Gadget Sycamore, 13
District Three Female
It's six in the morning when Gadget wakes, silently getting off of her mattress and reaching for the tattered, worn slippers that she puts on every morning so that she can tread more lightly around the house. It's a fine line between being quiet and waking her grandfather, especially when he's such a light sleeper. She has to be quiet on the wooden floors she and her grandfather had put in place in the cloth and board home they call their own.
Especially if she wants to get anything that she'd prefer staying to herself done.
Her hair gets in her face and she pushes the brown mess back behind her ears, frowning as she turns on the stove. It's making a little sputtering noise that she doesn't quite trust, a sign that the original owner had thrown it into the dump for them to scavenge for a reason, but she still turns on the burner and slides the pan onto the surface so that she can fry a quick meal of eggs for herself. It's a simple process, one that's been done countless times before, and she smiles as she flips the egg onto her plate - a skill that she's perfected from burning her fingers too many times to count - and dabs a bit of tomato sauce to add flavour to her breakfast before digging in with her fork. Five minutes later, she's finished the small meal. She's free to work on whatever she wants to until she has to make breakfast for Grandfather.
When putting the carton of eggs back into the tired, old ice box, Gadget notes that Grandfather had bought muffins on their last trip to the corner store. She reaches for one with chocolate chunks buried into its sides, pauses, then snatches it and hurries to her favourite armchair next to the window, a small opening in the cloth of the tent that they've been living in for the past few years. She reaches for the crisp new novel that she's bought up by saving sesterces whenever she went to the store to buy food for herself. Her grandparents often were too tired to go and sent her whenever she was able when she was younger, but the muffins had been a purchase of their own when her grandmother felt healthy enough to head into town. But it was only Grandfather who went now - Grandma had passed after a bad cold that had turned into pneumonia. At least, that's what the undertaker had told little Gadget when she watched Grandma's stiff body carried away, carted off to the family grave along with her mother and father, killed in a car crash as they walked home from the factories together.
She had always been glad Grandma went to town.
She takes a small bite of the muffin and looks at the pages of the novel, a boy's life dancing in between lines as he tries not to trip over his own two feet. She giggles when he accidentally feeds the cattle chickenfeed instead of the usual grains that they're supposed to receive - she doesn't know what grains they would actually need in order to be fed, she isn't from District Ten, but she can appreciate the humour of an honest mistake, especially when the chickens flock towards the cow pan and peck at the bull's eyes in order to get their fill.
Grandfather may not approve of novels, ones that he described as too weighted down with prose and nostalgia to make any sense, but why do they hate things that can bring you so much joy?
When she hears the first sigh drift from their side of the tent, she knows that she's got to get on breakfast before they wake up and come into the kitchen. She tucks the book into a pack that she carries to the factory every day. She doesn't worry about them snooping inside of it, the grease and grime that's collected on the cloth - that's what happens when she leaves her pack in the factory when she works for seven hours - is more than enough to keep him at bay. Grandfather never did like grime.
She turns on the stove again and gets out the eggs and a block of cheese, cutting it into thin little strips before throwing it onto the pan and stirring it around. The mass of egg and cheese soon turns firm and sizzles as it scrambles. Gadget smiles as she takes it off of the stove and gets the toast that she had thrown into the oven, the crisp sides two shades away from being burnt. She throws them onto a plate and dishes out the scrambled eggs, starting on putting away her own plates and gathering her supplies so that she'll be ready when the truck comes by.
Grandfather walks slowly out of the bedrooms, thanking Gadget as he takes a plate of food and sits down slowly, her makeshift cane right beside her chair. He chews, swallows, then continues the process with mild tremours in his right hand. Gadget hides a sigh of annoyance before rushing in to take away the chipped, weathered plates from her grandfather as he finally finishes the meal.
She's just glad that they had the sense to get better ingredients this time instead of the cheap, cracked eggs that they usually bought for half price at the store to save their money - something that would seem wise when they're living off of only a few sesterces a week, but doesn't when the eggs are spoiling by the third day and she's trying to make them into something substantial.
But none of that matters anymore - she's got work.
The blare of the pickup truck's horn causes her to grab her bag quickly, her grandparents waving at her in the ramshackle home before turning back to their own devices. They'll go out scavenging in the dumps and surrounding areas later, it's always helped them all to repair the broken down supplies in the tent home. With Grandfather's eye for anything useful, they'll be able to find a few things that can tide them over to next week, along with her salary.
She runs along the side of the house and bursts onto the road, the truck moving along steadily as it sounds the horn once more, a reminder that if the workers didn't get on quickly, they'd be left behind today with no chance to earn the sesterces they all need, that keep them all going onwards. It wasn't like there was anything else to wait for. What was going to happen? Were they going to be reaped for the Hunger Games?
Her legs move faster and her friends cheer as she vaults herself onto the back of the long truck, moving to a bench at the side so that others climbing on won't be tripped up by her legs. And then she smiles, clutching her bag tightly as the truck roars to life, climbing out of this tent city and onto the road to the factories.
It may be another long day, one filled with failures and successes alike, but none of it matters when she can feel the wind on her face and the sun in her eyes.
A/N: Wow, JAJ took a while to come back with another chapter! Sorry about that, life's been busy and school really took up a lot of my time. But, I'm back and ready to go with more chapters! Wish me luck :))
The lucky submitter of Gadget was willemsbakedgoods, and I hope I did your tribute justice! She's going to be a fun one, and it's always nice to have a few younger tributes to spice it up.
In other news, the official list for Caveat Lector is on my profile! Check it out! I'll see you soon with another chapter, and have a great day! Until then, TheAmazingJAJ