Self Preservation

Chapter II - Ceremonies

Disclaimer: Once again, everything belongs to Veronica Roth!

I fiddle with the brace wrapped tight around my right wrist as my feet trailed behind the shadow of Damon. My brother was 17, only one year my senior, but he stood a full foot taller, with a broad, muscular figure and dark, curly hair. Most everyone expected him to transfer last year, but I knew he would stay. I know that to him, brain outweighs brawn. I wonder if he knows what I'm planning. I wonder if mom does either.

I see tons more Erudite families trickling to walk behind and beside us. I try not to think about the one person we're missing. Father died two years after I was born. We don't know how. At least, that's what Damon and I have been told, but we read more into mom's determined eyes than she knows.

From the pictures I've seen, Damon looks like a carbon copy of father, and we both have his olive skin. It's funny how fast someone can die. I've been called insensitive many times by my blunt thoughts, but I can't help it. One second he was here, working a night shift in the medicinal lab, and the next he was gone, a bullet lodged in his chest and a blank look angled at the starry sky.

I shake my head, trying to lose the thoughts that plague my mind. Damon seems to notice and he drops back to my side, a few long curls hanging in his eyes.

"You okay?"

I look at my wrist again. "I don't know. I just..."

He looks like he is going to stop, but thought better of it, looking around at the herd of people pushing around us. "I know."

I meet his eyes, mine wide and pleading. "About what I'll choose."

He nodded, saying nothing else as we filed in behind mom, boarding the shuttle, squeezing between stranger after stranger. Unfamiliar smells filled my nostrils as I thought about the note I left at home. Mom would find it. Maybe she would understand. I hooked my arm around the metal pole, my mind momentarily flashing back to my test. I turned my head a little to the left, expecting to see a desperate middle-aged man but instead I see the same girl that I sat beside the previous week. She was easy to identify, stiffs always wore the same clothes. She looked nervous. I guessed that she still hadn't made her decision. Her brother was beside her. I recognized him as Caleb, we were in Advanced Mathematics together. I had a hunch that erudite might be gaining him.

The jostling stop and beep announcing we had reached the gathering hall seemed to rearrange my organs. The knot I thought I had lost abruptly made its presence known for a second time in my stomach. Don't puke. Don't puke.

I grasped the loose fabric of Damon's sweater with my left hand, trying not to get lost against the struggling crowd of people. Don't puke. Please dear lord do not let me puke.

I blinked twice as I stepped through the entrance, trailing Damon and mom as they took the third walkway into the stands. Most everything in this room was either a sharp white or a light grey, like the color of thunderclouds. We climbed the steps up three rows, taking the seats nearest the exit. I looked level with the steril-white elevated stage. A glass table about seven feet in length stood threateningly in the very middle. On top, evenly spaced in all their glory, sat the five bowls. The bowls that would determine our future. I tried to stifle a laugh. The skylight above let blinding, white sunlight in, causing the stainless steel knife to glint from its place atop the smooth cloth. I gulped.

Then the woman in blue herself stepped up to the podium. I tried not to roll my eyes.

"Hello..." It was at that word that I felt a tap of my forearm. I jerked it back out of reflex to protect my injured wrist. It was just Damon.

"Which one?"

It took me a second to know what he meant. "Dauntless."

The word hung heavy in the air, and I felt breathless after I let it go. I closed my eyes then, just for a second, trying to imprint the memory of my family forever. A hand wrapped tightly around my heart, choking. I tried not to gasp. My eyes flew open, and I felt a hand wipe the rebel tear away. I knew this hand.