There's a boy sitting at the back of a classroom in District 2, but he's the only one.

"Who's that kid?" he hears the teachers say.

"That's Cato. Ignore him, he prefers to be isolated."

"Really? That's unusual, a kid his age."

"It's just how he is, he's always been that way. Pay no attention to him, he prefers it like that." It's true, he really does. He's used to conversations like this going on, him being branded 'weird' or 'strange' or 'unusual'. They don't bother him, he's left alone because of them.

A third voice can be heard suddenly, and she's a kindly sounding woman. "My granddaugher's a bit like that. She doesn't like being around people, she's alone most of the time..." It's unusual for Cato to hear about others similar to him in what they do, but he thinks nothing of it.

He doesn't listen to the remainder of the conversation, so the boy nearly jumps out of his seat when the following day he's given some paper, a pen, and a name during the lunch break he usually can hide from the world during.

"Here. I thought you could use a friend." Cato shakes his head with force, and defiance.

"I'm not playing with the other children, miss."

He's more than slightly confused when the old woman, who must be near retirement by now, just laughs. "I was talking about my granddaughter, Clove. You seem quite similar to her, so I thought you might get along." He doesn't really care about making acquaintances, but to avoid making the lady sad, he nods and begins to write a message in scrawly writing, clearly a child's. It's barely three lines long in his massive writing, the spelling is bad and the drawing of a dog is messy, but in the end he's proud of his attempt, which he never thought he would be proud of beforehand.

The lady comes back and he's folded it in half, writing 'Clove' on the one side. She accepts it, and tells him she shall give it her later.

That night, a girl somewhere frowns as she reads out a note for her.

It's without a question that she hides it in the back of her drawer. She doesn't want a friend, but she keeps it as a memory of the one time when another child was nice to her. After all, until she was passed the letter, the closest she ever got to acceptance were the days when she was hit with words rather than fists...