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“Yes, Prosie, I’m by the library now. No, no need to panic. I’m armed with determination and a positive attitude!”
Effie skips up the library steps, phone lodged between her ear and shoulder, and umbrella gripped in both hands. The wind is blowing a gale and the rain is sharp and horizontal, nipping at people’s faces despite their best efforts to shield themselves with raincoats and umbrellas. The library doors open with a quiet hiss and Effie closes her umbrella and drops it in the stand. Her hair is a mess and her clothes are damp. By no means was the rain deterred by Effie’s umbrella, or anything else for that matter—the storm is torrential and news outlets are reporting flash floods. Effie just hopes the floods don't reach home.
”Remind me of the name of the book again?” Effie asks, lowering her voice to a hush. Her phone is now in one hand while the other attempts to smooth her hair. “Contemporary Capitol Fashion. Okay, I’ll see you soon. Love you! Love you, bye.” Effie hangs up her phone and pockets it.
The library is busy. Full of students, Effie presumes; but she’s not paying attention, her focus is solely on finding this book for Prosie. Her little sister is an adult now and finally earning a degree, and yet she still relies on Effie. She’s still anxious sometimes. She still forgets things sometimes. She’s still young and hurt. And Effie wouldn’t blame her for any of it. They’re two peas in a pod, as Effie would say. The four years between them meant nothing, the arguments meant nothing, because at the end of the day Prosie is the one most dear to Effie, and vice versa. They always had each other, even when taking different paths in life. Prosie jumping into fashion, and Effie pursuing architecture.
“Politics… Crime… History…” Effie mumbles to herself as she passes the aisles. “Ah! Fashion.”
The fashion aisle of the library is empty. Effie’s eyes scan the books, looking for the one her sister needs, and she repeats the name of the book in her head to keep reminding herself. She checks the bottom shelves and then works her way up to eye level—but nothing. She can't find it. The book isn't below her, or at her eye level, so she looks again to double check. Again to triple check. It's not there.
Effie looks up.
There’s four more shelves above her.
Her eyes fall closed and she takes a deep breath. Focus, Effie thinks to herself. Prosie needs this book, and Effie won't leave until she finds it.
“Positive attitude, Effie…” she mumbles to herself. Effie glances around, looking for anyone to ask, or anything to stand on, and she spots a small footstool by the fogged up window.
The aisle is dark and dreary thanks to the storm, and the overhead lights in the library are flickering like they're haunted. The floorboards under the worn, thin carpet creak with every movement, and the bored sighs echoing through the ground floor spin a negative attitude around the library.
Effie doesn’t notice the cracked leg on the footstool.
She grabs the footstool and steps up onto it, and she barely reaches the seventh shelf. Eight shelves in total and the footstool hasn't even helped! Nethertheless, Effie remains undeterred; she will find this book, and if not, then… well, she'll get there when she gets there. But she will find this book. Effie checks the seventh shelf before stepping off the stool and moving it across. She steps up, checks, steps off, moves the stool. She steps up, she checks, she steps off, she moves the stool. All the way until the end of the aisle. And then Effie realises she has to do all of it again to search the highest shelf. The shelf which she can't quite reach.
Effie sighs.
Oh well. This is for Prosie. And the library is a shelter from the storm battering the windows and whoever dares to venture outside. If Effie has to spend a while searching for a book, so be it. She’s helping her sister and that's all that matters to her, really. Prosie is the only thing that matters.
And Effie’s PhD. That too.
Maybe Effie’s parents would matter, but they had died a few years ago now. Effie was studying her Masters in Architecture when her mother had fallen ill, and her father died of a broken heart shortly after her mother had passed. Their deaths had destroyed Prosie. So much so that she pulled out of university. But now she's back in education, studying fashion, and Effie has to help her. She has to help.
She has to make her parents proud of Prosie.
The highest shelves are checked, then double checked. Effie still cannot find the book, but there's one small section at the end of the aisle left to search. The book has to be there. It has to. Or so help her, she'll pull a miracle out of thin air and conjure the book from another dimension.
The lights flicker again and the electricity is audible.
Effie steps back onto the footstool and stretches up to look at the books on the top shelf. “Think of Prosie. Think of your little sister’s grades.” She scans the books, and reaches up on her tiptoes.
“Aha!”
And from the next aisle over: “Shh!”
Effie snaps her mouth shut.
Prosie’s book is just beyond her reach; Effie’s fingers brush the bottom of the spine of the book, and she almost claws at it to pry it off the top shelf. Almost… she thinks. Effie teeters on the tips of her toes, on the edge of the stool. And then the leg cracks.
The stool collapses and Effie with it. She yelps, and tries to grab the shelf, but she falls anyway. Her nails dig into a book, which falls with her. And it misses her face by an inch and lands on the wooden floor with a loud thud. But Effie doesn't hit the floor. She makes a quiet noise of confusion before it registers in her mind that someone is holding her—she feels one hand on her waist and another on her arm. Effie looks up. The man looking down at her, with dark hair and eyes, looks out of place in the Capitol’s library. The top two buttons of his old shirt are undone, his collar is askew, and his cracked phone is peeking out of his breast pocket. Though his expression is less than caring—more bored than anything—there is a flash of concern in his grey eyes.
Effie clears her throat and straightens up. The warm, calloused hands let go of her and she brushes down any creases in her blouse.
“Well…” Effie can't help but look him up and down. The old shirt is… sort of tucked into his jeans, and the belt is old but genuine leather. Must be an important belt, then, compared to the rest of his clothing. She looks back up at him and smiles. “Thank you very much.”
“You're welcome,” he says, and lingers for a moment before nodding to the shelf. “You need any help?”
“Oh! Yes, please.”
“With what?”
Effie looks up at the shelf. “I cannot reach that book up there. The big white one,” she says, standing still and not even lifting a finger to point the book out. Because pointing is rude, and if there’s one thing Effie Trinket isn't, and refuses to be, it's rude.
“Which one?” He asks.
“The big white one.”
The man groans and rolls his eyes. “The name. They all look the same.”
“Contemporary Capitol Fashion,” Effie says. She purses her lips, but won’t voice her grievances. That would be rude. What sort of person thinks all books look alike? A grumpy one… Effie thinks. Nevertheless, she can't help but say something… so she voices her grievances. “They don't look the same. All those books look different.”
She’s met with a scoff.
An offended huff escapes Effie’s lips when the man hands her the wrong book. A blue one! She can see the glint in his eyes. That stupid shine in his stupid grey eyes.
“Can’t you read?” Effie says. “I told you the name of the book I need, and you've handed me the wrong one. It’s not even the right colour.”
“I can read.”
“Really? Because from where I'm standing, it seems like you can't.”
“Oh, I can.” He leans in, bending down to Effie’s height, and Effie can smell alcohol lingering on him. “I can read your forehead just fine.”
“What–”
“It says 'spoiled brat.’”
“Ugh!”
This man is infuriating. He is annoying. He is cocky. He is everything that Effie hates. Rude, sarcastic, awfully dressed. Did she mention that he’s rude? Effie takes a deep breath, and slowly lets it out; her eyes drift up and away from those grey ones filled with mirth, and she counts to ten. One. Two. Three… four. Five… six…
“Are you in there, princess?”
Seven eight nine ten.
Princess?
He holds the correct book up to Effie’s face. “This the one you’re looking for?”
Effie grits her teeth, and forces herself to remain polite. “Yes. It is,” she says. She reaches for the book, only for it to be ripped away from her and held up to a height she cannot reach. Annoying, rude, and tall.
Despite Effie trying her hardest to remain polite, collected, and pleasant, she can't. Though she would never admit it to herself, or to anyone else, this mess of a human was grinding on every last nerve. She had already snapped a little, actually. In just one small interaction, Effie is an inch away from losing all of her decorum.
“Don't you have manners?” Effie snaps. One hand finds her hip and she scowls. “You offered to help, and you’re being so rude! There really is no need for it.”
“Can’t resist. Sorry, princess,” he says as he lowers the book back down and holds it out for Effie. “Haymitch.”
“What?”
“My name. Haymitch.”
“Oh. Effie Trinket.” She takes the book.
“Effie?” Haymitch’s lip curls up. “What sort of name is Effie?”
Deep breaths, Effie thinks, he’ll leave soon…
She’s silent for a moment, a long moment in which Haymitch stares at her and raises an eyebrow, before she grumbles out a response. “My full name is Euphemia…”
Effie doesn't know why she’s telling him this. Everyone calls her Effie. From her parents and grandparents, to Prosie, her friends, great aunt Messalina and great uncle Silius. Maybe she has to justify her name somehow, but why would she? She doesn't know this man, why would she have to justify something for someone she doesn't know? But at the same time, there's something in his eyes. The mirth, maybe. The concern when he caught her, despite the gruff exterior, and the prickly attitude. What happened to him, to make him like this? Or maybe he’s always been unpleasant.
“Haymitch Abernathy,” he says. Haymitch says nothing about Effie’s full name. He doesn't joke, or make a face, much to Effie’s surprise.
“Abernathy… didn't Plutarch Heavensbee do a documentary about your town? There was some sort of tragedy there–”
“Shut up.”
Effie scowls again and snaps at him. “Don't tell me to shut up! You are so– oh.” She stops, and looks at him properly. The way he’s tensed up, the way his jaw is clenched, the way his eyes have dulled. “I'm sorry,” she says.
“Don't be,” Haymitch says.
“You two! Out!”
Both Effie and Haymitch look to the end of the aisle to see a bitter, almost plastic looking older man. His glasses are entirely too big for his face, which looks expressionless due to badly done plastic surgery. His clothes are loud and harsh, and Effie gets the feeling he’ll drag her out by her hair if she doesn't leave right now. So, she grabs Haymitch by the sleeve, checks out the book for Prosie, grabs her umbrella, and drags him outside. Effie doesn't know why she took Haymitch with her, but she did.
It's still raining. Though, the wind has calmed.
Haymitch makes a disgusted noise when the rain pummels him and soaks his back. Effie hurries to put her umbrella up, and she holds it higher than normal so Haymitch can duck underneath.
“Now what?” He says.
“I don't know,” Effie says, “but there’s a cafe down the street we can dry off in.”
“You asking me out on a date?”
Effie tenses and her knuckles go white around the umbrella handle. “What, no! You…”
Haymitch barks a laugh, “you’re so easy to fluster, Euphemia.” He takes the umbrella from Effie, and their finger brush. “Here,” he says, “I'll carry it.”
Effie’s hands are soft compared to Haymitch’s—which are calloused with bitten nails, and still warm even in the freezing rain—and Effie notices a few small scars. It’s tempting to ask, but after his reaction to her mentioning his town earlier, she keeps quiet.
“So…” Effie says as she walks under the umbrella with Haymitch. “What are you doing in the Capitol? You don't look like you belong here, if you'll excuse my manners.”
His eyes shine again. And they blend with the colour of the rain and the sky. His eyes are like a stormy day, like today, Effie notices.
“Manners excused. I’m here because Plutarch offered me a job.”
“Well, that's brilliant. Plutarch is very well respected. Working for him would open up a lot of opportunities.”
“I told him to get stuffed,” Haymitch says.
“Ah… why doesn't that surprise me…”
Their conversation echoes down the quiet street, carried by the rain and light wind, and followed by the splashing of footsteps on a puddled pavement.
Effie can drop the book off to Prosie later. Right now? Right now, she wants to sit in a cafe and buy two coffees while she shelters from the rain with a prickly, difficult man. And maybe, maybe, ask him on a real date. He brought it up, after all.