CHAPTER SIX

Violet

Peeta is too young to remember the first time Mother hits him. But there are plenty of strikes that follow and he remembers them well enough.

He goes to school with bruises on his cheek, his arms, under his clothes. When teachers or friends ask questions he smiles and tells some lie about falling or fighting with his brothers. And he's so charming, so good at spinning a story, even then, that they believe him. Or maybe they just see what they want to see and Peeta's lies have nothing to do with it.

Mother smacks his face when he burns the bread, but it's worth it to see Katniss (gaunt, hair stringy, eyes hollow, starving) run off with the loaves stuffed up under her shirt. She never thanks him, never says one word in greeting until the day her sister is reaped, but Peeta likes to think it meant something to her. That he means something to her.

He's not in love with Katniss Everdeen. He knows that, really, but at night when he's alone and can't sleep because of the ache in his ribs (or black eye, or busted lip) it comforts him to think of the girl in the red plaid dress who sang the valley song so pretty. Love-but-not hurts almost as much as hate, and over the years Peeta finds that he likes having at least one pain that belongs to him.

When he holds his own daughter in his arms, and later his son, he doesn't understand how any parent could do to their child what his mother did to him. How you could leave marks on tender, little boy skin. Sometimes he pretends that this is just another Capitol lie. The ghost of tracker jacker venom playing on his fears, making him think things that aren't true. But the memories are dull and the bruises were violet and he knows real from not real.