Caresse Oliver [District 10]

Cary has orange-blonde hair that reaches her mid-back and is very wavy, and usually kept down, in a high ponytail, or in a fishtail braid. She has large brown eyes and long eyelashes. Cary's nose is small and rabbit-like. Her mouth is unattractively large and her lips an odd shade of pink. She is pale, with no freckles.

She is short, but not completely lacking in strength. Cary usually wears a white t-shirt, a tanish thick skirt, and goes barefoot. On Reaping day she wears a dark purple dress that reaches her mid-shin, though she stays barefoot. She enjoys being without shoes, though sometimes she puts socks on in the house to keep warm.

Cary is a very quiet person, hardly ever saying anything at all. She tends to keep her opinions hidden, nodding her head and agreeing with people just to keep from fighting. She does not like fighting, or when people raise their voices. She is easily made to panic, but also easy to calm down if you say the right words and do the right things. Cary loves helping people, and usually will not say no to doing a favor for someone.

She isn't the brightest penny, and has to look to others for help solving problems quite often. She doesn't usually let this bother her, although sometimes her inability to understand can annoy other people. She likes to draw, but it isn't a hobby of any kind to her, she just likes it and is good at it when she does it. She actually prefers to peek around and find someone she can help with their hobby. She adapts, not liking coming up with things on her own and having very little imagination.

"Butterflies can't see their wings. They can't see their own beauty and they leave it for others to see." Caresse talks about animals a lot. She thinks of them just as someone would a human, making them her friends and talking to them when she has no one else to talk to. She defends them, sometimes without being provoked. She remembers things, little things that people said weeks ago. Those little moments when a penny is dropped and no one picks it up.

Her family consists of her mother, father, two older brothers Phillip and Todd, and her older sister Bernadette, who is still Reaping age. She gets along with them well, shaping herself to what they want her to be, only sometimes panicking because of the conflicting expectations. In those cases she runs away to cry, questioning why people don't like her, and overreacting out of control.

Cary was born to Phoebe and Leonard Oliver, their final child. Because their previous children had turned out intelligent, creative, and successful even at their very early age, they expected nothing different from Caresse. When they realized she was the opposite of her siblings, they began to shame her, until eventually she realized what was going on and started trying to make things right. If she couldn't be clever, she would make herself useful. It worked, somewhat, though it turned her into a servant in her own house.

Her sister was kind, and never asked much from her but that she make up her own mind instead of going with whatever her parents thought she would want. It only confused Cary, but she still loved her sister so much. They would go on walks and go swimming together, laughing and splashing around. Then they would go back to the chicken farm they called home and do their chores side-by-side.

A few years ago many chickens went missing, and after a thorough search Phillip discovered feathers under Cary's bed. It was automatically suspected she had done something with the chickens, but no one knew why or what she would do with them. It was decided she sold them so she would have money for candy, and her parents stopped trusting her right then. The last person who really trusted her was her sister, but Cary wanted to please more. So she made "friends" of her sister's classmates.