Chapter 3

I don't know why I did it; I shouldn't have. I should have just gone down the elevator and forgotten that I saw her. I shouldn't have spent thirty minutes of time I didn't have to draw a picture of days that ended over a decade ago.

My eyes followed the path of a basketball as it bounced from the hand of a skinny sixth-grade in front of me and back to the ground. He, and the dozen other kids in the lot, had been going at it all recess and the rhythmic pounding was giving me a headache. No, scratch that. It wasn't the basketballs or the high-pitched laughter of the children or the constant squawk of the whistle giving me a headache; it was all the questions bouncing through my head.

"There are better ways to catch flies, you know." Finnick Odair said. He pointed to my mouth. "Might want to close that."

"I guess I'll take your suggestion, Odair—you would know seeing how your mouth's always open."

Finnick flashed his toothpaste-ad smile and laughed. He used to be a teen model or something, but now he taught English Lit to eighth-graders in one of the poorest districts in the city. He was also one of my closest friends.

When I was younger, I kept a lot of friends, lived near the center of every party, but that was before. It was something Finnick and I had in common; we were both former golden boys.

We were standing in what passed for gym at P.S. 12—a square of asphalt with a hoop at one end and a beat-up set of monkey bars at the other end. It was outside, but the surrounding buildings were so tall, the only way to see the sky was to look straight up.

The school had a real gym, but it was closed for repairs—as it had been since I started working here last school-year. The school didn't have money for repairs—it didn't have money to hire a separate P.E. teacher either, so me and a few other teachers rotated and "volunteered" for the task.

It was only fair that I volunteered. The school had an art teacher because they got an anonymous endowment that stipulated it be used for an arts program. They could probably have patched that leaky roof in the gym or hired another "real" teacher if they weren't required to have me.

"So, is there a reason you're standing there slack-jawed? Did somebody run over your brand-new puppy? Bad news this morning?"

I missed the morning classes for a doctor's visit. I had to keep up a strict schedule of visits in the last year, nothing out of the ordinary—just another part of getting half your leg blown off. "I saw Katniss today."

"You mean the girl that doesn't leave the house? Well, yeah seeing the ex is tough."

"She's not my ex."

"I don't think a girl you haven't seen in months counts as a current relationship."

I tilted my head up towards the tiny square of sky above us, brilliant blue against the slate gray of the buildings. Ultramarine and phthalo blues against a mixed gray of purple and yellow. "I have to know she'll be alright."

"Good news, then, you saw her," Finnick says. "And unless you've gone stalker, I'm guessing it was outside her apartment. She's alright. Problem solved."

The problem wasn't solved. I thought back to look on her face, the way she had hunched down, arms wrapped around herself in that elevator. She wasn't okay, but she was outside and I wanted to talk to her. I'd left a drawing for her after that, a reminder that I was still here for her.

"I was going to marry her," I said.

"Was is the operative word in that sentence." Finnick came over to put a hand on my shoulder. "Come out to East Street with us on Friday. Have some fun." East Street was a bar some of the teachers went to after work.

"I know your kind of fun."

"That's why I suggested it. Find another girl…." He gave a long pause. "You know what? Forget it. This is starting to sound like Act 1 of Romeo and Juliet. You're going to meet some girl there and somehow I'll end up stabbed to death."

"It was Benvolio who suggested they go to the Capulet's party and Mercutio who ended up stabbed. You'd think a literature teacher would know that."

Finnick grinned again. "Yeah, but I'm the handsome and clever one, my friend, and that was definitely Mercutio."

A fourth-grade girl ran up to us. "Two boys are fighting in the hallway," she said between puffs of breath. We looked at each other and sighed. A fight meant a half hour pulling the two boys off each other and wrangling them to the office and then another thirty minutes filling out paper work.

"It's going to be a long day," I said.

"You've only been here an hour," Finnick said as we got to the ring of kids watching the boys go at it.

"I know."

Home was a hollowed place when I got there. No word from Katniss. Her door was still closed, as closed and impenetrable as it had been for the last year. I stared at it as I passed, willed it to open, for her to give me one of her shy smiles or even one of her trademark scowls. This morning had jarred me, seeing her again after so long and then taking the time to draw that picture, reawakening those long-ago memories.

It wasn't like I could forget; it was seared into my brain. Seeing her framed in my window was like coming home even though I was in my own room.

I've gotten used to her showing up like that, on my best and worst days. It's almost like there's a pattern that I can't understand, hovering just out of reach, that determined if she would show up again.

I've always been practical—no magic, no prayers, just what I can see, but, when it comes to Katniss, I have never been able to shake the feeling that we were fate. It's stupid, I know, but every time I saw Katniss, it felt like the first time I held a paintbrush in my hand—something I would love forever. Fate.

She had been fate from the day her family moved into the dilapidated house next door, a haunted fairytale house with dark green ivy crawling up its sides, and I saw the little girl that looked as lost as I felt inside. It was fate the day I jogged to the park instead of around the block, to see where the girl with the dark braids was going alone in the dark. And it was fate when she came to me later.

It was never strange between the two of us. It felt natural that she would slip in through the window, steal into my room from the branches of the oak tree like a wood nymph, to sleep next to me.

When we were eleven, it'd been simple. we were both too young to think much about it, beyond knowing that our parents wouldn't like it. I just wanted her beside me in the dark. It was innocent back then and it stayed that way for a solid two years.

That last night I'd waited for her, one eye shiny and purple. She'd come in silently, dressed in a t-shirt and sleep shorts and frowning, but I'd been a tiny bit proud as she lain her head on the pillow next to me, her pillow, the one that smelled like her and drove me crazy with missing her on the nights she didn't come. If anyone in my family ever bothered to pay attention, they might have wondered why their thirteen-year-old son's pillow smells like a girl's shampoo.

"I fought Tyler today," I whispered.

"I know. You shouldn't have." She was mad, giving me a patent scowl but inched closer anyway, wiggling her cold feet until I trapped them between my warm ones.

"Why not? He deserved it." I wrapped my arm around her waist and dropped my head to her long dark hair, breathing in its scent and feeling her relax in my arms. I held her as tight as I could.

Whenever I stuck around the main house, I heard the way my parents talked about Katniss and her mother, the foul words they used when then didn't think anyone was listening, but it was nothing compared to the things my classmates said—that her mother was crazy, that all they ate were squirrels shot out of trees, that she was a whore who did men out in Seam park for food.

That comment was the last straw, the one that had finally sent me over the edge. After what happened in the park, my mother forced me to swear never to tell anyone that it'd been me with Katniss—having bruises wasn't unusual, not with a mother like mine—but most people knew the girl had been Katniss.

I'd seen what that monster had done and the aftermath, the sleepless nights and shivering fears. I couldn't let her pain become someone's punchline.

I'd finally broke and took a swing at one of those idiots, Tyler Cato, who, until a few months before, had been closer to me than my brothers. I'd gotten a black eye out of it, but the other boy had walked away bloody and with a broken nose.

And I was suspended for the week.

"Tyler's your friend," Katniss said around a yawn and then she wouldn't look at me, just out the window. "You shouldn't fight with your friends about me."

"And what does that make you?" It was something I'd wonder about since she showed up at my window because I didn't understand it.

At night, we'd spend hours together, talking about everything I couldn't talk to my friends about. As far as I was concerned, Katniss was my best friend. She was my best friend…but I wasn't hers.

At school, Katniss refused to talk to me. There was no way to bring her into my crowd, but I wouldn't have cared. I would've given up my idiot friends in a heartbeat to spend time with her. We passed each other in the hall and she ignore me, brush me off in the lunch room, duck her head and turn the other way.

And there was something else, too, the only thing I couldn't talk to her about, because I knew it would send her running.

I had a crush on her.

I hadn't meant to. It wasn't something I'd planned, but it had hit suddenly, like lightening, when I realized I couldn't stop drawing her.

One day I'd been working hard to get the tilt of her head just right on the page, because I loved that about her. The thought had been bare, right there in my mind, and obvious. I loved the tilt of her head, the soft look in her eyes just before she slept, and everything else about her.

Keeping my feelings a secret with her lying next to me was a feat. It helped that she was oblivious to that sort of thing.

Kids our age dated at school, held hands at lunch, stole kisses, but Katniss kept her head down, didn't notice, even though there were guys that looked at her. Even the guys that acted like they hated her were mostly just mad she ignored their existence.

"I can fight my own battles," she said.

"I know."

"And I don't like you getting hurt. I hate it."

"Why?"

She gave me an impatient huff. "Just shut up and go to sleep."

I pulled back to make her look at me. She was so pretty in the diffused moonlight of the room, silver eyes and soft brown skin. "Why do you care if I get hurt or not? If we're not friends?"

She didn't answer, but reached up to trace the curve my eyebrow where my skin was still shiny and bruised.

And then she leaned forward and kissed me, her mouth tingly warm on mine and just the slightest bit clumsy, but still perfect—perfect for me. I'm sure I was just as clumsy and lost; it was my first kiss, after all.

Earlier, I said that everything with Katniss always had the weight of fate. With us, fate always seemed to come in pairs: good and bad.

My mother, who had only ever noticed me to complain, who hated everything about the way I'd painted the bedroom, who had never stepped foot in my room even when I was sick, opened the door.

Her outraged roar broke us apart and Katniss scrambled away from me like a frightened cat, taking away her warmth. The lights flicked on overhead, blinding me for a minute.

"What the hell is going on!" Her hair was done up in pink rollers and she was in her nightgown, faded and stained and gray.

"I…" I couldn't find my words. I swallowed, looking from my mother to Katniss, who had backed herself against the wall near the window.

"You're been letting her in here?" She said her like it was a curse word. My mother came further into the room, looked Katniss up and down, sneered with disgust.

"Don't," I said. "She didn't do anything wrong."

She reached out, shook the bedpost. "You don't understand, you stupid creature! Their kind? She's like a little bitch in heat. I won't have you ruining your life and my life with this shit."

"I'm leaving. I'll go." Katniss said it under her breath. She wasn't crying, but she was shaking. She didn't move.

"You better get out! Get out whatever way you got in." My mother looked around. "Was it the window?"

"Stop it! Stop talking to her!" I said. "We didn't do anything!"

She pointed to me and then back to Katniss. "And you hear that? You didn't do anything with that boy so, don't come crying back here with any little whelps."

"Leave her alone!" I was crying—hot, angry tears.

"You think you're the only ones she goes slinking around with? Stop being stupid!"

Katniss moved to the window, slid through the opening and was gone into the night.

My mother came over to the bed, gripped my arm and pulled me to the edge. She looked me in the eye and spit in my face. And then, as the cherry on top, she slapped me, backhanded me so hard I fell to the floor. It wasn't the first time and it wouldn't have hurt so much if my face wasn't already bruised.

"If you ever do something like this again, you're out of this house. Do you hear me? You're gone."

I didn't answer her. She wasn't expecting one, anyway. And then she was gone, too.

I had lain there on the floor, looking up at the ceiling painted to look like the night sky, knowing that everything was ruined, that Katniss wouldn't be back. I'd lain there and cried.

The ceiling now was plain because the apartment was a rental, a stubbly white, but I was still worrying over the same girl, still wanted her beside me in the dark. It's amazing how nothing had changed in thirteen years.