"Clove," Glimmer grinned. "Truth or dare?"
"Dare," Clove replied instantly.
"You always pick dare," her best friend whined.
"Sucks to suck," Clove taunted.
"Bitch."
"Asshole."
"Guys," Johanna interjected. "While I don't resent the obscenities, can we get back to the game?"
"Right," Glimmer laughed. "Sorry."
"And give me a good dare," Clove demanded. "None of that pansy shit you were giving Katniss. 'Eat a spoonful of mayonnaise.' 'Send an ugly Snap to all your recents.' 'Do ten push-ups'," she said mockingly.
"Katniss is a pansy," Glimmer reasoned.
"Fair, but still."
"Fine," Glimmer said with a smirk. "I dare you to sneak into Cato's bedroom and steal a pair of his boxers."
"How do you know he doesn't wear tightie-whities?" she replied.
"Clove. Take it from me. It's a very complex algorithm that my friends from California and I spent months trying to decipher, but I figured it out eventually, I can tell you this- Cato Hadley does not wear tightie-whities. He conforms to every trait of a boxer boy."
Clove bent over howling with laughter.
"Am I right?" Glimmer asked.
"Well... yeah, but -"
"Wait, how would you know?" Madge asked.
"Cottage, remember?"
"Oh, right."
"What, exactly, happened at the cottage?" Delly said suggestively with an exaggerated wink.
"Delly!" Clove exclaimed. "No, nothing like that! I just meant that I've been going to Cato's cottage every summer for almost ten years. We've caught each other in our underwear every now and then, and yes, Glimmer, Cato is a boxer boy."
"I knew it," Glimmer said. "Now, it's a bit of a long walk to Cato's, but you should just be able to-"
"I can make my own goddamn plan," Clove snapped.
"Well, well, well, aren't you a little ray of sunshine?"
"Piss off."
"Just go."
"Aren't you gonna come with me to make sure I do it?" Clove asked.
"You just want someone to take pictures," Glimmer scoffed.
"So? Come on. And bring my camera, I want to download and print them and the camera take better photos than either of our phones."
Glimmer huffed and followed Clove out the window and the two scaled down the tree in their pajamas.
"Glim, call your brother," Clove said.
"No, ew, why?"
"I have my learner's but I need an adult in the car, and also I'm a terrible driver."
"Gabe has only has his general for a year," Glimmer reminded her. "He isn't allowed to be the 'adult' that supervises you. Hell, he's a large child."
"Yes, I know. He's driving us."
"No."
"Fine. Then you'd better be prepared for Nora."
Clove ran next door and knocked. Nora answered and pulled Clove into a bone-crushing hug, which Clove barely escaped from alive.
"Hey, Nora, can you give us a lift to Apollo Drive so I can steal my friend's underwear?"
Nora needed no convincing.
She pulled her car out of the driveway and Clove ran back over to Glimmer.
"Do you have the camera?"
Glimmer pursed her lips. "Um..."
"I'll go. Get in the car," she grinned, turning and running back into the house. She ran into her room.
"Forgot the camera," she grinned. "Continue without us, but fill us in when we get back." She grabbed her Canon EOS R and ran back down, where she bumped into her mom.
"Going somewhere?" Diane asked.
"Yeah, I am," Clove replied.
"Don't be a smartass."
Clove tried not to laugh. "Nora is taking us to the grocery store. We need more chips. We ate all of our snacks."
"Why don't you just make cookies? The kitchen is clean."
"Yeah, but Johanna would blow it up if she tried to cook."
"Fine."
"Okay."
Clove ran back outside and clambered into the back seat and realized Glimmer had chosen to sit in the back as well. Wise choice, Clove thought to herself.
"Mom was skeptical that we were going out," Clove said as Nora pulled out of the driveway, "so I said we were going to get snacks."
"I'm not following," Glimmer replied.
"It means that she will ask Nora to make sure we actually went there and not the Beer Store or something. I don't know," she said when Glimmer gave her a weird look. "She just doesn't trust me for some reason."
"I can't think of one," Glimmer said sarcatsically. "What's the worst thing you've ever done without permission?"
"Nothing, I'm a good kid," Clove said smugly.
"I mean, there was that time when you and Finnick snuck out in the middle of the night when you were only ten years old, and had no way to contact her and she was so worried about you she called Cato and Marvel's families to see if they'd heard anything, and almost called the police."
"But she didn't," Clove said defensively.
"Yeah. Because Cato eventually gave in and told them you were at the park with Finnick so she wouldn't call the SPD and have them start a whole search for you!"
"Well, she didn't even come after me, so obviously it wasn't a big deal..."
"You wanna know the story behind that?"
"Go for it."
"Cato started crying and begging her not to react and just act like it never even happened because he thought you weren't going to be his friend anymore and it broke his sad little ten-year-old baby boy heart."
"Wait, really? How would you even know that?"
"Well, it was a three-way phone call, so Marvel heard everything, and he was telling me about it a few weeks ago."
"Awww," she laughed.
"I think he really likes you, Clove," Glimmer said, more seriously.
"I certainly hope so, we've been friends for over ten years."
"No, not like that. Well, yes like that, but I meant-"
"I know what you meant," Clove said waspishly. "But we're just friends."
"Clove, I mean it."
"So do I."
"Clove-"
"Nora?" Clove asked.
"Yuh huh?" she replied buffly.
Clove could tell Glimmer was trying not to laugh.
"If my mom asks, can you tell her we went to the store to buy chips?"
"Yuh huh," she agreed. "Sure thing, sugar."
Clove turned back to Glimmer before Nora could say anything else. She felt kind of mean, because she was asking her to lie to Diane, but at the same time, she was sure that Diane would have Nora for dinner later that week, so she'd have plenty of time to listen to Nora's weird stories.
"So," Glimmer said.
"So," Clove said. "Operation: Steal Cato's Underwear."
"About Cato -"
"No," Clove said simply, and Glimmer sighed.
"Hey," she started, remembering something. "You and Annie aren't still fighting, are you?"
"Why do you think she didn't come tonight and everyone else did?"
"I just figured she was sick. I mean, we're almost halfway through May, Clove. It's been like three months -"
"Oh look, we're here," Clove interrupted, telling Nora to pull up at the end of a street. "Nora, could you head over to the convenience store and grab us a bag of barbecue chips and a bag of sour cream and bacon?" She handed Nora a few crumpled bills from her hoodie pocket.
"Yuh," Nora grunted, and when Glimmer and Clove has gotten out, she drove off.
"Why didn't you have Nora drop us off in front of his actual house?" Glimmer asked.
"Because," she replied, leading the way to a big white farm-style house and the end of the street. "C'mon. If you can give me a boost so I can get over the fence, I'll unlock the gate-"
"Don't you need a key for that?"
"It's a combination."
"Ah."
"Well, don't just stand there, give me a hand!"
Glimmer laughed and held her hands, fingers interlaced, out. Clove stepped into them with one foot and swung the other up to the top of the fence, standing up slowly but surely.
"You want a picture, don't you?"
"You know me so well," Clove grinned.
"Well, you're standing on a fence."
"Shut up and take a picture."
"Okay."
Clove stood there until Glimmer had given her the signal that she had taken some good ones.
She jumped down to the other side of the fence, the sudden and forceful impact shocking her and hurting the soles of her feet through her thin flip flops.
"Ow, shit!" she yelped.
"Clove, are you okay?" Glimmer exclaimed.
"Yeah, just the impact," Clove replied. She entered the three-number combination for the lock and let Glimmer into the backyard. "So all we have to do is climb the tree onto the balcony, which leads into this really cool TV and game room with a foosball table and everything, and we just have to sneak down to Cato's room at the end of the hall-"
"Which he could very well be in," Glimmer interjected.
"-and steal his underwear out of... actually, I don't know where he keeps it, so we'll have to look around. And he is, like, seriously OCD about how his room is set up so if you touch anything-"
"Put it back exactly where I got it from."
"Yeah. This will be fun. Here, help me up to that branch, I can't reach it."
Glimmer gave Clove a boost so she could swing from the lowest branch up to a higher one and climb up to the balcony. As Clove gracefully scaled the tree, she noticed Glimmer taking a few pictures before following.
"Those shorts are really tiny, C," Glimmer said. "If Cato catches us he is gonna see half your ass."
"We don't have to worry about that."
"No, really, your ass is hanging out of your shorts."
"I meant us getting caught, dipshit."
"Just climb."
"I'm working on it, and I would be in Cato's room already if you weren't talking about my ass. And to be fair," she added, "it isn't the worst ass you could be looking at."
Glimmer burst into laughter.
"Shhhhh!" Clove said in a hushed chuckle as she pushed herself across the four-foot gap between the tree and the balcony railing, hopping agilely down onto the cold metal and extending a hand for Glimmer.
She opened the door as quietly as she could and Glimmer took a few more pictures.
("Make sure the flash is off because if we get caught, remember who told me I should do this!" "It is off! I'm not that stupid." "Debatable.")
The girls tip-toed down the hall, making sure to be as quiet as they possibly could, and peered through the open door (which had the initials CJH on it) to Cato's bedroom.
It was a large enough room, with pale grey walls, a simple queen-sized bed with navy blue bedding, white shelves on either side of it lined with records, a window across from the bed that was framed with navy blue curtains, two grey armchairs, and a mini basketball hoop on the back of the door.
And best of all: he wasn't in it.
They crept in slowly and carefully and began rifling through drawers as silently as they could. In the bottom drawer of Cato's mahogany dresser (which was tucked into the back corner of his walk-in closet), Clove found a couple of small gift boxes (well, not so much that as the drawer was packed full of them). Clove took a picture so she could remember how they were arranged before taking a few out carefully to examine them. There was one labelled MLS, one labelled FBO, AMC, KBE, FEC, JKM, GWH, and a few others, but it wasn't until Clove saw one labelled CAK that she realized they were initials. CAK was her, Clove Adrienne Kentwell, and the rest corresponded to their other friends' initials. Some boxes, like Glimmer's and Annie's, were much lighter, and if Clove moved them around a little she could hear the contents moving inside (paper, maybe?).
Clove really didn't want to pry, but then again, she was already in his room looking for his boxer shorts, and he did have a box with her initials on it (including middle name, which made it more personal), so she put all the boxes back except for hers, removed the rubber bands holding it closed and the lid came right up, pushed off by the hundreds of Instax photos inside it, all of them dated on the back with a blue pen, the earliest ones dating back from September 16, 2011, and the most recent from only a few days ago (Clove at Ivan's Ice Cream Parlour sticking her chocolate-covered tongue out at him). She wondered just how many of the photos he had taken of her were in this box. She rifled through it gently, making sure not to disturb the order, and found pictures from the Fourth of July fireworks in 2016, Cato's mom, Julia, jokingly holding mistletoe above Clove and Cato in December of 2018, and so many more, as well as some of the countless notes they'd passed over the years (but he couldn't have all of them, because Clove had a box full in her room). She unfolded a crumpled piece of lined paper dated February 14, 2014, and read Cato's messy writing. Happy Valentine's Day, it said. Roses are red, violets are blue, I am so lucky to be friends with you. She proceeded to her own response, which was scrawled in loopy cursive. Lavender's purple, lilac is too, your poem was stupid, but I still love you.
Suddenly Clove heard footsteps growing louder and louder as someone came down the hall. "Glim!" she hissed, closing up the box and putting it back where she'd found it. "Closet! Now!"
Glimmer dashed into the closet and closed the door behind her, silently opening the top drawer of the dresser and pulling out a pair of grey boxer shorts. She winked at Clove as they heard the bedroom door open. There was a slight creak of a bedspring and then silence.
Clove groaned internally. Who knew how long it would be before they could get back to the others?
She whipped out her phone to text Madge that there was a bit of a hold up when she felt Glimmer tense up beside her: and sneeze.
There was another creak, indicating Cato may have gotten up, but there were no footsteps, and a few minutes later he hadn't come to investigate.
Clove smacked Glimmer, which proved to not be the smartest choice.
"OW!" Glimmer exclaimed, then clapped a hand over her mouth.
More creaking. Footsteps. The closet door opening and the lights being turned on.
"Glimmer?" Cato asked.
"Um..."
"Clove..." he said, glaring at her skeptically.
"Hi?"
"What are you doing in my closet?"
"Nothing much, you?" she replied coolly.
"Are those my boxers?" he asked incredulously, referring to the grey garment that Glimmer was still holding.
"I can explain," Clove said. "It was Glimmer's idea."
"Hey! I resent that! You could have picked truth, but you just had to go and be a difficult little shithead."
"Have you met her?" Cato asked.
"Fair."
"Cato, stop staring at my ass," Clove scolded.
"Sorry," he chuckled. "Your shorts are just really tiny."