Jordan Paisley's P.O.V
Kate Pinsetter is getting fidgety, twisting her hands around in her lap. God, it's getting annoying. "The train should be here by now…" she keeps quietly repeating.
"So Jordan, how old are you?" she asks, attempting to start a conversation.
"I'm 14…" I reply awkwardly. I really hate talking to people that I don't like.
"And you, Adam?" she asks my fellow tribute.
"18." I can tell that he doesn't like Kate either. Kate Pinsetter is not a very nice or likeable person. And she's an idiot.
Then, from around the corner, the silver train appears, smooth as a bullet and shiny as a diamond. "Ah, here it is!" Kate squeals. Her voice is so annoying… I see Adam roll his eyes and I smirk in reply.
We get out of the shiny, black car and walk through the crowd of reporters with their cameras, filming our every move.
The reporters have us surrounded and I can barely see a metre in front of me. They're like flies buzzing around a cow's butt or something.
We practically run through the crowd, due to Kate not wanting anyone from such a low class to touch her, and so in less than a minute we are standing on the top step of the train.
In my peripheral vision I can see two girls, one with a tear streaked face- great, I hate it when people cry- and brown hair, the other with blonde hair, a knife and a piece of toast in her hand, and also one of their escorts. I can also hear some others coming down the hallway.
Then Kate shuts the door and the train starts to move again.
I go up to the crying girl, with the brown hair. She sort of looks like a much shorter version of me with less curly hair, so I have to help her, right?
"Uh, is this chick bothering you or something?" I ask her, "'Cause I can get her to go away, if you want." I glare at the blonde one. She looks me up and down, raising her eyebrows with a confused look on her face.
"No, she's fine where she is," she replies quietly. "She just mentioned my mum."
"And that's bad because…?" Adam says loudly, eavesdropping on our conversation, while walking past us to get some food from a snack table that's standing next to us. He has a habit of dong that.
"My mum's dead!" she spits back at him. Considering she was so quiet before, her voice can be loud when she wants it to be. Wow. Even blonde girl looks surprised.
Adam stands there, wide eyed and looking pretty stupid. Right now I kind of feel sorry for him but it is pretty funny. Getting yelled at by a girl who's at least 4 years younger than him, if not more.
"This would be Jodie," says the girl standing next to her, still grimacing at the sudden explosion of noise. "And I'm Elisha. Hi."
"Nice to meet you guys. I'm Jordan Paisley."
"Hello," says Jodie.
"Sorry to hear about your mum, Jodie. I know how you feel, my mum's dead too. She died in last year's Hunger Games, so it's pretty ironic that I got chosen too," I say.
"It's ironic for all of us then," says Elisha, frowning.
"Her dad was killed in the last Games and so was my mum," says Jodie.
"I have a theory," Elisha says thoughtfully, "that they purposely reaped children of tributes from the Quarter Quell, just to make it more exciting or something."
"Well it kind of makes sense," I say. "I mean, it is the Capitol..."
"Yeah, and it'd cause more fear in the districts to kill off whoever's left in the torn families," says Jodie. "It's like they're saying, 'your parents just died, how about we kill you too?'."
"Hey, what can you guys do that could help in the Games? I reckon if we're all good at something useful we should form an alliance," Elisha suggests.
"It'd be a huge 'fuck you and your plans!' to the Capitol," she continues, smirking.
"And maybe one of us could sort of avenge the deaths of our parents," I say, pointing out the obvious.
"Yeah, that too," she laughs.
"I'll go with it," Jodie says.
The next 2 or so hours pass in a blur as we talk about our lives and what abilities we can use in the upcoming Hunger Games. We could pretty much write a book on everything we talk about. Turns out that we can all climb trees pretty well, Elisha is good at spear throwing and Elisha and I can both use swords. I can use a pistol but they don't have guns in the Hunger Games.
The cart we used to be in is now full of people, filling their stomachs or watching reruns of The Hunger Games on TV, so we now sit on a couch in the District 12 cart at the far end of the train.
We can hear the door open to let the tributes from District 1 coming aboard.
"Welcome!" we hear one of the escorts say from the main cart.
The escorts stopped getting us to welcome the new tributes on board at around District 7. They must have figured there were enough people around the main cart for them to get at least one 'Hey' from the others.
"Wait. I think our team needs a name," I say.
"Why? I've never heard of anyone naming their alliances," Elisha retorts, looking at me dubiously. "The Careers only have a name because of all the fans they get each year."
"We might get more sponsors that way. I mean, they might think of our alliance as more important and they'll remember us better too," Jodie says.
"She's right," I say, "We'll be more heaps memorable to the sponsors."
"Well if it's two vs. one then I think it's agreed that we're naming our alliance," Elisha says. "But you have to actually think of a proper name, otherwise the whole idea of naming it is pretty pointless..."
We ponder for about 5 minutes until I almost yell, "I've got one!"
"Well, spit it out then," says Elisha, clearly bored with the whole idea.
"We're all from pretty un-memorable, un-important districts on the outlines of Panem, right?" I ask them.
"No shit, idiot" Elisha says, rolling her eyes, "Now tell us the damn name already!"
"Okay, calm down!" I say loudly back to her, holding up my hands in surrender, "The name I came up with is 'The Outliners'. A simple group made up of three people from some of the outline districts who just want to be noticed."
"Nice description," Jodie says.
"Well, as weird as this is, it's settled. We are 'The Outliners'," Elisha says.