Jodie Ann Frostbite's P.O.V
We pull into District 11 smoothly and quietly, as though trying not drawing too much attention to ourselves and yet, everyone outside stops and stares at the train.
"Jodie Ann! Where are you?" calls Effie Trinket, our escort.
"Over here!" I yell back, feeling slightly annoyed. I just want to sit alone for once...
"Oh, good, I need you in the main cart to welcome your fellow tributes on board," Effie says, poking her head through the door. She's wearing a very bright orange dress, bright pink lipstick and a bright red wig in an afro style. Not exactly matching but I don't think anyone from the Capitol has any idea of how weird and scary they look. I think the colours are supposed to be like fire, to match the usual Opening Ceremony outfits we have to wear, but I can't really tell.
I get up and follow her into the cart at the very front. The doors are open and the District 11 tributes are on the top step, allowing the cameras to get one last glimpse of them before their trip to the Capitol.
I look past them and see a huge wide open space with the occasional cluster of houses. Next to their old Justice Building, I can see an apple orchard that seems to stretch forever. I can't even see the fences on the sides, that's how big the whole place is. I wish I could live there.
Unfortunately, however, I live in the Community Home, a terrible place for orphans in the Seam, District 12. The worst building in the poorest part of a very poor district, probably the poorest. Serious over-kill, in my opinion.
I pull my eyes away from the beautiful view thinking that probably only handful of people from 12 have ever seen this place. And now I'm one of them. As I look away from the view, my eyes pass over the snack table, crammed with enough food to feed a Seam family for over a month, and I realise that I haven't eaten since yesterday morning, the last time the people who run the Community Home actually bothered to feed us.
I stand just out of view of all the cameras, staring longingly at the table.
I've lived in the Community Home since the last Hunger Games, when my mother was killed in the Quarter Quell. I was 13 then. I don't have a father either, since he was killed in a mining accident when I was about 9.
"Jodie Ann, the train's left the station~. You can go eat now~," a male voice says. Not hesitating, I rush up to the snack table and quickly fill up a plate of food, not thinking of who it was that just spoke or how he knew I was hungry. Or why he only called me Jodie Ann, rather than Jodie as almost everyone calls me.
I realise who it is pretty quickly though.
"Kevin, you can go away now," I tell him over my shoulder, reaching for a small cake covered with bright red berries.
Kevin Baxter is my annoying and mean fellow tribute from 12. Unfortunately, he lives in the house next door to the Community Home. He's only 15, a year older than me, but a lot stronger than me. He's also figured out that if I go into a temporary quiet state it means I am hungry and have just seen food. I just went into one now so here he is. Any excuse to bully me and he'll use it.
He takes the cake off my plate and holds it out of my reach, far above my head. "Oh, can't you reach the cake?" he asks mockingly.
"Nobody likes a shorty, Jodie Ann" he says to me. I get these kinds of things enough at the Home but now it's ridiculous. We're all going to be dead soon so there's no point in being such a dick.
"And you know, if you keep eating like that, Jodie Ann, you're gonna get really f-" Kevin stops talking when a knife nearly hits him in the back of the head, actually slicing off a few hairs.
We turn and stare at the thrower, both equally shocked that a knife almost killed him. A girl, with long, loose blonde hair and a stern look on her face, comes out of the shadows of the hallway that leads to the bedrooms. She must be the tribute from 11.
"You heard her, Kevin. Now piss off."
Kevin leaves with a startled look on his face, probably still surprised that the girl almost killed him.
She turns around slightly, checking when she's sure he's gone she whispers, "Whoops!" to me.
"Huh?" I say. "What do you mean, 'whoops'?"
"It wasn't exactly supposed to get that close to his head, but, oh well," she continues. She pulls the knife out of the wall and butters a piece of toast.
"At least it shut him up," she says jokingly.
For some obscure reason, now she's got a slight smile on her face. I don't get what she's smiling about. As an inexperienced knife thrower, she could have hit and killed Kevin, or even me!
"So I just heard that your name is Jodie," she says, with toast in her mouth.
"Yeah, that's me," I say quietly, smiling awkwardly. I'm still too freaked out, after what she did with the knife, to properly introduce myself. She seems to take it as shyness or something like that.
"I'm Elisha Bailey, 14 years old and obviously from District 11."
"My full name's Jodie Ann Frostbite, I'm the same age as you and I'm from District 12," I counter, still a bit quietly.
"Cool name, Jodie."
"Thanks..." I reply.
"Hey, I was just thinking, seeing as we're like the same age and both in the Hunger Games, we might have other things in common." She takes another bite out of her toast. Weird conversation starter...
"What kind of other things?" I ask.
''Was your mum killed in the last games?" she asks nonchalantly. How does she know that?
"Yeah…" I quietly answer, pretty shy and sad about the fact of it. I never want my dead family to come into my conversations. "Uh, how do you know that?"
"Dude, did you even watch the last Games?" she asks sarcastically "Miranda Frostbite, District 12. Same last name as you and her dying words included your name."
"Wow. Good memory," I say, struggling to hold back the tears the come flooding through my eyes like the memories in my mind. I fail. She doesn't realise at first.
"Yeah I have a habit of remembering relatively useless things," she says stuffing the rest of the toast in her mouth.
I sob loudly. She thinks my mum's last words are useless.
"Oh shit, I didn't think this would happen," she says, freaking out when she sees that I'm crying. Something tells me that she's not personally in these situations very often. "It's okay, dude, I know how you feel. My dad died in the Quarter Quell, just like your mum did. That's what I was getting at; both of us lost a parent in the last Games," she says quickly.
This makes me calm down a little. So, she's not an insensitive rock.
Then, Effie walks in saying "District 10, coming up!"
Elisha and I both turn around and look out the window, to see never ending paddocks, stretching for miles around.
I wonder who we'll pick up here.