It Comes in Waves

Thirty Six

He stays and we stay up late drinking tea and talking. I quickly decide my favorite thing is listening to Louis tell stories from when he was a little boy, because he was such an adorable child.

One of my favorite stories is one that goes like this: The summer Louis turned seven, he felt something needed to be done about all the stray cats and kittens roaming around District 4, so he decided to start an animal shelter under his bed.

He'd swipe a fish here and there while him and his mother were fishing and smuggle it back for the cats. He named every single one of them, he said, but of course they were all hilarious names like Poseidon and Moon and Starfish.

He'd let them out of the window every morning, but they'd always come back at night. Until his mother found out, that is.

I'm trying my hardest not to laugh at the mental image of a tiny Louis hiding cats under his shirt and nudging them under his bed, where five more are waiting, their eyes lit up in the dark, but it's useless. I'm hunched over laughing and Louis' hand is warm on my back. He's laughing, too.

"Hey, it broke my heart when my mom made me let those cats go! She nailed my window shut!" he says defensively.

I bury my face in my hands and take a deep breath, gaining control over the laughter and sitting back up, turning to Louis. It's easy to get sadness back in my eyes.

"I'm truly sorry, Lou." I say.

But then his lips are twitching and I'm laughing again.

He pokes at my stomach, and I jerk away from his hand, because the last thing I need right now is for Louis to recall that I'm ticklish. I'm having a hard enough time controlling the urge to laugh as it is.

"Don't act like you don't have a soft spot for animals! I bet you hid cats yourself."

I'm remembering a memory then, though. Two actually. The first when I was five and I passed that injured cat by the bakery and I held onto it and cried.

The second when Gemma told me about that moment, and how it broke her heart, the day of the Reaping. I wonder then if maybe Louis took that cat in a few weeks later.

Maybe it was the one he named Poseidon. I love the idea of that, that Louis rescued the broken animal I saw and fed it stolen fish until it was well again. And I can cling to that idea until the sorrow those memories washed over me swirls down the drain.

"Are you still here?" he questions gently.

I can feel his worried gaze on me, and I realize I've been quiet longer than I thought, locked inside my mind, wondering what happened to that cat I held in my lap and let bleed on my white shirt.

I look back up at him and shake my head, trying to clear it fully again. That doesn't work, but his eyes do.

"I'm here, Lou."

It's midnight before I can feel the tiredness sweeping over me. I'm mentally exhausted more than anything, certain I've held on longer than I ever thought I could, and positive my mind will be going under soon.

I drift off against Louis' shoulder, unsure whether I'm hovering some place between consciousness and sleep or if I'm hovering somewhere between one reality and the next. They feel extraordinarily alike, sometimes.

"Bedtime, I think," Louis says.

I pull myself slowly from the clutches of sleep or my mind, and I take his hand as he helps me stand up. I think he's going to leave, but he walks up with me like he always did at Mags house.

He helps me carry my things to the guest room, and then I disappear into the bathroom to get ready for bed. I'm thinking about cats again when I walk back down the hall.