Gage Aspen - District 7 (fin)

Name: Gage Aspen

Age: 16, almost 17

Gender: Cis female

District: 7

At 5'8, Gage is tall for a girl of her years, her build slender but toned. Her dark hair is almost black, tumbling down her back in a shaggy, unkempt cascade and reaching just below her shoulder blades. Its color is complemented by the dark olive of her skin tone. She has strong chiseled features, with a sharp jaw and prominent cheekbones. Her eyes are undoubtedly the most striking facet of her appearance; they are a dull gray, smokey and glacial, and somehow seem never to manifest emotion. They have seen too much, and as a result, appear empty and uninhabited.

Gage sports a labret piercing in her lip, which she achieved at home with a safety pin, rubbing alcohol, and a regular small circle earring. She also has a small scarification tattoo on the right side of her neck - a scorpion. She dresses for practicality and versatility rather than for comfort or style, most often donning close-fitting, home-sewn leather attire. Her fingerless leather gloves are a frequent feature of her apparel, as well as her favorite leather boots, which rise mid thigh-high.

Gage exhibits a hardened, tough demeanor. She is slow to spare a smile, and when she does it's rarely genuine. She has always had difficulty interacting with other children; her aggressive personality and persistent disregard for the sensitivity of others has never earned her many friends. She realizes this, but makes no effort to change. While she is undeniably lonely, a part of her has no desire for a personal connection with others; she is too afraid of rejection and abandonment to open herself up to those around her. She attempts to ward off well-meaning offers of companionship by appearing intimidating and unapproachable.

Gage has a wry sense of humor and a propensity for sarcasm, especially at the expense of others. She is also prone to using rather crude language. She is brief, blunt, and often rude, and thanks to these tendencies she has never made a great first impression with anyone. She is dour and taciturn, uncharismatic, and generally disagreeable. People perceive her as a negative, irritable person, or more often, simply a bitch.

In the eyes of her peers, her only redeeming quality is her utter rejection of authority. Even though most of the other students don’t necessary like her, the majority of them do look up to her, or at least find her entertaining. Her squabbles with teachers and even Peacekeepers are often a hot topic in the gossip grapevine. She doesn’t mind that the rumors always exaggerate her skirmishes, warping them into ridiculously sensational heroic escapades. Some kids are scared of her -- which she also doesn’t really mind -- but most are awed by her fearlessness.

It can often be difficult to distinguish between those who genuinely want to be friends with her, and the social-climbers who simply want to be seen hanging out with her in order to advance themselves on the popularity ladder. Her reputation makes it almost impossible to tell which people like her simply for her popularity -- or more accurately her infamy -- and which are sincere. It just gives her another reason to distrust ostensibly friendly advances.

When she’s by herself, she is a completely different person. She loves spending time alone to recharge. As often as possible, she slinks off into the woods behind her house, trekking through the brambles to a small, secluded spot that she’s adopted as her own: a huge, mossy rock, hidden in a grove of trees and overshadowed by a weeping willow, the perfect place for pondering and introspection. She’s sure that she is the only one who knows about it. It’s the only place in the world where she feels completely comfortable, free of her peers’ constant scrutiny and judgment. Sometimes she stays out all night, mindful of the time but knowing that she won’t be missed.
She was raised in a poverty-ridden sector of DIstrict 7. Besides Gage, the small family comprises only her older brother and her dad, both of whom work as lumberjacks. Growing up as the only girl in a family of umpteenth-generation lumberjacks, Gage inevitably turned out as a bit of a tomboy.

She has little memory of her mother, who passed away when she was barely five years old. Her father never speaks of his late wife; other women come and go, but none linger long enough to take Joann's place as Mom. Besides, Gage loathes every girl her father brings home. She feels that each one’s presence is an unspoken betrayal to the mother who she struggles to remember.

She and her brother, Juniper, aren’t close; Gage has always felt that Juniper was favored by their father, being the first-born and the only boy. She resents him for it. The two are constantly at odds, and Gage assumes that her contempt for him is mutual. She would never guess that her brother privately wishes that he knew her better. Juniper can remember a time before their mother passed away, when Gage was still his little sister. He would give anything for them to be close again.

Ever since she was little, Gage was seen as a problem child at school. While she wasn’t “popular” among her peers, she was often admired and congratulated by the other children for her open defiance in the face of authority. She always chose to hang around the other “bad kids” rather than the more popular in-crowd, even though she probably would have been readily accepted into any group she wanted.

Practically every student knew her name, and heaven knows every teacher was well-acquainted. With her aggressive personality, on top of her tendency to stir up conflict and get tangled up with people she hated, she was first-class gossip material. Rumors regarding Gage circulated like wildfire -- always bad, but often “good-bad.” Of course, they were all lies, even if most of them were rooted in truth. For example, it was accepted as fact that Gage had been involved in a scandalous affair with the former head disciplinarian, Mr. Lewinsky, and that their short-lived fling was clearly the explanation for his resignation. In reality, his reason for quitting had absolutely nothing to do with Gage. Still, she never technically denied it. Mr. Lewinsky was quite young, and even the most hardcore-hetero guy could tell he wasn’t half bad-looking. When the subject was brought up with her, which it frequently was, she would respond simply with a sultry smirk or even a growl.

In all honesty, she sometimes rather enjoyed playing with people’s heads. Guys loved to tell stories about doing all sorts of things with her, emphasizing either how bad she was in bed, or how, sigh, bad she was in bed. Gage was helpless to stop it, so she went with it. Besides, she knew that any effort to deny the rumors would be futile; the only point served by denial would be to admit shame in her reputation, which would obviously be the dumbest move she could make. She flaunted her infamy with brazen, shameless, and completely feigned pride.

Privately, though, she would have liked nothing more than to disappear, to become irrelevant. Thanks to what everyone thought they knew about her, no one really knew her at all. No one would guess that she was was a virgin, let alone that she might not even like boys. No one was there to confide in about her struggles at home, her insecurities, her loneliness. Some kids saw her as a badass rebel, some saw her as an attention-seeking slut, and most saw her as a bitch, but no one really saw her.

table by onyx