“I’m Christina,” she says, offering me her hand.
I haven’t shaken a hand in a long time either. The Abnegation greeted one another by bowing heads, a sign of respect. I take her hand, uncertainly, and shake it twice, hoping I didn’t squeeze too hard or not hard enough.
“Beatrice,” I say.
“Do you know where we’re going?” She has to shout over the wind, which blows harder through the open doors by the second. The train is picking up speed. I sit down. It will be easier to keep my balance if I’m low to the ground. She raises an eyebrow at me.
“A fast train means wind,” I say. “Wind means falling out. Get down.”
Christina sits next to me, inching back to lean against the wall.
“I guess we’re going to Dauntless headquarters,” I say, “but I don’t know where that is.”
“Does anyone?” She shakes her head, grinning. “It’s like they just popped out of a hole in the ground or something.”
Then the wind rushes through the car, and the other faction transfers, hit with bursts of air, fall on top of one another. I watch Christina laugh without hearing her and manage a smile.
Over my left shoulder, orange light from the setting sun reflects off the glass buildings, and I can faintly see the rows of gray houses that used to be my home.
It’s Caleb’s turn to make dinner tonight. Who will take his place—my mother or my father? And when they clear out his room, what will they discover? I imagine books jammed between the dresser and the wall, books under his mattress. The Erudite thirst for knowledge filling all the hidden places in his room. Did he always know that he would choose Erudite? And if he did, how did I not notice?
What a good actor he was. The thought makes me sick to my stomach, because even though I left them too, at least I was no good at pretending. At least they all knew that I wasn’t selfless.
I close my eyes and picture my mother and father sitting at the dinner table in silence. Is it a lingering hint of selflessness that makes my throat tighten at the thought of them, or is it selfishness, because I know I will never be their daughter again?
“They’re jumping off!”
I lift my head. My neck aches. I have been curled up with my back against the wall for at least a half hour, listening to the roaring wind and watching the city smear past us. I sit forward. The train has slowed down in the past few minutes, and I see that the boy who shouted is right: The Dauntless in the cars ahead of us are jumping out as the train passes a rooftop. The tracks are seven stories up.
The idea of leaping out of a moving train onto a rooftop, knowing there is a gap between the edge of the roof and the edge of the track, makes me want to throw up. I push myself up and stumble to the opposite side of the car, where the other faction transfers stand in a line.
“We have to jump off too, then,” a Candor girl says. She has a large nose and crooked teeth.
“Great,” a Candor boy replies, “because that makes perfect sense, Molly. Leap off a train onto a roof.”
“This is kind of what we signed up for, Peter,” the girl points out.
“Well, I’m not doing it,” says an Amity boy behind me. He has olive skin and wears a brown shirt—he is the only transfer from Amity. His cheeks shine with tears.
“You’ve got to,” Christina says, “or you fail. Come on, it’ll be all right.”
“No, it won’t! I’d rather be factionless than dead!” The Amity boy shakes his head. He sounds panicky. He keeps shaking his head and staring at the rooftop, which is getting closer by the second.
I don’t agree with him. I would rather be dead than empty, like the factionless.
“You can’t force him,” I say, glancing at Christina. Her brown eyes are wide, and she presses her lips together so hard they change color. She offers me her hand.
“Here,” she says. I raise an eyebrow at her hand, about to say that I don’t need help, but she adds, “I just…can’t do it unless someone drags me.”
I take her hand and we stand at the edge of the car. As it passes the roof, I count, “One…two…three!”
On three we launch off the train car. A weightless moment, and then my feet slam into solid ground and pain prickles through my shins. The jarring landing sends me sprawling on the rooftop, gravel under my cheek. I release Christina’s hand. She’s laughing.
“That was fun,” she says.
Christina will fit in with Dauntless thrill seekers. I brush grains of rock from my cheek. All the initiates except the Amity boy made it onto the roof, with varying levels of success. The Candor girl with crooked teeth, Molly, holds her ankle, wincing, and Peter, the Candor boy with shiny hair, grins proudly—he must have landed on his feet.
Then I hear a wail. I turn my head, searching for the source of the sound. A Dauntless girl stands at the edge of the roof, staring at the ground below, screaming. Behind her a Dauntless boy holds her at the waist to keep her from falling off.
“Rita,” he says. “Rita, calm down. Rita—”
I stand and look over the edge. There is a body on the pavement below us; a girl, her arms and legs bent at awkward angles, her hair spread in a fan around her head. My stomach sinks and I stare at the railroad tracks. Not everyone made it. And even the Dauntless aren’t safe.
Rita sinks to her knees, sobbing. I turn away. The longer I watch her, the more likely I am to cry, and I can’t cry in front of these people.
I tell myself, as sternly as possible, that is how things work here. We do dangerous things and people die. People die, and we move on to the next dangerous thing. The sooner that lesson sinks in, the better chance I have at surviving initiation.
I’m no longer sure that I will survive initiation.
I tell myself I will count to three, and when I’m done, I will move on. One. I picture the girl’s body on the pavement, and a shudder goes through me. Two. I hear Rita’s sobs and the murmured reassurance of the boy behind her. Three.
My lips pursed, I walk away from Rita and the roof’s edge.
My elbow stings. I pull my sleeve up to examine it, my hand shaking. Some of the skin is peeling off, but it isn’t bleeding.
“Ooh. Scandalous! A Stiff’s flashing some skin!”
I lift my head. “Stiff” is slang for Abnegation, and I’m the only one here. Peter points at me, smirking. I hear laughter. My cheeks heat up, and I let my sleeve fall.