiling.
As they’re leaving the library to head to the cafeteria, he falls into step beside her.
“Nice job on your number,” he says, his usual grin replaced by a sweet, shy smile that makes her believe that he’s not making fun of her.
“You have a really good voice,” he continues. When she stops walking but doesn’t say anything, he starts again: “And I liked that you chose Loretta Lynn. I mean, I chose something kinda weird too.”
“Really?” Normally she would bristle at the “weird too”, but she thinks he means it in a good way.
“Yeah, I mean this record is from my parents’ collection,” he chuckles. “And Loverboy isn’t even American.”
“They’re not?”
“No, they’re Canadian. Anyway, it was nice that you didn’t pick another ex-Mouseketeer.” She doesn’t know what he means, so she just stares at him. He tries again: “And, uh, yeah, did you know that Loretta Lynn was kinda revolutionary?”
She shakes her head, and he continues: “Yeah, my dad says she sang a lot about women’s rights and stuff, which was really different for country music. There were all these radio stations that banned her stuff. Plus she’s from Kentucky, so she’s got to be cool.” He grins again. “You know, like me. I was born there.”
She hadn’t known that, or anything about Peeta really. She still can’t believe that they’re having a conversation, just the two of them. She realizes she hasn’t actually contributed anything to it, but she is smiling, and Peeta is smiling back.
“I really liked your act too,” she says. “You did a great job.” His smile gets wider and he says “Thanks.”
Then Matt Campbell comes up behind him and puts him in a headlock, and she rolls her eyes and walks over to where Christina has saved a seat for her.
***
In October, Ms. Greene tells them that they’re going to put on a couple of plays, just for fun, without any audience other than her. They spend an hour digging through issues of Plays magazine to find plays that everyone can agree on. It takes them a while, but then Lizzie finds a spoof of Red Riding Hood that everyone thinks is funny, and Bobby nominates a retelling of St. George and the Dragon that gets everyone’s agreement.
Ms. Greene tells them that each person will get the chance to play one main role in one of the plays. Melissa and Lizzie both want to be Red Riding Hood, but she’s not interested enough to compete with them for it. She figures the role of St. George will go to Bobby, since he chose the play. But when Bobby says he’s fine with any part, she speaks up and says she’d like to be St. George. And then Peeta says he wants to be the dragon. She’s surprised he doesn’t want to be the Big Bad Wolf, which is a showier, funnier role, but she’s glad.
When they break into groups to do a few read-throughs, Peeta asks her why she chose St. George.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I like his lines. I like how he goes off on his own to deal with the dragon once and for all. And it’ll be fun to dress up like a knight and carry a sword and stuff.”
“Yeah, it’s a pretty good part,” Peeta says.
“You mean it’s the best part,” she replies. Peeta grins back.
“Whatever, the dragon’s the real hero of the story,” he says. “He’s the one who tries to talk to George and manages to get George to listen, when George is all set on killing him. He’s the one who brings about world peace. And his costume is going to be awesome.”
She can’t help smiling in response.
When they start practicing their lines, Peeta turns out to be remarkably good at making the dragon’s loneliness and desire for companionship come through. And he gets really passionate when he starts talking about wanting to live in peace with the villagers. She’s having so much fun that she’s disappointed when it’s time to move on to their weekly freewriting time, which is usually her favorite activity.
The next week, they start working on their costumes. Ms. Greene takes them to the art room and tells them they can use anything in it, and Peeta starts grabbing pieces of green and gold foil and cellophane. He asks if she wants any help with her costume, but for now she’s just going to make a sword out of cardboard, so she says no.
When she’s got something serviceable, she looks up to see that Peeta has cut out sheets and sheets of green and gold scales. He’s also made a tunic out of green foil. Melissa, Lizzie, and Bobby have already gathered around him to watch. She remembers now that art class was always the one period of the day when he was focused on his work and not fooling around.
The next week, the dragon costume is nearly complete, all shimmery scales with a long green tail. Meanwhile, she’s been trying to make a knight’s tunic out of grey paper. It’s good enough, she thinks, although it’s a bit plain. But then she puts it on, and it just looks like she’s wearing a grey shopping bag.
“I can help you decorate it if you want,” a soft voice behind her says. She turns to find that it is Peeta. His voice had been so shy and tentative, so different from his typical voice, that she hadn’t recognized it.
“Thanks, that’d be great,” she says, taking off the shopping bag and placing it on the floor.
“So how do you want it to look?” he asks.
“Good. I want it to look good.”
He grins. “Ok, I’ll see what I can do.”
He grabs a bunch of paints, and she sits back and watches him work. She starts with his hands and the way they move the brush, dipping into the paint, mixing it, spreading it in lines and curves across the paper. Then she’s staring at his face, and his ridiculously long and practically transparent eyelashes, and his intense expression that makes him look like a different person from the one that she sees the rest of the week in school.
She’s startled when he looks up suddenly. “How’s this?” he says. He’s painted an elaborate coat of arms on the front of the tunic. It’s perfect, and she tells him so. He looks a little embarrassed and mutters that it’s no big deal, and how about if they practice one more time before lunch?
The day of the performance, she realizes she’s actually excited. She knows her lines, she has a great costume, and she has fun working with Peeta. She’s not nervous, like she was with the lip-sync exercise, and she thinks it’s somehow connected to Peeta.
Things start out well, and she’s feeling exhilarated. Then they’re in the middle of their big scene, just the two of them in the dragon’s cave, when it’s Peeta’s turn to speak, and nothing comes out. He stares at her, and she mouths the words to him; somehow, both his lines and hers are coming at her in a rush.
It’s enough for him to get back on track, and she marvels at how he can make the words sound like his own, even after just having blanked out. She feels like a robot when she says her lines, even though she remembers all of them and then some.
“Thanks for helping me out,” he says to her afterwards with a sheepish smile.
“No problem,” she says. “That was the easy part. You did all the hard stuff yourself.”
“Well, it was fun doing this with you,” he says. “We’re a good team.”
***
In January, Ms. Greene tells them they’re going to spend the next eight weeks preparing for something called “Olympics of the Mind.” They’re going to be a team in a competition with teams from other schools. The theme for this year’s competition is “Survival”, and there are two parts: for the first part, they will have to devise a contraption to catch fake fish in a fake river without directly touching any fish with their hands. For the second part, they’ll need to develop a non-verbal communication system to guide their blindfolded messenger around a series of obstacles called pods.
They’ll all brainstorm together to develop the fish-catching mechanism and the non-verbal communication system. But during the competition, everyone will have specific roles to play, which they must also prepare for.
“I think Katniss should be the messenger,” Peeta blurts out.
She looks at him in shock. “What? Why? I don’t think I’d be good at it.”
“No, you would. I mean, the way you walk, you’re like a cat, like a lynx or something,” he says. She stares at him. “Like you're really quick on your feet. And like you have really good balance…I don’t know how to say it. I just think you’d be good at it.”
She’s embarrassed by how he’s describing her. Like he’s been watching her. “What about you?” she asks. “You’re really good at sports. I’ve seen you in gym class.”
“It’s not the same. I don’t – I don’t move like you do,” he says.
She frowns, annoyed that he’s talking this way, as if he’s an expert on how she moves, of all things. Ms. Greene ends the discussion, saying they can all try different positions and decide what works best later.
The next week, they come up with a communication system they want to test out. It’s made up of claps, whistles and stomps that indicate whether the messenger should stop, go forward, turn left or right, or take a big step over a pod.
After they take turns acting as messenger, it’s clear that Peeta is right. She’s the best at it. Everyone else takes steps that are too big or too fast or too tentative or too wobbly.
Then they try her out with Lizzie and Peeta, who turned out to be the clearest and most consistent whistlers, to see who should be her main “handler.” She goes through the course perfectly with Lizzie, but when it’s Peeta’s turn, she can feel her body relax. It doesn’t seem to impact her performance one way or another, though.
But Ms. Greene chooses Peeta, and says Lizzie will be the backup.
“I told you we were a good team,” Peeta tells her. For some reason this makes her foolishly happy.
They spend the next weeks working on their fish-catching devices, making their costumes (which Peeta is in charge of, of course), and practicing. She and Peeta and Lizzie figure out a few things that work better than what they’d originally planned, and by the Friday before the competition, they feel they’ve perfected their approach.
The competition is on a Saturday, at a community college, and they’ll spend the day there. She’s excited about it. She rarely gets to spend time away from her parents and Prim on weekends, and she’s not nervous about the competition, because she knows that all she has to do is close her eyes and listen to Peeta.
They’re not on until after lunch, and they spend the morning practicing one more time, watching a couple of other teams, and then taking a walk around campus. Peeta stays next to her pretty much the whole time, and she’s surprised, but she likes it.
They have burgers for lunch. He’s sitting next to her, and he takes out all the pickles from his burger and puts them on the side of his plate. After a minute, she asks if she can have them. He nods and says, “Gross,” with a grin, and she kicks him, and he tugs her braid.
When it’s their turn, they do as well as they’ve ever done, and Peeta helps her out of her blindfold and pulls her into a hug. She’s too surprised to hug him back, but she smiles. Then everyone else comes to hug her, and she hugs them back and it’s nice.
They end up placing fifth, which means they’re not advancing to State. She’s disappointed, but Peeta is already talking about next year, and how much fun it will be.
***
Three weeks later, though, Peeta says that he’s moving to Ohio. Their teacher writes down his new address on the blackboard and tells the class they can write to him there, and he can write back to tell them how he’s doing. She tries to imagine writing letters to Peeta. She has a pen pal, a girl in fourth grade in California whom she’s never met, but it’s easy to write letters to her.
In G&T, Ms. Greene takes a bunch of photos of all of them for Peeta to take with him to Ohio. They do some goofy ones, making gross faces and doing silly poses, but when they do the normal smiling-into-the camera ones, she tries to pretend that it’s Peeta that she’s looking at, not Ms. Greene and her camera lens, and she hopes that it comes through in the pictures.
On his last day of school, their class has a party for him. He is, as usual, telling stories and trading jibes with his friends, and she’s on the sidelines, listening but not talking. She feels like he keeps looking at her, and she wants to talk to him but doesn’t see how she can.
When it’s her turn to say goodbye, there are too many people around, so she just says “Have fun at your new school” and smiles and makes to go. But suddenly he’s hugging her and saying in her ear, “Write to me, okay?” And then he’s gone, saying goodbye to Jennifer Johnson.
Three weeks later, in G&T, Ms. Greene says that she has a letter from Peeta. It’s addressed to all of them, and he tells them that he likes his new house and his new school, that he’s playing little league baseball, and that he got a dog because his mom said they finally had a yard big enough for one. He asks them to write back, and Ms. Greene gives them time during class to write their own letters to him.
She’s not sure what to write, because she’s not sure he really wants a letter from her. They were friends, but only really in G&T, and he sounds like he has a new life that he’s happy with. So she keeps her letter short and just says a few general things about what they’re doing in G&T now.
To her surprise, he writes her back a week later. And it’s a long letter, with a story about how dumb but lovable their dog is, how his brothers already have new girlfriends, how he misses G&T.
She writes back a couple of weeks later, with a little bit of a longer letter this time, and he writes back again. Again, she’s surprised, but she knows it won’t last. At the end of second grade, when her best friend Vicky had moved away, she’d written to her for about four months before one of them and then the other had stopped. And that was with her best friend, who was supposed to be her best friend forever. Peeta was just her G&T friend.
It does last, though, all the way through the summer and into fifth grade and the summer after. She sometimes takes a couple of months to write back, but she always does, and he always responds.
***
Sixth grade
She starts middle school, and it’s awful. All of her friends, and pretty much all of the girls in her grade, suddenly look all grown up. Her parents think that makeup is only for actual grownups and that clothing should be inexpensive and functional, so she knows she’ll just continue looking like she’s still in elementary school.
Her friends don’t reject her or anything; they’re still her friends, but they don’t compliment her hair and clothes like they do each other’s, and she never gets asked what she thinks about someone’s new shoes or what she’s going to wear to so-and-so’s birthday party.
Some of her friends even start going out with boys.
Billy Perkins, whom she’s known since kindergarten, who never really bothered her, suddenly starts taunting her. “Oh, Katniss, will you please, please go out with me? You’re so pretty, Katniss; I like you so much,” he says every time he passes her. Every time, she rolls her eyes and tries to act like he’s beneath her notice. Eventually, he gets bored and stops, but it takes a few weeks.
She gets a letter from Peeta. He tells her about his new middle school, and how he has an amazing art teacher, and how he’s having fun playing on the soccer team, and how he joined the drama club and it made him think of her. He asks her how she likes her new school. She doesn’t know how to respond, so she doesn’t write back.
At Christmas, she gets a card from him. There’s a photo of him next to the set he helped design for drama club. He has a cooler haircut now. “Wish you were here to help me with my lines again,” the card says. “Hope you’re having a great year. Write back soon!”
She wants to write back, but she doesn’t want to write back. She knows that if he hadn’t moved away, they wouldn’t be friends anymore anyway.
In the spring, he sends her another letter. This one, if possible, is even more filled with all the cool things he’s doing, as if he’s trying to make her feel bad. At the end, he says, “You’re probably really busy, so just write me when you have time!” She does have time, but she knows she can’t write him.
***
Seventh grade
One day at the mall, she thinks she sees him – it’s his floppy blond hair, his build, his untucked T-shirt and worn jeans. She freezes. But then he turns around, and it’s not him.
The week before Christmas she wonders if he’ll send her a card this year. He doesn’t.
***
Eighth grade
She can’t keep from thinking of him when Prim starts G&T with Ms. Greene and starts doing the same kinds of things she used to do with Peeta and the others. Melissa, Lizzie, and Bobby are mere acquaintances now, and she thinks about how it’s good that Peeta moved away when he did. It would be hard to have to see him hanging out with the jocks, not acknowledging her in the hallways, when she’s being hit with memories of how they once were.
***
Twelfth grade
She goes on her first date, with a boy from her history class, and then a couple more with the same boy. On their fourth date, he finally kisses her, open-mouthed. She’s shocked at how slimy it feels.
***
College
She starts her first year at the state university, and even though a lot of people from high school are there too, as well as a lot of people who are just like the people from high school, there are also a lot of people who are different. There’s no dominant group or dominant way of being, she realizes. Instead, there are lots of subcultures that mostly ignore each other but sometimes intersect. She finally feels free.
Then, one night she has a dream about Peeta. She can't remember what it was about, but they were in the library for G&T. Mostly she just remembers his hair in his eyes. He says something to her, but when she wakes up she can't remember what it was.
A year and half later, she dreams about him again. This time she's in the middle of the Olympics of the Mind, with her blindfold on. He's sending her signals, but she keeps getting them wrong, and she walks into a pod.
She wakes up. She sits down at her computer and types his name into the search bar.