Snippet from a sequel to You Know Where to Find Me
Many thanks to @distractionsfromthefood @thelettersfromnoone and @mollywog for sending snowflakes to make me write! And again, to @mollywog for giving the inspiration for a sequel! It is a longer WIP and I will likely complete it someday. But until then, enjoy the ending!
And you guessed right, the title is a song by They Might Be Giants!
“Look, I’m sorry about them, really.” Peeta turns to her once the house is out of sight. “They were just happy to see you but they can be a bit much sometimes.”
“I was happy to see them too,” says Katniss, trying to match her strides to his. “I can’t believe it’s been that long.”
“Seven years almost to the date,” he says under his breath. She has a sense that he is about to ask her something, but he wipes the frown off his face and says, “Well, I can’t believe I had to drag you inside on the threat of literal hypothermia."
“Oh, stop. We only took like, what, ten thousand steps the whole day?”
“Yeah, in freezing weather with only a dodgy kebab to eat. I’d have keeled over if I took another step.”
“You need to get tougher, I suppose,” she jokes. The truth is they could’ve gone to the Mellarks earlier but she didn’t feel ready to face the memories. And her old house just across the road. “Are you sure you’re fine to walk back on your own in the snow?”
“I live just three minutes away, Katniss.”
“Well, text me anyway.”
“Will do. And you ring me when you’re home, alright?”
The bus station is almost empty, much like when she arrived this morning. They stand on the platform with their hands deep in their coat pockets and awkward smiles plastered on their faces.
“I will see you soon,” says Peeta, as they watch the bus pull up. "We'll be back on campus in a couple of weeks."
She nods and notices how the snow is now gathering on the ground, sparkling under the headlights of her bus. “It reminds me of that song we used to listen to.” She starts singing in a low voice. “The streets are paved with diamonds and there is just so much to see…”
“Hah,” Peeta laughs dismissively, pushing the thin sheet of snow around with the toes of his boot. “I think we pretty much established there is fuck all to see here. Maybe I’ll visit you in London before the term starts and then it’d be more like it.”
“That’s not what the song is about though,” Katniss corrects him. “It goes ‘But the best thing about New York City is you and me.’”
A smile spreads across his face. “So that would make the best thing about this town…”
“Us.” Katniss shrugs. “If you’ll allow it.”
“Let me think,” he says, taking a step towards her and clasping her cold hands in his. “I mean, I’ve lived here my whole life and almost all my friends are here…”
“True. Not to mention your family and your perfect little niece.”
“I know. And we happen to be very close to the best city on earth here.”
“Liverpool is hardly the best city on earth, Peeta.” Katniss rolls her eyes.
“But,” he ignores her and squeezes her hands again, “ I will agree that the best thing about this town is you and me. ‘Cause I have a pretty good feeling you’re about to finally kiss me now.”
🧭An alternative title to your/ one of your WIP(s)?
Thanks for asking, @mega-aulover!
My sequel to You Know Where to Find Me was initially going to be titled "Your Mum's Alright."
All my chapter titles in that universe are songs by They Might Be Giants and I thought that would be so fitting and funny considering how Katniss visits Peeta in his home and has to spend some awkward time with the Mellarks. (and I really love a modern AU where Mrs. Mellark is actually alright)
But then! I listened to Impossibly New by They Might Be Giants and fell in love with it! Tell me that song isn't "visiting your hometown after years away with your childhood crush turned boyfriend by your side and having a completely new outlook on the place."
Phone Power is 5 today! Here’s the one and only performance of “Impossibly New” from the amaaaaaazing (I should know, I was there, my 50th show!!) duo show in Brooklyn, 11/29/15. Happy birthday, Phone Power!
Do folks out there in Tumblr-land have any guesses at lyrical interpretation of this second block? (PS: Click on the link above and you can listen to it on YouTube while reading along with the lyrics on TMBW)
The corner phone booth, in its youth, loved burning leaves and morning suits, it's true. The only smokestack coming back is me for you, with love that's impossibly new.
The bits about burning leaves and the smokestack are the ones that’re vexing me.
For the former, I can imagine the mourning morning suits (PS: TMBW has it as ‘morning suit’, but I’m pretty sure it’s ‘mourning’) as calling from a payphone after a funeral, as maybe someone still wearing their evening suit from the previous evening, but I’m not sure why one would use a phone around the time of burning leaves. All that leap to mind are burning raked leaves (usually at home, so no reason for a phonecall) or burning fallow crops (usually out in a field, so again... no reason for a phonecall). Burning leaves came up earlier in No-One Knows My Plan, but I’ve always figured that was just a vague part of a specifically unspecified plan (sort of like how there’s no reason Montana is a leg).
Smokestack, I’ve no clue. I could see something about carrying a torch, but that doesn’t seem too linear enough (like ‘carrying a furnace’ would be, or like how one was told to stop carrying a torch for Judy).
