Carrica Tinkham \\ District One

There is a difference between kindness and innocence, and Carrica Tinkham walks that line like a tightrope strung over a chasm. People only ever seem to see one side of her: innocent, naïve, foolish, so inexplicably tied to her niceness that they don’t take a second thought in wondering if there is anything cruel inside of her. That’s because Carrica is always smiling. Not a mean smile, or a haughty one, but a smile of the genuine kind – the sort of smile that crinkles up her eyes in an awkward way, a throwback-and-laugh smile that’s all eyes and teeth and vivacity. And people in District One aren’t for that kind of thing, not usually. The other Careers look at her with sideways glances, unsure, judging.

She can’t be a Career. She’s not smart enough.

Which isn’t true. Where most Careers are aloof, sarcastic, and guarded so as to avoid manipulation, Carrica exudes optimism, reaching out to speak to people in a way that is both soft and careful. She has her own form of disguise, however minor it might be. She watches her words and talks in a pleasant voice, avoiding all forms of confrontation before they even start, more so out of necessity than out of decency. Hers is a strategy built around defense first, offense later; while she might not lash out at someone with a rude comment or throw herself headfirst into conflict, she will hold her head high when the moment calls for it. She dances around other people’s feelings, always sitting somewhere in neutral territory, spending her problematic opinions only on rare occasions. In this way, she keeps to herself, allowing the people of the District to think whatever they want about her. They think that she is weak, foolish, and easily manipulated, for she is kind and she is optimistic and she will associate with just about anyone.

Only her kindness does not equate to innocence, and this is the one thing that Carrica has going for her. As a Career, she has trained for years in every mode imaginable: survival, strategy, different types of weaponry. She prefers bladed weapons over ones that require brute force, mainly because she fights in about the same way she speaks: being careful and swift and light. Most of this training has been done in private, late at night in the hours just before the training center closes, for there are usually fewer people to watch her train than there would be during the afternoon. Most people don’t even know that she’s a Career, and she has guarded this fact like a secret, holding on to the notion that one day, if she is reaped, nobody – not even a fellow Career – will know who she is and what she does.

When she moves with a blade tucked between her fingers, she is quick, powered by just enough lean muscle to give her a bit of kick. Her limbs are long and look ganglier than anything else, and sometimes – even with her level of training – she finds herself prone to falling. She’ll often push her honey-blonde hair out of the way with a rubber band while she trains, leaving her sight-line unobstructed as she stabs and prods her way forward with a knife or a sword. Her eyes, usually so full of life, fall dim with the slashing of her blade. She becomes different when she trains; solemn; aggressive. The offensive part of her finally takes hold, and those light blue eyes of hers spark something more elusive, more precise. It’s when she’s wielding a weapon that she knows herself best.

She is kind, and intelligent, and careful.

But not ever weak. She defies the label when she fights, even though she surrounds herself with it like a mask from day-to-day life. Others’ opinions drip away like water and pool at her feet, dictating her reflection but not the real image, which is hers and hers alone.

With that image, she adorns her body in whatever way she sees fit. District One has no shortage of fashionable clothing, and Carrica has her pick of the lot. Except for perhaps her drastic change in height over the past few years (she spurted up to a little under 6 feet, thanks to puberty) she rarely required much of a change in clothing size, meaning that she still has everything she has ever really owned that isn’t worn out. And, unlike the Capitol, styles in District One tend to remain somewhat stable, the only variation being the type of colors that are in and out. When a flood of bright colored garments flowed through the District on the Capitol’s train, Carrica took the opportunity to buy as much as she could. This only adds to the illusion of her foolishness, for people tend to equate her femininity to stupidity, especially considering her constant friendliness.

Her parents are well-enough off, and Carrica loves them to bits. The only problem comes with the fact that they’re constantly working for the wealth that they do have, and whenever they get back from work, Carrica tends to train. Still, her mother and father tend to stay up nights and ask her all about her day. Being an only child, she knows them better than she knows anyone else, and she shares a lot of similarities with them. Her father, always the master of tact, taught her from a young age to hold her tongue and speak wisely, while her mother – a socialite at heart – surrounded herself with loud, gossipy people and filled Carrica with the optimism and confidence to speak to strangers (though, to be fair, Carrica was outgoing almost from the start.)

Neither of her parents trained when they were young, but they didn’t stop Carrica from pursuing it herself. She never had older siblings to look up to, so instead she looked up to the people in the Games. Specifically, she saw the valiant tributes of District One hold their own while the tributes from other Districts crumbled, standing tall as victors more often than not. They had a special something that let them exude sheer power, and Carrica grew up wanting whatever that something was. And so, at about the age of seven, Carrica Tinkham went to her first training session, staring shyly up at the instructor that taught her all about how to correctly hold a (fake) knife in her hand. From then on her training progressed quickly, but she began to train privately, away from the people who might watch her and hinder her with harsh criticism.

In school, she made friends quickly, but found herself put down by people who didn’t take her seriously. Despite her ability to learn quickly and perform well in school, others labeled her as a ditz. She mostly ignored those accusations, but couldn’t help but take them to heart. After a point, she realized the futility of their insults and started to ignore them completely, and found that she was happier when she stood tall and accepted herself on her own terms – both kind and cruel, friendly and violent at heart.