I CHECK MY watch. The first initiate should be
jumping any minute now.
The net
waits beside me, wide and sturdy and lit from above by the sun. The last time I
was here was last year’s Choosing Day, and before then, the day I jumped. I
didn’t want to remember the feeling of inching toward the edge of the building,
my mind and my body going haywire with terror, the awful drop, the helpless
flailing of limbs, the slap of the net fibers against my arms and neck.
“How’d the
prank go?” Lauren says.
It takes me
a second to figure out what she means: the program, and my supposed desire to
prank Zeke. “Haven’t done it yet. Our work time didn’t overlap much today.”
“You know,
if you were up for some serious studying, we could use you in tech services,”
she says.
“If you’re
recruiting, you should talk to Zeke. He’s much better than I am.”
“Yeah, but
Zeke doesn’t know when to shut it,”
she says. “We don’t recruit for skill so much as compatibility. We spend a lot
of time together.”
I grin.
Zeke does like to surround himself with chatter, but that’s never bothered me.
Sometimes it’s nice not to worry about providing any conversation.
Lauren
plays with one of the rings in her eyebrow, and we wait. I try to crane my neck
to see the top of the building from the ground, but all I can see is sky.
“Bet you
it’s one of my Dauntless-borns,” she says.
“It’s
always a Dauntless-born. No bet.”
They have
an unfair advantage, the Dauntless-born. They usually know what’s at the bottom
of the jump, though we try to keep it from them as much as possible—the only
time we use this entrance to headquarters is on Choosing Day, but the Dauntless
are curious, they explore the compound when they think no one is watching. They
also grow up cultivating in themselves the desire to make bold moves, to take
drastic action, to commit themselves fully to whatever they decide to do. It
would take a strange kind of transfer to know how to do that without having
been taught.
Then I see
her.
Not a black
streak like I was expecting, but gray, tumbling through the air. I hear a snap of the net pulling taught around
the metal supports, and it shifts to cradle her. For a second I stare, amazed,
at the familiar clothing that she wears. Then I put my hand out, into the net,
so she can reach it.
She wraps
her fingers around mine, and I pull her across. As she tumbles over the side, I
grab her arms to steady her. She’s small, and thin—fragile-looking, like the
impact with the net should have shattered her. Her eyes are wide and bright
blue.
“Thank
you,” she says. She may look fragile, but her voice is steady.
“Can’t
believe it,” Lauren says, with more Dauntless swagger than usual. “A Stiff, the
first to jump? Unheard of.”
She’s
right. It is unheard of. It’s unheard of for a Stiff to join Dauntless, even. There
were no Abnegation transfers last year. And before that, for a long time, there
was only me.
“There’s a
reason why she left them, Lauren,” I say, feeling distant from the moment, from
my own body. I pull myself back and say to the initiate, “What’s your name?”
“Um . . .”
She hesitates, and I feel, for a strange, brief moment, like I know her. Not
from my time in Abnegation, not from school, but on a deeper level, somehow,
her eyes and her mouth searching for a name, dissatisfied with the one she finds,
just like I was. My initiation instructor gave me an escape from my old
identity. I can give her one, too.
“Think
about it,” I say, smiling a little. “You don’t get to pick again.”
“Tris,” she
says, like she’s already sure of it.
“Tris,”
Lauren says. “Make the announcement, Four.”
She’s my
initiate, after all, this transfer from Abnegation.
I look over
my shoulder, at the crowd of Dauntless members who have gathered to watch the
initiates jump, and I announce, “First jumper—Tris!”
This way,
they’ll remember her, not for the gray she wears but for her first act of
bravery. Or insanity. Sometimes they’re the same thing.
Everyone
cheers, and as the sound fills the cavern, another initiate plummets into the
net with a blood-curdling scream. A girl dressed in Candor black and white.
This time, Lauren is the one to reach across the net to help her. I touch a
hand to Tris’s back to guide her toward the stairs, in case she’s not as steady
as she seems. Before she takes the first step, I say, “Welcome to Dauntless.”
