#eggplant8

    I tapped the beat of the music on my steering wheel lightly, focusing on the dark stretch of road ahead of me leading back to Panem. 

    There’d been something exciting about the impromptu road trip when I’d first headed out to Waukesha. I liked being the person people depended on. The one that got calls in the middle of the night because a car broke down. I was curious what he was doing out there on a Thursday night, though. Last I’d heard from him he had a major test to study for. It wasn’t like I needed the play by play of his life, but it did seem strange no conversation of him going home had come up. 

    For all of the conversations we’d had, all the truth and dare games at Hoffman’s, I didn’t know all that much about his family. I knew about his three siblings, two brothers and a sister, but I didn’t even know their names. Not that I’d exactly been an open book with him either about my family. It was just that there wasn’t much to tell. We were boring in that sense. 

    There was nothing boring about Gale’s family dynamic though, and the more he kept tight lipped the more curious I became. 

    The first small glimpse I’d gotten of any of his siblings came from the little boy asleep on the couch. Even with a blanket curled up around his shoulders and face pressed into a pillow, the resemblance to Gale was uncanny. There was no denying their familial relation.

    “I can’t believe how much your little brother looks like you,” I laughed. I almost wished he’d been awake, so that I could’ve seen his eyes and his smile. Heard his voice. I wondered if their personalities were anything alike. Gale continued with his silence, only nodding his head a little and I sighed.

    “Do they live with her? Your grandma?” It seemed that way, just based on the small bit of the house I’d seen. There were backpacks and school books scattered in the dining room. An open pantry with all kinds of kid-friendly cereal inside. More than one pair of small shoes at the front entrance by the door. 

    For as little as I knew about Gale’s siblings, I knew even less about his parents. Thinking back, I wasn’t sure if the conversation had ever come up at all. If it was true, that the kids did live with Hazelle, it must’ve come with good reason.

    One of the girls in my neighborhood growing up lived with her grandparents because her mother died shortly after giving birth to her from complications. I didn’t know what happened to her father, never asked, but I remembered going to the graveyard with her every year on her mother’s birthday to place down daisy’s at the tombstone.

    For a dark moment, I wondered if something similar had happened to Gale’s parents, too.

    “Yep,” he answered, shortly, only adding to my terrible theory.

    “Oh. How long?”

    He finally looked at me, or at least turned his head in my direction. His eyes went straight through me though, lost in a thought too deep for me to reach.

    “A while.”

    “Hmm,” I hummed, trying to do the math on how old the brother I’d seen on the couch might’ve been. He’d told me his sister was eight, if she was the youngest that meant his mother couldn’t have died all that long ago. I felt a lump forming in my throat at the thought.

    “Did you grow up with her, also?” I asked quietly and then he was back in the present, eyes boring into me with irritation as his eyebrows pinched.

    “Stop,” he told me harshly, turning back to the window. “Just not tonight, okay? I’m exhausted and not in the mood for your psychoanalytical bullshit.” 

    Psychoanalytical bullshit? Wow, okay.

    “I was just asking a question,” I muttered, annoyance clear in my tone. 

    I wasn’t the only one. 

    “No, you weren’t.” 

    “Okay, why are you mad at me right now?” I shot back, unable to help it. It wasn’t like I’d dropped everything I was doing to pick him up in the middle of nowhere at two in the morning. Granted everything I was doing included hot chocolate, a face mask and a Friends re-watch, but he didn’t need to know that. I hadn’t minded the change of plans at all, but Jesus, I wasn’t going to be the scapegoat for his bad mood, either. 

    I understood his frustration. I’m sure I would’ve been stressed beyond belief if my car broke down unexpectedly in the middle of winter two hours away from campus. But everything had worked out…

    “Because you think you know everything, but you don’t,” he replied back, voice rising.

    “That’s not true…”

    “I’m not some project for you to figure out!” 

    The air was tense between us with his words and I bit the inside of my cheek, fighting to keep silent until I felt that I was in control.

    “I never said that you were,” I muttered.

    “Right,” he scoffed, tone accusatory. “You can’t help yourself, you have to get into people’s business. Well, fine, what would you like to know Dr. Undersee? That the reason my siblings live with our grandmother is because our mother is a junkie who chose drugs over her own goddamn kids?”

    His voice cracked with the confession and when I looked over he seemed on the verge of a panic attack. His breaths were shallow, as if he couldn’t get enough air in his lungs and his leg was bouncing uncontrollably. 

    “Gale,” I tried in what I hoped was a soothing tone rather than the anxiety I felt welling up inside of me.

    “Oh, maybe you’re dying to ask how many of us share the same father. Spoiler alert: four kids, three dads, two of which were such scum they wanted nothing to do with their kids and the third so bad it would’ve been better if he’d just left too!” 

    “You don’t have to--”

    “You want to get into how he used to beat me over something as stupid as a lost remote control?” No. No, no, no. “Or how I had to beg our neighbors for food to feed my siblings because no one remembered to go to the store? Go ahead and diagnose the hell out of me, tell me about all the reasons why I’m fucked up trash now that you’ve got all the pieces to your puzzle.”

    I wasn’t sure if he was even aware of the tears in his eyes, threatening to spill over, or not. He seemed lost. Floundering. Trying to find purchase to tether him to reality but coming up short. 

    We needed to stop driving. I searched the road signs passing by quickly for the nearest exit. Five miles. 

From the corner of my eye I saw him lower his head between his knees, back rising and falling with each breath, hands clenched in hair that was coming loose from his bun. 

    “It’s okay,” I promised quietly. “Just breathe.”

    I pulled over as soon as it was safe off the highway, near a farm and a cornfield because of course. It couldn’t have been a well-lit parking lot or something. 

   Gale jumped out of the car without a word, heading closer to the creepy cornfield with his head turned up towards the sky. I wanted to go after him, but reason told me to give him a moment. Let him cool off.

   His confession still had me stunned. After months and months of vague answers and subject changes, he’d poured it all in such haste I was almost positive he would have regrets over it. 

   When minutes passed, but he remained outside, I tentatively got out to join him.

   “You can go,” he told me as my feet crunched closer in the snow. “I’ll call Peeta or something.”

   Yeah, sure. I was going to leave him in the middle of nowhere at two in the morning where the children of the corn could feast on his body before sunrise.

   “I’m...not going to do that.”

   He jerked out of my reach as my hand touched his forearm and took a few steps further down the field. 

   That’s fine. I didn’t like being touched in the middle of an attack, either. I remember my mom read one time that pressure helped to calm people down and she came and wrapped her arms around my body in a hug that felt closer to a straight jacket. I couldn’t breathe, let alone speak to tell her to stop, and when I finally managed to get air out, I screamed so loudly that she cried. 

   Focusing on Gale, not you.

   Right.

   “You’re right,” I whispered to him, and he turned his head half a fraction. Listening. “You’re not a project. I’m sorry if I treated you that way.”

   “It’s not your job to put me back together.”

   “I know that.” 

   He nodded silently and turned back towards the field as the wind whipped, picking snow up from the ground with its fury. It burned my exposed skin and I hopped a little in place to keep circulation flowing but didn’t get any closer to him.

    “Truth or dare?” I asked. We could both use the distraction, and somewhere along the line the game had become our weird way of communicating when regular forms felt like too much.

    “Truth,” he said back quietly and I couldn’t help but smile in relief.

   “Tell me something you like about yourself.”

   When he laughed, like the idea was a preposterous one, I felt my heart clench.

   “Just one thing. Anything.”

   He thought about it for a few painstaking minutes before folding his arms over his middle.

   “I’m a good brother,” he croaked. “I think.”

   “Yeah,” I smiled. “I think so, too.” 

   “Your turn.”

   I took one step closer, then stopped.

   “Truth.”

   “How do you always find the best in people? Even when they don’t deserve it.”

   The real question was easy to see between the words he spoke. How do you always find the best in me, even when I don’t deserve it?

   Like he didn’t deserve it.

   “There’s very few people in the world who don’t deserve any benefit of the doubt and you aren’t one of them,” I told him sternly, chancing another step. He didn’t move, or seem to be upset that I was closer to him, so when I chanced placing my hand in his and he didn’t flinch, I gave it a comforting squeeze.

   When his hand tightened back around mine, something inside of me jolted. 

   “Wouldn’t you rather live in a world where we all saw the best things too?”

   “Reality makes it difficult.”

   “Hmm. That’s true,” I mused. “It’s not always easy.”

   He looked down at me, exhausted and broken, and frowned.

   “I’m sorry.”

   I know.

   “Come on, it’s freezing,” I said, motioning back to the warmth--and let’s be real, safety--of the car. “Let’s get back in the car.”

   Gale was silent the rest of the way home, staring out the window with his arms folded protectively over his chest. And I let him be. When we pulled in front of his apartment, he seemed surprised that we were there, as if his mind had drifted somewhere else entirely, and he waited until he was almost out of the car to turn back and say thank you.

   “It wasn’t a problem,” I promised. It was never a problem. “Gale, I--”

   “You should go, Madge,” he interrupted. “Thank you but, you should go.”

   The door shut without another word, leaving my unfinished words in limbo.

   Gale, I’m always here.

                                                       +++

    Darius was still awake when I got home. At the sound of the door opening, he wheeled out into the hallway in his chair to look me over expectantly.

    “Well?” he asked when I said nothing. “Did all your dreams come true? Did he thank you for rescuing him with sexual favors?” 

    I burst into tears, adrenaline finally giving out now that I was back in the safety of the apartment. Darius was up in a flash, coming towards me to put a hand on either one of my shoulders.

    “Did he hurt you?” He asked, like Gale wasn’t the same guy who brought me soup when I was sick. It was a reflex reaction for him, though. To assume the worst.

    I shook my head and he brought me in closer to his chest.