CHAPTER 1: THE BIG SACRIFICE

I never thought I'd be sacrificing myself for yet another person. But here I am, about to take a bullet for Tobias. Everything was in a blur. It came so fast. Afraid to look, I closed my eyes. I expected a searing pain spreading to every part of my body, but instead, I feel nothing. I open my eyes slowly, afraid of what I might see. I saw the fallen body of Nita. Relieved someone else shot her before she could get me, I started to move forward but my foot hit the side of something squashy. A body. I froze. I tried to hide a scream as I saw the rumpled body of someone I once hate, the body of Peter. I can't move. A few days back, I would be delighted to find him dead. But now that's real, I don't know what I should feel. Disgusted or sad? Seriously Tris, don't you have any humanity left in you? Tears swim in my eyes, I wouldn't cry for him, I shouldn't, after what he did to me all this time. But I couldn't stop the tears and it came rushing down my cheeks. Tobias was holding me tightly in his arms and whispering that it wasn't my fault. I didn't kill him.

"Why would he do that? What was he thinking?" my voice came cracked, not the way I wanted it to sound like.

"Maybe he was trying to…protect you?" Tobias' replied with uncertainty. Why on Earth would he want to protect me? Right, because trying to throw me into the chasm shows that he truly cares. I struggled hard not to think of the past, I shouldn't be saying bad things about someone who just died. Especially when that person died shielding me. Mom and Dad won't be all that pleased if they find out I let someone else die instead of me. The thought makes me want to cry harder for disappointing them.

I walked into the dormitory to find Caleb sitting on Peter's bed. Just looking at Peter's bed makes the image of his rumpled body on the floor swimming before me. I have forgiven Caleb for quite some time, knowing that it wasn't his fault. What kind of younger sister am I if I keep on ignoring him for his genes? I walked towards him, careful not to look at the picture by the bedside table; a picture of Peter when he was a toddler, along with his family. Now that I thought of it, Peter looks a lot like his mother. I choked on a sob.

"Hey, you okay?" Caleb asked, looking up at me.

"I'm fine." I lie easily, I'm not fit to be in Candor, it's what my friends always say.

Caleb looked around the room. After discovering that we were the only ones in there, he pulled me close and said in a low voice, "Look what I found?"

I looked at his hand, reaching under Peter's pillow. He brought his hands back a second later, revealing a flat piece of silvery metal. I must have put on a stupid look because he began to laugh. "This is no ordinary metal," he started to say. He tapped it in certain places and the metal transformed into a book. "Is that his.."

"As a matter of fact, it is" Caleb answered my unfinished question. He was pacing back and forth now. Seeing the questioning look on my face, he added, "After, you know… Peter got shot, I searched for my notebook he borrowed before but I came across this. I looked at it closely and saw his fingerprints and I began to tap at those places and this…thing, turned into some sort of journal. But I don't want to mess with people's belongings, so I just left it where I found it."

I know this sounds weird, but I would like to read his thoughts. That's not a very nice thing to do but since he's…gone, he can't do anything about it. And so I opened it with Caleb peering over my shoulder.

"As you probably know, I am not one who writes his personal thoughts on some kind of crap book but since it's disguised as nothing more than a metal, I agree to do it; mostly because of my pushy parents. They wanted me to write about the school, and continue writing until I finished initiation. The Choosing Ceremony is in another two days and I've been wondering about what my tester said: about me fitting into Dauntless more than Candor. That's not even possible. Everyone said I'm the most candor-ish person that ever existed in the city! But seems like they're wrong. I keep thinking about it over and over again. How I would explain to my parents, about changing into another faction. I bet myself 99% they would be so shocked tomorrow they're faces would turn red; I sure think because they're going to get angry."

Caleb and I exchanged a look. We both don't really want to know about his daily or personal life and so we skipped to the important parts. The next is: The Choosing Ceremony. I sure don't know how he could find the time to write in his journal with everyone crowded everywhere.

"Today's the day. The day my parents know that I belong in another faction. The day they are ashamed of me, for leaving my faction, leaving them, behind. Just as I predicted, their faces were red. Embarrassment or anger, I can't tell. The Dauntless initiates perform their first act of dauntlessness by jumping onto a moving train. That one was pretty easy actually. Since I've watched them jump millions of times through the windows at school. When the train slowed down, we had to jump onto a roof. Not all of us made it, though. I made some friends. The ones who made it were Candors, Erudites, Dauntless (of course since they've done it a million times) and just one tiny, little stiff. I could tell she was a stiff, even if she hadn't been wearing their grey uniforms because of the plain, unselfishness look on her face. I wouldn't have thought she was 16 if she hadn't been here with us. I….."

I shut the book very hard, making Caleb jump in surprise. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Like you weren't reading it," I shot at him. I decided to read it some other time. I am not surprised he thought I was a pure stiff. Maybe I still am. Caleb wore an expression of shock for such a brief moment I was wondering if I had imagined it. He cleared his throat and said something about going to the lab to see Matthew and left me alone, thinking about the stupid words that dead guy wrote about me. Maybe I should read it with Tobias, I thought and put the book safely under my mattress.