Hunter shrugs. “Eh, Peeta was talking, I was bored anyway.”
I was baffled a second ago, but him knocking my fictional arch nemesis brings a smile right back to my face. “You might be my favorite person right now.”
“Just right now?” he asks, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “I’ll have to try harder.”
“You can start by telling me how much you love Gale,” I inform him.
“Am I following you into the girls’ bathroom?” he inquires, cocking an eyebrow as we approach the opening.
“Oh. No. I forgot I was walking this way. I don’t really need to go to the bathroom, I just needed an excuse to come inside.”
“I noticed,” he remarks, smirking over at me. “Did I scare you off?”
I didn’t think that comment all the way through. My cheeks flush, but I go with absolute denial. “Of course not.”
“Seemed like I did,” he replies.
“Weren’t we talking about the book?” I ask, trying to direct him back on track. “I need to know all your thoughts. Do you like Gale, or are you just knocking Peeta because you know I do?”
“Yeah, I like Gale,” he says. “Peeta’s all right, though. He seems nice enough, just boring. I can’t imagine him keeping up with Katniss—maybe sitting on the sidelines holding her bag, but.... Gale’s the kind of guy you can see keeping up, challenging her, making her better. I haven’t seen that from Peeta yet. Doesn’t seem like he’s that kind of guy.”
“Yes, exactly,” I agree fervently. “That’s the thing, I don’t hate Peeta as a character. He is nice, but Katniss isn’t in love with him, so she shouldn’t be with him. That’s not romantic. I mean, I know it’s not a romance, but… I just can’t handle it because she and Gale had a spark, and I just hate—well, I can’t say yet, it would be spoilerish. Hurry up and read the whole trilogy so we can talk about how bleak and terrible Mockingjay is.”
“Maybe Katniss isn’t looking for a great love, just a really okay-looking purse holder,” he jokes.
I roll my eyes. “All she’s looking for is a box of tissues by Mockingjay, to wipe up all her tears.”
“Tears of boredom?” he questions. “If she gets with Peeta, I’m guessing tears of boredom.”
I sigh heavily. “I can’t even talk about it. Not until you finish the series yourself. I don’t want to color your reading experience more than I already have. I don’t possess the self-control to talk about each individual book without making spoilery comments, though, so I’m gonna need you to read faster.”
“I’ll get right on it,” he assures me. “Want me to hold your purse, too?”
I grin over at him. “You are so not a Peeta. You’re a Gale if I ever met one.”
“I’m a Hunter, actually.”
“So is Gale,” I tell him with a big grin.
Hunter rolls his eyes at me. “We’ve gotta get you out more. Your nerd bubble is out of control. Do you have a curfew?”
His question about stops my heart. “A curfew?”
Nodding, he teases, “You’ve heard of those, right? Parents typically give them so we don’t stay out all night with our friends. You do have friends, don’t you?”
I slide him an unamused look. “Of course I have friends. Well, a friend, but quality over quantity, right?”
Hunter blinks at me. “You seriously only have one friend?”
I back up against the wall and slide down it until my butt’s on the ground. Hunter sits down on the floor beside me. “It’s sorta complicated. Sara’s cool and fun, but people are afraid to be friends with her. It’s stupid,” I say, looking over at him. “It’s so dumb. But one of the mean girls put a target on her years ago and now… I don’t know. Same kids, same habits. People still avoid her, and Valerie’s still mean to her for no reason—”
“Wait, Valerie Johnson?” I nod my head. “I’m friends with her. What’d she do?”
“She ostracized my friend Sara. She has these slumber parties…”
He nods when I trail off. “Yeah, I know the slumber parties,” he says with a smirk.
Ugh. I roll my eyes. “Of course you do.”
“She barely invites anyone to those, though. If Sara doesn’t make the cut, I’m sure it’s not personal. Mostly only our friends go to her parties.”
“I know that’s what it’s like now. This was in first grade.”
Hunter’s eyes widen. “First grade? When we were little kids?”
I nod my head. “The social stigma somehow lingered. Like I said, it’s stupid.”
“That’s incredibly stupid,” he agrees. “So, let’s fix it. I was gonna invite you to come hang out with us this weekend. Why don’t you bring your friend, too?”
“Hang out?” I question.
He nods.
“With your friends?”
“A few of us are gonna go to the mall—shop a little, get some food, just hang out, you know?”
Right. I know, because these are… normal things that normal teenagers do. “Yeah. Right. Totally. I do that all the time.”
He stares over at me. “You don’t even go to the mall, do you? God, Bishop, what do you do?”
“I go to the mall if I have to,” I say defensively. “But Sara and I aren’t really—we don’t go to the mall all the time, that’s all.”
“Jeez,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re not just 80 levels below me on the food chain, you’re extinct.”
“Hey!” I object.
“It’s okay,” he assures me, reaching over and patting my thigh reassuringly. “I’m gonna put you back on the map.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “I don’t need you to put me anywhere. I’m just fine where I’m at.”
“You’re really not,” he disagrees, now assessing the outfit I’m wearing. “We need to get you a couple new outfits, too. You dress like an alien who just arrived and found a box of clothes nobody wanted on the side of the road.”
“All right, now, you listen to me—”
He holds up a hand to silence me. “Don’t worry about it. My mom gives me her credit card when I go to the mall, I’ll have someone with more style sense help you out and I’ll buy you some stuff.”
“I don’t need you to buy me things,” I inform him, wide-eyed. “I’m not your project, I’m just fine the way I am.” I look down at the Old Navy top that is admittedly an ugly, vegetable-like shade of green. And okay, yes, the graphic is a bit faded and it has seen better days, but it’s not like there are holes in the fabric. It’s still perfectly fine clothing. “I know I’m not the most stylish girl in the world, but why does that matter?”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Hunter says. “But it matters to my friends. They’re into that stuff. If you want them to accept you, you’ve gotta look the part.”
“I don’t need your friends to accept me,” I tell him, frowning.