To Be A Stranger

The arrow whizzed through the air and landed on the target in the middle of the room. It wasn't a bull's-eye, but it was pretty darn close.

It wasn't what Jezebel had aimed for. She grabbed another arrow and strung it into the bow. She wasn't going to quit until she got her bulls-eye. She was stubborn and always wanted her way.

Being the younger sister of Atarah, who was very sick, Jezebel didn't really get her way all the time at home. No matter how many times Jezebel stamped her foot and begged for attention, her parents still dotted on Atarah and not Jezebel.

Well this would finally make her family stop and watch her. Jezebel was finally going to get the attention that she demanded.

She let the arrow fly. It still didn't hit the center of the target. No worries, Jezebel still had five more arrows.

Atarah, Atarah, Atarah. She was all her parents could think about. Jezebel took a steadying breath and reloaded the bow. She looked at the target with a blank face and imagined Atarah's face on the target.

The arrow went flying, hitting dead center, exactly where Jezebel imagined the center of Atarah's forehead would be.

But it didn't make her feel better like she thought it would. It just made her feel worse. What type of person was she? What kind of sister was she? To wish Atarah dead just so Jezebel could be the apple of their parents eye.

But for all of her life, Jezebel had been the shadow in her family. She had been ignored and put aside. All they cared about was Atarah and getting her better, even though Atarah was going to die. It was just a fact of life, one that Jezebel had accepted long ago.

Jezebel didn't get along with her sister for the plain simple reason that she didn't want to get close to Atarah just for Atarah to die.

So she closed up, and pushed people away.

"Good shot," Rex said from beside her.

"Go away," Jezebel barked at him. She pushed people away, that was what she did. She pushed her parents away, she pushed Atarah away, and now she was pushing Rex away.

She couldn't help herself. It was what she did. Everyone had a character flaw, that was hers.

"Keep shooting like that in the arena, and you'll be golden," Rex told her anyway. Jezebel was getting tired of him. He clung to her like a three year old being left at preschool. Jezebel hated clingers.

"I'll shoot you," Jezebel shot back, her eyes flaring. Rex shrugged.

"Good luck catching me," Rex said.

"It's on," Jezebel said. He held out his hand and the two of them shook on it.

Jezebel strung another arrow and turned away from Rex. After she shot the arrow she looked around for him, but he was off socializing with some of the other tributes. Well good for him.

It didn't matter though. It was each tribute for themselves. And Jezebel was going to take care of herself, just like she had been doing for most of her life.

Rex was used to taking care of others. He had been doing that ever since his mother died. He took care of his father and his twin brother Leo. And with his dad's condition, Rex was constantly cleaning up messes and making sure no rumors of the Long family was spread around.

Who was going to do that now? Who was going to sober up his dad and keep Leo out of trouble now? Rex was the only one keeping his family from falling apart. The only one who could keep the three of them together.

It was freeing actually. Not having to give his father a cold bath, not having to fix a mailbox that Leo broke. Liberating. Life changing.

He had always wondered how his mother had done it. She was the soul of the family, the one that had kept all of them together. But she was dead now, and it was Rex's job.

Sometimes he envied her. She no longer had to put up with a drunk husband, didn't have to worry about what her delinquent son was up to next.

And now Rex didn't have to do it anymore either. He was free, just like his mother.

Rex headed over to the only empty station in the room. The one on tying knots. The most boring station in the room. The most useless one.

The woman at the station handed Rex a rope.

"Under, then over, then this piece goes over here and this piece comes through like this," she said as she weaved her own rope into a knot masterpiece.

Rex actually found himself intrigued.

"How'd you do that?"

She smiled at him, "lots of practice. This knot is very useful for making snares."

"Snares? As in traps to catch rabbits?"

"Yes, among other things."

Rex changed his mind. Maybe knot tying wasn't as useless as he thought.

Tying shoes was something that everyone learned at a young age, when they were children and their brains were like sponges. But for the longest time, Rex just couldn't get it.

It made no sense to him. Bending laces in half and making loops just to make a bow.

He was the last kid in his class to figure out how to tie his laces. And for weeks on end, his peers made fun of him for the fact that he couldn't.

Children were just so cruel. Leo used to stand up for Rex. The other children were frightened of Leo. Rex was probably Leo's only friend, and Leo was Rex's only friend.

They were twins, and all they had was each other.

"Tying knots sure isn't your forte," the woman laughed at Rex's mess of a knot. Rex looked down at it and saw that she was right. "Maybe we should try an easier one?"

Rex tried to concentrate as the woman held on to each end of the string and made the simplest knot in the world.

Rex tried, but his didn't look like hers in the least bit.

"I think I'll try a new station," Rex said, thanking the lady and moving on. There was no point in staying at a station that was of no use to him. He didn't want to waste what precious time he had on a tying knots.

So he wandered over to the ever popular berry station where two girls were pouring over the books and trying to commit the edible berries to memory.

"So blackberries are black and blueberries are blue? Imagine that," one of the girls said as she flipped through the pages of the book.

"But strawberries aren't made of straw," the other one replied back.

"But chokeberries make you choke," Rex said to them.

The two girls stared at him, shocked that he had talked to them.

"I'm Rex," he said.

"Annabel, and this is Janie."

The girls looked freakishly identical. They both had brown hair, Annabel's was straight and rigid while Janie's was wild and out of control. They both had piercing brown eyes. Janie's were big while Annabel's were small. They both had that nice look about them. Like they were girls from next door. They suited each other well, and Rex knew that if it weren't for the games, then Annabel and Janie would be best friends forever. BFF's.

The girls fell back into conversation as if they had known each other their whole lives.

Rex felt very out of the loop. He had never been able to connect with anyone just like that. And he had always been jealous of those who could.

"There are tricks around every corner," the man at the station said, "if you're not sure about the berry, then don't eat it. One bite of a poisonous berry and you can be dead in seconds."

"Or just have someone else eat it and see what happens," Rex said. Janie and Annabel both looked at him in horror. Rex had been through hell with his dad and brother, he knew what it took to survive in a world like this.

Obviously, Janie and Annabel hadn't had any hardships in their lives. Or if they had, it hadn't set them back. Because they were both so optimistic and nice, plain nice.

Rex didn't know that Annabel didn't have a mother anymore like himself. He didn't know that Janie didn't have a father anymore.

Janie didn't know that Rex's mother was dead. That she had been dead for a long time. Janie saw something in his eyes, a sadness of sorts. She saw that he had seen things that no child should ever have to put up. She wanted to put an arm around him, she wanted to comfort him. Because that was what Janie did. She stored her emotions up and put on a happy face. She made others feel better, because that made her feel better.

Janie found herself wondering about the other tributes. Wondering what their stories were, if they had siblings, if they had boyfriends or girlfriends. Other people fascinated her. She loved to hear about other's lives. She loved to people watch.

She did it all the time. She would sit at her favorite cafe back in District 8, drinking her chai tea and watching as others went about their day. It was a good way to pass time. Janie liked to imagine that the woman sitting in the corner was waiting for her one true love, that the customer at the counter had a major crush on the barista.

It almost felt normal to be sitting there next to Annabel and Rex. Well, more so with Annabel. It was like they were cut from the same cloth. Janie had heard that people who were exactly alike couldn't get along. But Janie thought that it was a load of dirty laundry. Because Janie could see herself being best friends with Annabel.

Janie didn't know much about Annabel, but she could tell that Annabel was a genuinely good person. A girl who wouldn't be able to hurt a fly, just like Janie.

Janie needed a friend, she had always craved human contact. She was going to need someone in the Games that she could count on. Someone that she could trust. Everyone needed someone they could trust. Janie fully trusted Annabel, and she knew that if she didn't make it out alive, she wanted Annabel to.

Janie shot a look over at the Careers, they didn't trust one another, but they were still an alliance, a very strong one, one that would terrorize the other tributes. Janie knew that once they got in the arena, all hell was going to be let loose, and most of the other tributes would forget who they were.

Janie wasn't going to. She just wanted to help. She wanted to show Angelo that life was short, and that nothing was worth getting upset about. She wanted Rex to know that no matter what, someone out there loved him. She wanted her mother to know that things would be alright, she wanted her boyfriend to know that she loved him and wanted a future with him.

There were so many things that the tributes didn't know about the other tributes. Lives had been cut short, forcing twenty four children together, and they didn't know a single thing about the other twenty three.

They didn't know that Angelo had major problems. Although, Janie was slowly finding out about his anger problems.

It wasn't a known fact that Sabine was abandoned as a baby, went through several foster families before finally being adopted.

It wasn't a known fact that four tributes didn't have a mother, while four tributes didn't have a father anymore.

They didn't know what Annabel's favorite color was or what Amira's favorite song was. Nolan's favorite number and Mallow's favorite author weren't known. Artis didn't know the name of Amethyst's boyfriend, and Ross didn't know who Liviana's best friend friend was.

They were strangers, pushed into a room together for a few days before being shuffled to an arena where they would kill one another.

Strangers. And they were slowly learning about one another. Learning things that made the others feel human.

Annabel and Janie were friends now, they would never be able to hurt one another. As strangers, they might be able to, but not as friends.

It might be easier for all of them to keep to themselves, to not learn about the others.

But they were all humans. Just children. And they craved company, they wanted friendship, they needed to be loved.

So even though in just a few days, death was going to occur, they still wanted company, wanted to make friends, wanted to be loved.

Because right now, their worlds still sort of made sense.

Not for long. And most of them weren't ready for what was about to happen. None of them saw it coming.

To be a stranger, one had to stay closed off.

Trivia Question: Who were the members of the girl power alliance?

Previous Trivia Answer: Meleana said "We should totally get the poisonous berries and slip it in the Career's food supply."

Please review, if you do, you'll get another chapter. If you don't, well...you'll still get another chapter, so I guess that's an empty threat. But still, reviewing is fun!

~*Misty*~