Isaiah Colby, District 12

    Isaiah is about 6 feet tall. He's all bones and wiry muscle; there's barely a scrap of fat on him. His face is ovular and roughly shaped, though still very expressive. He has intense, dark brown eyes and curly, messy, light brown hair that he never got the hang of styling or taking care of.   He has big hands with long, thick, nimble fingers which learn skills quickly.
    His jaw is strong and kind of long, but not angular and square. He has many freckles over his nose and cheekbones, which are barely visible on his dark fawn-colored skin. He has pale pink, seemingly perpetually chapped lips. He has a knotted, pale scar which is about an inch long over his left temple, and his hair sometimes covers it.
     He has long arms and long legs. He was a very gangly preteen. He smiles often, but the expression only sometimes reaches his eyes. When it does the effect it has is impressive, changing the look of his eyes from hard and hungry to light and shining and glad. 
    His old, worn boots are usually dusty, from spending as much time as he can away from home. Especially in the winter, he wears a lot of layers, covered by his rough, old, brown jacket, which he loves because of its many pockets. He's sewn it back together many times, and he's patched the elbows. 
    

     Isaiah has trouble expressing his emotions because, as he grew up, it was very rare that he knew someone who would listen to him or care about what he had to say. He didn't have practice at socializing and talking to people, other than business interactions.
    Growing up without people who care about him also means that he gets attached easily, feeling very grateful to almost anyone who listens to him or shows him any kindness. This leads to his getting jealous very easily, to trusting very easily, and being very willing to help people very easily as well.   He's easy to use because he's happy to accept any bit of kindness he can. He is very gullible. 
    He's very selfless. 
    He has low self esteem and is very eager to learn any new skills or knowledge that might make him feel and seem more valuable, to himself and to others. This makes him a bit of a scavenger. He takes any jobs he can and collects any random objects he finds that might possibly be useful in the future. He's learned to fight and keeps a backpack with him most of the time. Growing up neglected also made him independent in terms of getting food or medical help or anything like that. 
    He loves to laugh and appreciates the little things, being pretty perceptive and admiring people quickly. Any little good thing will lift his mood at least a little bit. 
    Without friends or people he knows closely, he hasn't had much of a chance to figure out feelings of attraction to other people, but he's never been able to imagine himself married to a woman with kids and a house. 
   He's claustrophobic and has trouble sleeping. Due to an injury, he can  blackout when his senses are overloaded. This is very, very rare, and something he's insecure about.
    He hates feeling helpless and likes to be in control of himself and to be helpful and valued. 

    

    Isaiah's mother died giving birth to him and his father died in the coal mines when he was five. They were both somewhat respected among the people because his mother was a talented seamstress and had a lot of good friends among the other women. After the death of his father, a nearby couple (the Whitmans) who found themselves unable to have children took him in, because the woman (Lara) had been friends with his mother, who was an only child. Without his parents, whom Isaiah was very close to, he became desolate and was very quiet, isolating himself from his friends among the other boys he once played with. People started thinking he was weird.
    After a few weeks of trying to help him get back to normal, the Whitmans  got more and more frustrated as he showed little response to their attempts. They began to think of him as a nuisance and eventually became somewhat abusive when they finally had another child (Elizabeth) who they really cared about. Once he stayed out passed curfew and they locked him in a large clothes chest for a whole day, resulting in his claustrophobia. Isaiah started talking again and behaving normally again as he slowly got over the death of his father, but he was unable to get back with his friends.
    The gap between him and the other kids in District 12 grew. It didn't help that the couple who took him in were never very respectable. He wasn't friends with anyone at school, where he did very well academically, but occasionally got into fights with other kids. Isaiah started doing more and more chores for the family he lived with, and he tried very hard to do a good job of them. None of this made them treat him any better. He accidentally set the house on fire one morning while he was lighting the fireplace. The house suffered irreparable damage but Mr. Whitman (Keith) flew into a rage and threw a rock at Isaiah, resulting in his aforementioned scar and blackouts. 
    The Whitmans told him he'd have to pay them back for "taking care" of him all these years. The debt weighs heavily over him and he doubts he'll be able to completely pay it off for years. As he got older he took any job he could find from the people nearby. He fixed houses and weeded gardens and picked up things from the market and did many other things. He learned quickly and gained a lot of little useful skills.