Ruby Ginne, District 1

Ruby tends to get plenty of attention with the way she looks and stands in front of a crowd. It’s not that she is beautiful or anything of that kind, but rather peculiar in a way. She has an imperative manner of making herself known to everyone without really wanting to. Her 5’8” erect stance and strong built, but thing figure, make her someone to either fear or dislike for various reasons. And to give her more attention, her thick, medium length, wavy, dark auburn hair is as neatly kept possible, which to most people it can be seen as an insult that requires further glancing. However, when people look deep into her face, there is simplicity all over it, or so it seems. Her light olive skin is without alterations, and her eyes are a simple dark brown surrounded by intact eyelashes as well somewhat thick eyebrows. But then, when looking at her even more up close, something else is seen. Her face promotes anger, despotism, and a hint of strange intentions while being amiable at the same time. It really can’t be deciphered, but she looks like she is thinking too much, about people, about her surroundings. Her eyes look as if two people possess them at the time; for at times she looks calm, while other times she seems to be scorching within by uncommon thoughts.

She views herself apathetic about the way she dresses, even though she knows about her dress exclusions. But, to Ruby there is nothing less important than caring about clothes as she believes one is not judged by them – and this is ironic as she tends to unknowingly judge people based on the way they dress. But why not; she doesn’t even recognize the fact that she has preferences. People see her all the time with at least one red item, and she never notices. People also see her wearing boots instead of flats, and jeans instead of skirts. But, one thing is true: she wears almost any color without it being influenced by her mood. However, she does tend to wear the same blue, green, and purple shirts all the time as their textures are adequate for almost every kind of weather; plus, she feels comfortable in them. And in addition, by wearing gray or black jackets, pretty much every color in her outfit automatically becomes balanced, or so she thinks.

In total, Ruby is careless of her looks up to some extent. However, her hair is at the top of her priorities. If she has a bad hair day, she either ties her hair back or puts a discreet hat on top, and she is always fixing it for it to not be all over her face. However, that is not the only thing she cares about. Her nails and skin are things she keeps in check all the time as well; in her must be zero specs of unnatural substances such as nail polish or tattoos – well, things she can prevent from polluting her. It is not that she is conceited, but she thinks that better health will come to her if she can have extra good hygiene; and this means that Ruby is very reluctant about germs as well certain aspects of living. However, that seems to be more ironic giving the fact that she has countless of small scars across her body from being careless in the outdoors. Yet, since the people around her like to make a huge deal about things, they only take in count her “neat freak” behavior, and thus label her as being somewhat arrogant.

Ruby is a person who tends to view life in many ways. She is curious about everything surrounding her as well as skeptical of given answers; thinking of other possibilities. And for her, there is nothing more fun than annoying people into falling into her mind traps. This is primarily because if someone is telling her the truth, they will stick to their answers. It’s not that she does this from malice, but because most of her intelligence comes from what people tell her, she must make sure not to say false statements simply because someone tells her. So, by putting people traps, she is able to distinguish good information from bad. However, Ruby sometimes wishes to not do so because it is a waste of time and never as fool-proof as a book; plus, she knows that people hate her for it. But, since she rarely gets to have a book, she must compromise with average human knowledge and devise ways to get around it. However, when she sees a book, she will do almost anything to get her hands on it in order to verify what she knows, as well as taking the time to learn new things.

She is very impatient too. It is rare for her not to become antsy whenever she is tied down to something. She must always be in charge of things to feel either comfortable or calm. But, even then she seems in a hurry to finish things and move on to other topics that take up space in her mind. And one of those topics deals with medicine. However, that passion is the most awkward she has since she barely knows anything in order to love that subject in the first place. But, the thing is that as long as she finds no answer for what she wants, she will always be enthusiastic to find out everything about it until the point where she knows more than the average person does. It sounds like she wants to be superior, but that’s not true. She only wants to learn in order to tell others about it; Ironic isn’t it?

Even though Ruby seems to be a solely interested person, she happens to give a lot back. If people say that she passes the entire day outside in order to evade house cleaning, that’s not entirely true. Sure, she does tend to be reluctant of cleaning, but she passes the entire day in the school, teaching kids about society, history, and other things they might have questions of. She is careful, however, not to say what she truly thinks as most people would take it the wrong way. And it’s not that she thinks negatively of things such as politics, but rather feels that things could be better.

Ruby is exaggeratedly competitive as well as impulsive. And this can explain her love for fighting as well as betting on who has the best tactics in the annual Hunger Games. She happens to hate the game’s intention as well as the deaths, but she can’t help rooting for fights. And sometimes, she happens to replicate the fighting scenes in the Games in order to see how well she could do if she were to be chosen. For her, going into the Games is something tedious but also interesting. She likes dangerous situations that require much thinking in order to get out alive. In Ruby’s case, she believes that the Hunger Games is simply a mind game, and thus ultimately telling her friends that it should be the Mind Games where only the astute one lives. Because of her way of looking at the games, she incites her friends to replicate arena conditions in order to fight, or watch recordings of the Games in order to see if that happens to be true, which it is. And due to her life revolving around the Games, she constantly conditions herself in order to be both mentally ready as well as physically ready to win the Games and come home with the “sweet prize”.

But, even at the thought of winning and having bragging rights for the Games (because she is somewhat sassy and likes to joke about things that happen to be true), she thinks about how exasperating it would be to think about the offside. Despite being a blood-thirsty individual as well as competitive, she does not like the fact that people would have to die in order for her to win the Games, which happens to be her ultimate guilty goal; that’s why she never volunteers. And that happens to be part of her irksome flaw. She is way too compassionate about people once she leaves her crazy thoughts behind. This is the reason why she almost gets in trouble with the peacekeepers who humiliate people in the streets, especially caught foreigners. She happens to get extremely irritated up to the point where she wants to kill the peacekeepers in order to not let them get away with their abuses – she likes fights, but not abuses. However, she thinks and does nothing about it unless she can find a smart way around the situation.

Ruby also has a passion for something unconventional: artifacts. She likes to collect these and find a use or way of fixing them in order to satisfy her need for doing things and learning. And once she finds a use for them, she either sells them, exhibits it to the little kids at school (under secrecy) as well as her friends, or keeps them at home without her parents seeing them.

Ruby was born on a rainy night. Prior to her birthdate, the streets of District 1 as well as the terrain had become dangerous enough to kill someone transiting during that time due to the inundated roads and landslides nearby. Unfortunately, her father was working away on the other side of the district. It is said that while transporting goods to a shipment center he had an accident, most likely dying. In truth, no one really knows what happened to him; his body was never found. All that is known is that the goods never arrived and that some had been seen miles away from where they were supposed to be sent. Chances are that he was blinded by the weather and took a wrong turn, thus being washed downstream.

Two years passed by and Ruby’s mother began living with Ginne, and it was not until three years afterwards that she was convinced to marry Ginne in order to give both Ruby and Ginne's five children (two from his first matrimony) a real family. It was around this time that Ruby began to question why her mother had to marry Ginne, and why her mother would give up on hoping her washed away father returned. Her mother would then shut her up because she did not want the name of her real father being mentioned as respect to her new one, and because it made her think of him. Also, her mother felt that the less her real father was mentioned, the less Ruby would care about him and most likely accept her new one. That did not happen; she did not like her new father because she quickly learnt that the nice behavior he displayed was a lie, because once Ginne and her mother married, his attitude towards her turned to be the opposite. This made her take refuge in her real father. And even though she never met her real father, she loved him and wished she had been born earlier so he would have stayed home that week. If she had been born earlier, her mother would not have married a despot who barely loved his own children and hated her simply because she was the image of her father, a person that Ginne knew was present in his wife’s thoughts.

During Ruby’s childhood, her relationship with Ginne, as she likes to call him, never improved. Her siblings seemed to have curiosity towards her, but since Ginne never approached her they decided not to talk to her as a precaution despite wanting to do so. Ginne would later applaud his children for ignoring her as he did not want them to associate with her. And the situation stayed the same for a long time, without her mother realizing. However, when Ruby’s mother was present she would only see her other children being “courteous” with Ruby as well as her husband being attentive of her child for the time she would spend in the house before going to work. It wasn’t until Ruby became really aggressive towards her father at the dinner table when he said that he loved her as she was his own, when Ruby’s mother demanded to know what was happening. Ruby then said that her father was a liar and that because of him her siblings would never talk to her. Of course, Ruby’s mother was astonished enough that she did not want for the matter to be discussed, primarily because her situation with her husband was somehow delicate due to Ruby’s real father always being present.

Things used to be the same until they took a turn for the worse when Ruby’s mother fell ill. Her mother suddenly began to have frequent chills, high fever, and flu-like symptoms. Ruby was the pretty much the only one (besides her younger sister Sapphire who was somewhat more attached to her mom than the other siblings, and would barely peep in before her father would scold her while Ruby stared somewhat indifferently at them "as none could care more for mom", as Ruby would say to herself) that actually approached her mother without fear of her illness and tended her until her last breath. During her mother’s last days, Ruby watched and cried for her, for not having said anything before. She cried because she knew that she was going to die and leave her alone. She cried because she was the only one that in her own opinion cared and suffered to see her in that condition. And it was not until the day of her funeral that Ruby found out that her mother had been reported ten days before her death to have a wound at work which could have been cured if she had taken the necessary precautions. But she was proud; she was proud enough to let no one help her out because she said that the wound was alright. However, it was that pride that eventually led for her to die. And without thinking that Ruby would stay in the hands of someone who was not her father, she did not care to heal herself. She would have rather risked her health instead of asking for help. And that is something that Ruby can’t understand up to this date. Maybe she just wanted to die, and Ruby understands it, somehow. Yet, despite understanding, Ruby can’t accept that her mother would simply give up on life for something foolish as pride and of possibly wanting to be with her real father. And of course, Ruby always speculates this since it could explain why Ginne doesn’t like her as well as why Ginne’s relationship with her mother was very stiff until the last of her days. At the thought of her speculation being true, she asked Ginne after her mother’s funeral whether it hurt him for her to be the image of the person his wife always loved. Ginne only became angry, scoffed, and fled from her.

Not enough time had passed until Ginne remarried another woman (his third matrimony) who quickly began to hate Ruby for Ginne would do so as well. Now that hatred, Ruby says, is something without fundamental. But then again, Ginne’s wife will not think for herself unless Ginne thinks for her. That’s why they both got married in the first place! However, Ruby is not the only one who thinks that to be true. Her siblings think that too. And it is very ironic that all of Ginne’s life with Ruby, he has been trying to set his own children apart from her, but now is doing the exact opposite without wanting to. It is because of Ginne’s lack of affection to children that are used to it, that they are now understanding Ruby if just a little. In fact, one of Ruby’s siblings even asked her while outside during her fourteenth birthday how she could stand being left out. Ruby only smirked and said: You just get used to it…

Ever since that question, the siblings have somehow begun left the dominion of their father and resumed their curiosity for Ruby, the same curiosity they had long ago. And it has been Ginne’s error which has pushed the siblings to create an agreement with Ruby in order to watch out for each other as if they had no one but themselves, because Ruby is strongest in terms of emotions. The siblings are still a little indifferent to Ruby and vice versa, but it is Ruby’s love for the same books (which her siblings borrow her, or that Ruby brings to them) and her good humor that are breaking the ice with her siblings who happen to find refuge in that as well.