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Cleo was not supposed to be up that late, and they definitely were not supposed to be hanging out by the scrap pile of the factory she worked at, but they had a job to do and it could not wait.
Because of course her little brother had hit a growth spurt mere weeks before his first reaping, and of course now none of his good, proper, clothes fit him anymore, so it was up to Cleo to literally scrap together a nice enough outfit that he wouldn’t be reprimanded for disrespecting the Capitol.
Cleo knew that what they were doing was very illegal, she was stealing products that were not meant for the district people, the lavish fabrics were for the fancy people of the Capitol, but no one would notice, half the district was usually wearing stolen scrapped fabric anyways.
She had been working at that factory for a few months now, since they’d turned eighteen, it wasn’t so bad and she’d quickly picked up everyone’s habit of taking home whatever extra fabric was around, the overseers didn’t care, actually Cleo was pretty sure she’d seen them taking home entire rolls of fabric.
They were lucky, the peacekeepers are rather lax in District 8, at least under the current commander, but Cleo still remembered the lashings and beatings that happened on the daily with their previous commander. Before then their father had told her about another kind commander, and that before that there had been a cruel one. She wondered if that was a tactic of the Capitol to keep them submitted, to give them hope and take it away was probably a great way to keep unrest down, more so than constant relentless abuse.
It wasn’t good either, people starved and died of illness all the time. The factories were a breeding ground for all sorts of epidemics and it’s not like they had any facilities to care for the sick. Of course there are also the Games, Cleo would have been happy that it was her last year, that they were almost done with it, but her little brother was just starting, turning twelve just a few days before the Games.
It ate her alive, knowing they had no way of protecting him, she would volunteer for Liam in an instant, but the only year they had that possibility it was unlikely he’d be picked, and even if he did, and Cleo volunteered for him, he could still be reaped the years after. It was a terrifying possibility.
The suit would be a good birthday present. He’d look sharp, and stand tall and they would be fine. It was a good mantra, Cleo repeated it to herself as they worked, masterfully stitching together the dress pants from nothing until the first lights of the morning, when they snuck away from the factory, just to rejoin their colleagues there only a few hours later.