Ruth Winsterhand | District 1

RUTH WINSTERHAND | 15 YEARS OLD | DISTRICT ONE

She is neither tall nor thin nor rich nor charming, and therefore it is not surprising that she is ignored.

Well, it could be worse. She knows girls not so different from her who are horribly visible, teased and tormented by the popular crowd until they take to hiding in the bathroom during lunch and arriving late to every class rather than risking the halls while they are crowded. There's always something wrong with those girls, some flaw or another to mark them as a target. Acne - a stutter - a stained school uniform never replaced. But if the bullies decide you're worth hurting, they'll always find something to prove themselves right.

Ruth herself has too many freckles, and too many sisters, and too many responsibilities at home. So she knows to be grateful that she is, at least for the moment, invisible.

She is good at being grateful. Count your blessings, her dad used to tell her, and now that he is gone all his advice is sacred. So she counts them: roof over her head, clothes on her back, food on the table. Her mom is still here. All five of her sisters are still here. There are so many people in the world who are so much less fortunate than she is. She really has nothing to complain about.

So she doesn't complain. She is good at not complaining, at not being resentful. Sure, maybe she'd rather be a little less invisible at school, not in the way that gets you in trouble with bullies. Maybe sometimes she gets a little sick of always having to run off to the grocery store, the post office, the pharmacy, instead of going where she wants to go. Maybe she'd like a little more pocket money, a little more free time, a little more peace and quiet at home instead of her sisters always barging in. But she knows it's no use wasting her time thinking about those things. Count your blessings, her dad said - not your curses. She obeys him.

Not that Ruth has any problems big enough to warrant the name of curses. A curse is something out of a storybook, dramatic: it kills you on your sixteenth birthday, turns you into a monster, tears your children from you. Ruth has - inconveniences, that's all. There's no reason to let them upset her as much as she sometimes feels the urge to do; no reason for the way her whole body tenses when an errand is sprung on her unexpectedly, no reason for the bitterness of her frustration when she wakes yet again with a stomachache she knows will prevent her from eating breakfast. No reason, when her family is crowded around the kitchen table and one sister or another interrupts the first sentence Ruth has said all dinner, that she should have to stifle the urge to scream.

She is grateful. She is good at being grateful.

She is good at all those sorts of virtues - the ones that make her teachers call her a pleasure to have in class; the ones that make her mother say thank you, Ruth, you're such a help to me, when she thinks of it, and the two of them happen to be awake at the same time. She is good at gratitude, and patience, and hard work, and keeping her temper - and if these are not the traits she used to admire in the heroes of her favorite stories, if this is not the person she used to dream of being, well, growing up means letting go of your dreams. Real life isn't like in books or on TV. In real life there aren't any quests or adventures, and there's no time to daydream about them either. In real life your dad gets sick and your mom can't do everything all by herself and you're the eldest, you have to step up.

In real life you count it among your blessings that you'll never go to the Games, however much you used to hero-worship the victors, however much you used to dream of standing among them. Because that's for the rich kids, the kids who train, and in some Districts there aren't any of those to keep people like you at home where you belong.

In real life at home is where you belong.

Ruth is good at reminding herself of that.