Insurgent - Alternate Beginning

            I WENT THROUGH four beginnings in Insurgent before I found the right one. This was probably my favorite, taking place a little while after the Dauntless attack simulation, when Tobias and Tris are starting to get restless in the Amity compound. Ultimately I decided I didn’t want a break in time between the end of Divergent and the beginning of Insurgent; I wanted the stories to be continuous, which is how they felt in my mind, so I started the book with our heroes jumping off a train (a far more appropriate beginning for them, I think). But there is something about this quiet start that I still like, because it feels like Amity does: peaceful, but with the sense that this is just the eye of the storm, and something bad is still on its way.

+ + +

            I wake with his name in my mouth.
            Will.
            There are so many faces that I should see in my nightmares, but for the past few weeks, it has only been him. I watch him crumple to the pavement every night. Dead. My doing.
            It is not night now, though. It is midafternoon. I hear insects buzzing in the distant trees. Warm metal touches the back of my skull and my knees, the rails of the train tracks.
            The trains haven’t run since the simulation attack. I take that as a good sign. If the trains were running, that would mean that some order has returned to the city behind us, and the only order that is possible right now is the kind we would find under Erudite control. As long as the trains are still, everyone’s minds are their own. It is consolation enough.
            On my right are Tobias’s denim-covered legs. He lies with his head on the other rail, his eyes closed. He wears Abnegation gray, because we didn’t bring any clothes with us when we escaped the Dauntless compound. I barely notice it most of the time. The color looks right on him.
            I think he’s asleep, but he takes my wrist and sits up, looking down at me. Sweat runs down the side of his face, making it shine.
            “You okay?” he says.
            I sit up too, massaging my aching neck. “Yeah. Why?” I sound too defensive. He’ll know I’m trying to hide something.
            Or maybe he’s gotten so used to deceit in my voice that he won’t notice. I lie to him all the time now.
            “You cried out,” he says. “If you’re screaming in your sleep, Tris, you aren’t okay.”
            I have two dead parents, I killed one of my best friends, and Tobias, one of the only people I have left, has barely touched me since he told me he loved me and I didn’t say it back. If okay exists, it is not this.
            “I’m fine,” I say. “All right?”
            He nods, and releases my wrist.
            “We should go back soon,” he says, standing. He wipes his face with the hem of his shirt. I catch a glimpse of the patch of Dauntless flames tattooed on his side, over his rib cage. He may wear Abnegation clothing now, but he will always be Dauntless; it’s written on his skin, like it’s written on mine.
            “Trains are still out of commission,” he adds. “That’s good.”
            We talk this way a lot now—short sentences, nothing deep or profound. It isn’t because there’s nothing to talk about. It’s just the opposite. There is too much to talk about, so we don’t. We spend hours together without conversation.
            I twist around to see the skyline. All the buildings are covered with the haze of too much distance, but I can still see the Hub’s two prongs stabbing the sky. I feel a pang of something—sadness, maybe, or longing—in my stomach. I want to go back. I have to go back.
            “I won’t be able to stand it here for much longer,” I say.
            “I won’t either.”
            I know that. We were both built for war. The worse things are, the stronger we are. Hiding in the peace of the Amity compound, we are both weak. Useless.
            He offers me his hand. “Come on. Time to go.”
            I put one hand on the rail and grab his hand with the other. But before I let him pull me up, I pause, frowning. The rail hums beneath my hand. I hold it tightly, my lips moving in a prayer with words I don’t know. Please, is all I can think. I don’t know who I’m begging, or what exactly I’m begging them for.
            Trains mean order. Order means Erudite. Maybe I am asking for chaos.
            I turn so I’m on my knees, and press my ear to the rail, closing my eyes. I hear a low groan in the metal, like a beast waking after hibernation. It is unmistakable.
            The trains are running again.