hey guys this is my new version of foxface that my lovely beta thought up so thanks
It was a hard day at the plant. Finch was tired and sore, but she couldn't go home just yet. Isaac was waiting for her.
Finch marched up the hill, heading toward the polluted lake on the opposite edge of her neighborhood. Once she reached the top, she saw Isaac sitting down in the brown grass.
Finch cleared her throat in greeting. She was never one for words.
"Hello," Isaac said cheerily. "How was your day?"
He always asked this whenever they met up; it was one of the reasons why Finch did not hate him, as she usually dislikes people. He was unconditionally kind. Too kind for the Hunger Games, which was why she did not want Isaac's name to get picked.
"The usual," Finch said simply. "You?"
"Fine." He held up his hand; one of his fingers had a white bandage around it. "Cut my finger on the machine today."
Finch sat down next to Isaac, but not too close. She disliked physical contact.
"How many times? For Mika's name?" Finch said in a monotone, looking out across the grey-brown water in front of them. She pulled a long weed out of the ground and tied a knot in the end of it.
"Fifty-one," Isaac muttered, his previous energy gone. "What are we going to do if she gets picked?"
"Nothing," Finch replied quietly after a moment, "Nothing we can do."
"We'll be the first to donate money if she needs sponsors," Isaac said sharply, turning toward Finch when she didn't answer. "Right?"
"Don't condemn her yet," Finch said, her eyebrows slightly furrowing. "She might not get picked.
"True. Did you know Thomas has his name put in sixty-four times?"
"What? How?" Thomas was the most popular boy in school. All the popular boys were rich. Except Thomas, apparently.
"Hardly anyone knows. Me and you are the only two outside his family. My parents overheard his parents talking about it at work." Isaac shook his head.
Finch mulled this information over in her head. Mika had it easy compared to the other kids in her neighborhood, the poorest in all of District Five. Finch couldn't help but wonder how the other poor districts had it, like Ten, Eleven and Twelve. People seemed to think Five was a middle-class district, since the largest neighborhoods here were somewhat well off, but Finch thought it was probably one of the poorest districts, worse even than District Eleven. The truth was the largest population within the district was Mika and Thomas's neighborhood, which was also the poorest by ten landslides. It was way too overcrowded, with small one-roomed, half torn-down wooden/concrete homes arranged in no particular pattern or order over miles and miles of hills and valleys. The little homes were so close to each other it looked like they were almost the same buildings. All the kids in this part of the district were in dire need of tesserae and usually submitted their names into the reaping bowls around forty to sixty times.
Finch only had her name in four times since she was only fifteen. Isaac didn't need tesserae either, so his name was in four times as well.
Isaac's head fell into his arms.
"She won't last," said Finch.
"We can still hope," Isaac insisted, though Finch could hear it in his voice. He knew she wouldn't make it. Mika couldn't hurt a fly.
"She'll be distracted, too," Finch argued. "What with her brother and all."
Isaac nodded solemnly.
