Paige Evans. District 12. Finished

    Paige grabbed the small cracked mirror from the bookshelf and ran into the bathroom before slamming the door. She looked into it and frowned at her reflection, twisting her head back and forth to catch herself at different angles. Paige was by no means ugly, but she had no features similar to the predominate ideas of beauty. Her mother was a very attractive woman with soft gentle features, while her father sported a darker rugged face. Paige had hoped with each passing year that her face would morph into a gentle beautiful mask like her mother’s, but she could see as she looked into that cracked reflective surface that the combination of her parents have made way for something completely different. Her hair is a gradient from spending so much time in the sun, with the ends being sun bleached brown to the jet black at the roots. Although naturally a wavy and a little unkempt, it was hard to tell because her long locks are usually pulled up into a bun or a ponytail. Paige loved her long hair, but hated getting it in her face.
    Paige pulled her hair back like she did everyday, but this time with the purpose of examining her strong features in the mirror. Her facial structure and items were similar to her mother’s, but more distinct and emphasized. She has high cheekbones on an oval shaped face with dark eyebrows arched at the end. Her eyes were large, but deep set adding a brooding quality to her face. Her nose was thin and tall, with the tip ever so slightly turned up. Her lips were dark and full with a flat cupid’s bow. She tends to smile with her mouth closed to thin her lips as her school mates used to say her mouth made her look like a fish. As Paige examined her features one by one, she supposed that each one on it’s own wasn’t so bad, but to have all of these at once Paige thought was overwhelming. She had been told that her looks were striking, but she still couldn’t figure out if that was good or bad.
    She peeked out of the bathroom before sneaking around the corner to place the mirror back on the shelf. At barely five foot four inches she had to stand on her tip toes to place the mirror back in it’s home. She is short and slender with almost no hips and a fair sized bust that she developed early much to her dismay. Her body and mouth were often the topics of ridicule before her classmates also started puberty and caught up. Although her peers no longer teased her about her appearance she still felt a little self conscious, especially around the opposite sex.

    Paige has always been a daredevil. She always felt like she had to prove herself whether it was being able to climb to the top of a brittle tree or being the first one to enter an abandoned house her and her friends found. This bravery coupled with poor impulsive control meant that her and her friends got into a few sticky situations in their childhood. Paige was always willing to take the blame for her companions and she enjoyed being the one that would stand up against bullies and scary situations. While she always eager to stand up against those wronging other people, this bravery did not translate to herself. When it comes to standing up for herself Paige finds herself horribly incapacitated. Fearing confrontation, conflict, and disappointing others she had developed a reputation for letting others walk over her. On the positive side of this, Paige turned out to be an extremely altruistic person. She loves helping others and giving back. On the occasion that their family had a little extra to eat she could be found walking the streets to give the rest to starving children.
    This helping quality of hers and the fact that she naturally is drawn to people allows her to make friends easily; however, she is rarely the one to make the first move. After her mother’s death and her increased responsibility she found herself unable to socialize as frequently as she used to. Once contact is established the person will find her to be a very goofy person with a good sense of humor and loves making people laugh. Although she is outgoing and makes friends easily, very few can say they know her very well. You could spend an entire day with her and then at the end of it realize that you have found out very little about her. This attribute of closing off only appeared after her mother passed, where she became afraid of letting other’s in. She was always afraid of change, but her world broke when her mother died and her core was shaken. Her father likes to joke that she aged a lifetime in the month of illness.
    Being a very intelligent girl, Paige often feels bored in the tedium of her day-to-day life. She longs for adventure and spent great chucks of her childhood playing pretend games and rescuing princess. Indecisive by nature during these games her friends would complain she took too long deciding the game or her character. This indecisiveness carries to her teenage life where she continues to struggle making tough decisions.
    Her secret passion is drawing, a passion that only her family has truly witnessed. Classmates have witnessed her doodling around the edge of her notes and teachers had chastised her for the cartoons she leaves at the end of tests before everyone else is done, but hardly anyone has seen her true abilities. She loves realism and pencils, so the walls in the room her brother and her sleep in are covered topped to bottom in portraits and grey sketches.

    Paige Evans was born on a crisp November night to Holt and Ren Evans. Holt works as a metallurgist with a small team that painstakingly go through every bit of coal looking for precious metals and gems before it’s sent off to the capitol. A long time ago Paige could remember being well off. She remembered dinner on the table and her father being home every night. Ren once worked as a maid in the Mayor’s house. She always came home tired and dirty, but her job as a maid allowed her to be there everyday after school to pick Paige up and walk her home, even though this meant she left for work at the crack of dawn.
    The Evan’s lived a quiet happy life until her parents decided the only way they could be happier was to have another child. Although Paige didn’t know it, seven years after she was born her parents started on a difficult road to conception. The next five years Holt and Ren would experience bouts of disappoint and frustration not limited to their attempts to conceive. Production of precious metals and gems began to fall short of the Capital’s desires. One day they cut the metallugist’s wages as further incentive to look harder for these rare finds for if they found something then they would receive a large bonus. Her father’s pay was reduced to less than half of what he originally made, and the team of once close friends was morphed to paranoia and betrayal. He now worked in fear that one of his teammates might steal his findings for the bonus; that is if he found anything at all. It wasn’t long after this pay cut that her father started picking up shifts in the coalmines. Holt’s extra shifts combined with his daily work and Ren’s work as a maid was enough to keep them living comfortably.
    When Paige was twelve Ren finally had a pregnancy that stuck. Everyone was ecstatic, but eventually she became too pregnant to continue working. Money got tight and there were many nights that her father went to bed with an empty stomach to make sure his wife and daughter had enough to eat. Well aware of this, Paige began to make sacrifices of her own. She would pretend she was full when she wasn’t to make sure that her mother had enough and that her father had at least at a little. This would lead to her first incident of theft.
    On one particular hungry day on her way home from school, she had wandered into the bakery, lured in by the smell. The baker and his wife knew her face well from the number of times Ren and her would stop on their way home. The baker greeted her with a warm smile and asked where her mother was. She told the truth, that her mother was on bed rest due to her pregnancy. The baker wished her well before excusing himself to the back room to check something. In his absence Paige looked around the empty bakery and fingered a loaf of bread lying in a basket by the window. With a peek at the door to the back, she snatched up the loaf and tucked it under her coat before rushing out of the store. As she hurried home she reveled in the thrill of her successful thievery, thus began her mild criminal career. She only stole when her family was in need and although she continued to tell her self she was only protecting her family, a small part loved the thrill of a completed crime.
    Three months after Paige had turned thirteen her brother, Caden, was born and that following year was as perfect as Paige can remember. They were overjoyed with the healthy baby boy they got to watch grow and experience the world. When Caden was a few months shy of being a year old, Ren developed a cough that only got worse. She passed away a month after Paige turned fourteen and never got to see her son turn one. Paige and her father were broken by her death and Paige was left to pick up new responsibilities. While she was at school and her father was at work, Caden was watched by neighbor who’s own son and husband had died in a mining accident. Paige and her father were incredibly grateful for their kind neighbor and always tried to bring her food when they had spare. But right after school got out Paige would rush home to pick up her brother and take care of him. She cleaned the house, cooked dinner for them, and completed her work. Her life was no longer her own.
    Now she was seventeen, her brother was four, and as her brother grew older she began to experience more freedoms in her responsibilities. After she picked up her brother after school they might go for a walk, or meet up with friends. Her friends loved seeing her baby brother and never minded spending time with the both of them. On the weekends if her father was home and not in the mines, she would be able to go out and be a regular teenager. Her family now had to rely on one income and was barely enough to put food on the table for the three of them, so her thievery continued. On occasion she would enter the black market on the edge of town with a hood and swipe some goods to sell or food when no one was looking. She had become quite adept at it and the fact that it was an occasional occurrence has kept her from getting caught thus far. To push back the guilt she told herself that it was okay because she was doing this for her family, but even still she tried to give at least some of it away to the needy on the streets.