A New Family
On the first Parcel Day, early in the morning, I heard my doorbell. When I opened my door there was Katniss' mom, Prim, several bags, a cat, and a goat. The goat seemed happy enough, the cat was pissed off, and the two people looked like they had walked through hell on the way to my house. The bags under the girls' eyes spoke of long, hard days, and their posture spoke of people just worn out. Dealing with these people might be as big of a challenge as the government or my dead girlfriend.
I smiled and said, "Welcome to your new home. Come in."
When they entered the cat jumped down from Prim's arms and ran away to hide in the house, the goat calmly shit on the floor, and the girls just stared. I walked them though the living room, which I sensed was too big for our group, and right into the kitchen. We sat at the little breakfast table and I went to put tea on. "I'm so glad you decided to come. I'm not sure what I would have done if you didn't. You see, the reaping and the Games took away all the plans I had made for my life, and my promise to Katniss was one of the few things I felt I had left. This house has plenty of room for all of us, and I also have more than enough money, so I think we will do well here. I will give you guys the grand tour of the house and you can pick out your bedrooms. After that I will need you, Mrs. Everdeen, to help me make a shopping list of food and what else we need. Then we will go into town, buy supplies, and build Lady her own pen."
After I got the girls set up with their rooms and made a shopping list, we went into town. I gave Mrs. Everdeen all the money and watched the excitement she got just being able to buy things with cash. She kept saying everything cost too much, but I know she enjoyed the feeling of having money. We bought lumber and chain link fencing for Lady's pen and hired a truck to take it all back.
Thanks to all the rocks it took me most of the rest of the day to put in the fence. Prim helped me by getting drinks and tools, but mostly she just watched me. After a long while she got around to saying what she was thinking.
Prim lowered her head so I couldn't see her eyes and said, "Did it hurt? I mean, did dying hurt?"
Obviously she was worried about how her sister had died, so I said, "No, Prim, it wasn't like that. When we took the berries there was a bitter taste, not unlike vinegar. Then you can't see, and lastly you feel so weak you just fall down. It was all over in seconds. There was no pain at all."
Prim looked into my eyes. "Did you go to Heaven?"
"No, I don't think I was really dead."
"Do you think Katniss is in Heaven? Do you think she is really dead?"
"What do you think?"
"I just get this feeling sometimes like she's still here."
"Me too. You know how stubborn Katniss is. Maybe her spirit won't leave until all the people she loves can come with her."
Prim gave a little grim smile, the first smile I ever got from her.
When I finished with the fence it was time to start cooking supper. I cleaned up and all three of us started on dinner. The girls showed me how to make a stew and I showed them how to make bread. Mrs. Everdeen decided that I should call her Caroline. All the food did wonders for them. In some ways I think making the food was even better for them than eating it. After dinner we played cards and tried not to talk about anything serious until Prim went to bed.
Caroline and I stayed up for hours talking about the house and how to organize the chores and what Prim needed. Caroline said good-night and was about to leave when she said what was on her mind.
"Did Katniss talk about me at all?"
I started telling her the stories Katniss told me about her mom while writing the letter. "Yes, she told me several stories. The first one I remember is how you held her all night when she had the measles and sang to her. She felt so safe back then in your arms."
I went on to tell her the other stories Katniss told me, being careful to let her know how much Katniss loved her in those early years.
"Do you think she really forgave me?"
"I don't think Katniss was ever good at forgiving, but I know she kept her promises, so if she had lived you would have seen her struggle to forgive, but she wouldn't give up on a promise."
She thanked me for my honesty and went to bed.
That night I listened to the birds and cicadas and watched the full moon make its path across the sky. I sat for hours willing her back, imagining every detail of her, picturing her in front of me. Finally exhausted, I lay down to sleep and found myself unable to close my eyes. I got up and tried again. This pattern repeated many times and on many nights. I would go for days without sleep, but finally I started to see results. Now and again instead of Katniss appearing randomly she started to appear when I wanted her to appear.
The more I talked to Katniss the more my heart broke for her. My suffering was obvious, but I was the only person she could talk to or even touch. I knew I must keep her with me as long as possible every day, or she would go back to that half existence she suffered through.
Soon we fell into a routine: I would call it mundane, but I had never seen anything like it.
Mornings were the best. All day I would look forward to waking up. Five a.m. in the morning I would wake up, just like I had all my life, but instead of starting the ovens I would open my eyes and see a sleeping Katniss. I would lie there and just watch her sleep. I would force my mind to pause and focus on her beauty. After a while, questions would start ringing in my mind. What is she? Is she really real? I have never heard of anything like her—am I the only person this ever happened to, or am I just so crazy? When I got tired of those questions and the lack of answers, I would move on to: How are we ever going to be happy together? How can anyone be happy when they can't do anything and only have one person they can talk to? And when I got tired of those questions, I would wake Katniss. I loved the fact that she smiled as I woke her; part of me said she was really happy to see me, but then again, she had fooled me before.
"Morning, Katniss."
Katniss smiled and opened her eyes. I just loved that she smiled before opening her eyes. "Morning. What's the schedule today?"
"Well, we went visiting the Hobb yesterday, the day before we went hunting. How about today we do some spying at the Peacekeepers' building, or maybe we can say home today and do some art."
"You call that hunting? You didn't shoot anything! You need a lot more practice before you can call it hunting," Katniss teased with a mocking frown.
"So you want another try at teaching me the bow? I just thought we might try and learn more about the rebellion today."
"Okay, you win, but can we go by the old house on the way?"
"Sure."
When I left my room, I would often lose Katniss, but I had learned how to bring her back. It took effort, but I could bring her back if I meditated right. A side effect of bringing her back was my stomach would get upset, and I could feel myself getting nervous. Sometimes my stomach would get so bad I threw up, and other times my nerves got so strained I had a panic attack and had to hide for a while in the basement. I would wake Prim and Caroline and start making breakfast. They both loved my baking, especially in the morning.
A smiling Prim would bounce into the kitchen. "Morning, Uncle Peeta."
"Morning, Prim. Do you want English muffins?"
"With orange marmalade?"
"Is there any other way?" she said with a smile that made me almost as happy as her sister's.
Looking at Prim I would wonder, Should I—or even could I—share Katniss with her? To have someone else to share this would make me feel so much better. Katniss and I would have long arguments about it, but in the end we always backed down and admitted it was just too scary to share.
After Prim went off to school, Caroline and I would share a cup of coffee; then it was off to spy on the Peacekeepers. So down the road I went, me, my cane, my box of paints, and my invisible girl. She could talk all she wanted to, which wasn't much, but I had to watch that I didn't get caught answering.
Now that Katniss was around most of the day I kept getting caught talking to myself. Katniss and I had to come up with hand signals to avoid people figuring out how crazy I really was. With my left hand down by my side I would move the first finger of the left hand for "I heard you," second finger for "yes," third for "no," and fourth for "I don't know." People thought I was a crazy young man with palsy.
As we walked through the town, everyone would say hello to me. Not only was I the most famous person in the district, but I had been doing my best to charm the people. My shadows stuck out like sore thumbs; they were the only two people in the town who didn't say hello. These spies following me had become something of a joke to me. It didn't matter to me much that I was followed; they couldn't see my secrets, my Katniss.
One person we would see each time was Grandma Mabel. The name stuck even though all her kin were dead. I don't know how she found us, but she always did. She would walk up to us, grab my hand, stare into my eyes, and talk about Katniss. At some point her face would just start to glow, like I had told her some marvelous joke. I really found it upsetting, but I humored her. I wished she would just let me be. It wasn't until much later that a friend of hers told me how she looked forward to finding me and how she loved to see the "shadow lady" out of the corner of her eye.
When we got to the Peacekeepers' building I would set up my easel and Katniss would slip inside. When she got to the door I would avert my eyes; watching anything go through her made my stomach flip.
It took us weeks to figure out when and where information could be found, until Katniss found out when their status reports were reviewed. Every day they would review the reports from all the districts in a meeting, and she would just listen, aghast by what she heard. Katniss, like all of us, thought of the government as unassailable, but it wasn't so. She would hear of attacks on the government by dozens of groups in all the districts but 12. The government was monitoring hundreds of people and many groups, but still they lost many Peacekeepers a month. Many of the groups took their names from Katniss and it made her so proud. One of the groups called the "Citadel" was special. Unlike the other groups, it seemed to have chapters in each district, and every report on a group would have a section on how they interacted with this "Citadel." I wish they would say more about the nature of the "Citadel." The reports clearly showed that they thought a revolution was coming, but also that it would end like the last one.
When she returned she tried to time her exit to follow someone leaving; she knew how it hurt me to see her pass through things. We would return in time to see Prim home from school.
Lucky for us, we didn't have anybody over for dinner, or we would have had to start getting ready for that. About once a week we had people over, the mayor, Peacekeeper officers, reporters, or government officials, and sometimes even people we like from the district. I was trying to charm people to protect the Everdeens. I never told Prim or Caroline what we were doing, but I think they figured it out, because they played along.
Without the dinner to worry about I had time to do more art. I always loved drawing, but I never imagined I would be a real artist. Upstairs in the library we had large windows that give me the natural light I needed, and we could spend the afternoon drawing and painting. Ever since the Games, my skills had become amazing. All over the walls and stacked on the floors were all my works, and they were beyond anything I thought I could do. Most of my art revolved around the Games and Katniss, but there was also the District and my life too. Sometimes I got Prim or Caroline to join me, and I would help them do their pieces.
I remember one time I found Prim looking out the window in the library, and I went over to say hello. When she turned around I saw she had been crying.
"How are you feeling?" I asked.
"I don't know. I'll be okay for a while and then I'll have some random thought and . . . I'll just end up crying. How do you deal with it?"
"There is nothing wrong with missing Katniss or crying. Still, sometimes my thoughts get too negative and I feel I'm going to break down. On the train ride back it happened. I almost broke down; I had found Katniss' casket and just started to come apart. I just sat on the floor next to her casket and started having a fit. In middle of my breakdown I suddenly felt Katniss' presence and knew what I was doing was hurting her, so I just stopped. Since then, I realize I don't have the strength to do what I need to do, but I'll do it anyway for Katniss."
Prim got up and wiped her eyes. "For Katniss, I guess I can do this."
"For Katniss, for your Mother, and maybe a little for me too?" I answered.
"Yes, Uncle Peeta, for you too," Prim said as she gave me a kiss on my cheek.
As it got late and the light started to fade I would go down and help Prim and Caroline with dinner. They were making me a better cook, and I was teaching them a lot about baking. Dinners where people talked and actually enjoyed each other—it was just wonderful. For the first time in my life I was part of a family in which fear only existed outside its doors. After dinner we would talk and play card games.
After a while we would go upstairs and spend hours on my correspondence. Most of it was fan mail, but I also got letters from reporters, our old sponsors, and Capitol people I met. Most of the common people wanted to comfort me. I would encourage reporters to come to talk, or I'd write to sponsors to keep me in their thoughts. Reporters were easy. They were always looking for angles, and I fed them just what they needed.
I contacted Livia Stone about my progress on my pictures, and soon she was writing to me every week. I also started getting letters of encouragement from Livia Stone's granddaughter, Tess. Tess Stone claimed that she talked to me at the Victor's party, but I didn't remember her.
Late at night I would take my drugs. I had drugs for my nerves, drugs for my stomach, and drugs to sleep. Without some help on most nights, I wouldn't sleep at all. The strongest sleep drugs the district doctors could provide did little, but I found some drugs from smugglers that often worked.
As I nodded off, Katniss would check on Prim. So many times Prim still ended up in her mother's bed. It was at those times Katniss always was the most vulnerable: she would just look sad, and sometimes she would cry. If I asked her, her answers were always short and cryptic. I knew she was scared, and she was facing the doubts I started my day with. What was she? How were we ever to be happy together? What was our future? I would just hold her, kiss her, and nod off.
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