Chapter One

The rain pounds my bedroom window, waking me. I check the time. It's 6:30. Early enough to be awake. I grab my glasses, and sleepily pull on a blue denim dress from my drawer. I walk over to the other side of my room and snap a simple silver bracelet around my wrist. It used to be my mother's. Now, it's mine.

I shake my head to clear it and head downstairs, where my mother always is past 6:00. "Good morning, Mother."

My mother looks up in surprise. "Oh, Lia," she says, looking puzzled. "You're up early."

"Later than you."

"You need your sleep, LeeLee. Good for your brain, and good for Erudite. What's your average again?"

I flush. "A."

She prods me further. "A what?"

"A… A minus." I wince. It's a terrible grade, for an Erudite. "But you get less sleep than I do. You wake up earlier."

My mother glares at me. "First of all, you go to sleep at 11:30. I do an hour before. Second of all—"

"Second of all, we aren't Amity, but I didn't come down here to fight with you," I say, grabbing a bowl of blueberries and cracking an egg into an old pan. "Especially considering what today is. The aptitude tests are today, remember?"

She sighs. "Of course I remember. And I wasn't fighting. Just don't be late."

"I won't, Mother."

"Good. How many hours did you study yesterday for your last class?"

"Seven."

My mother purses her lips. "I wish you'd try harder, your grades being what they are. You should concentrate in Faction History, even when Raina talks about Stiffs." Raina is my teacher. She's also my next-door neighbor, and my mother's good friend. She likes me well enough, when my grades are high.

"Mother, don't…"

"Don't what? I a subject came up that I didn't like when I was your age, I'd pay attention!"

"Ugh, let's not fight."

An hour later, I shove my feet into a pair of worn leather boots, grab an umbrella, and run ton school, which is a five minute's jog from the Erudite sector of the city. Seven minutes, tops. Jogging the familiar streets automatically triggers a map of the city, frozen into my brain. Technically, I am headed towards the Abnegation sector.

I frown. Abnegation. The "selfless". Or so they say. Personally, I believe that anyone broadcasting how oh-so-selfless he or she is, is more selfish than the rest of us. But they don't quite seem to grasp that.

Still, I could deal with that if their leaders weren't the city's government, forcing their forget-yourself ways on the rest of us. If we had wanted that, everyone would choose Abnegation. And surely even they have noticed their dwindling numbers.

But instead, they deprive our city from other things. "Food for the factionless." Ha. As if. The energy and resources going into that program are really being wasted on luxuries for their own faction. Their goal is to use the mask of "selflessness" to go unobserved. Because why would the selfless take for themselves?

But all of this is common knowledge. I close my umbrella and pull the metal handle of the Upper Levels building, dripping. My first— and last— class is Advanced Math, today being a Tuesday. That's good. Advanced Math is the only class where I can pull an A double plus, the usual grade for an Erudite. An A plus is below standard. An A is pushing it. Anything below is completely unacceptable, although A minus could possibly be counted as just plain bad.

Maybe I'm not quite smart enough for Erudite. But I know it's where I belong. I quickly run through my choices in my head. I couldn't be Amity. I debate things too much. That said, though, I could never be Candor, seeing as I lie so often. And well, too. I don't like the idea of Dauntless. My logic would interfere with practically surviving my own almost-suicide. And there's no way I would ever turn Stiff.

When class ends, I head to the cafeteria and find my best friend, Nicole. Nicole is basically a genius. I think we're only as close as we are because she cancels out my stupidity; we first became friends when she saw me struggling with easy schoolwork and offered to help me.

"Hello, Amelia," Nicole says cheerfully. "Nervous?"

"Yeah, well, of course. My average is A minus. It's clearly some kind of written test or something, so what if I fail?"

"You won't fail. And who knows? It might not be a written test," Nicole says.

We sit in silence, until finally my name is called. "From Erudite: Amelia Clark and Isabel Pogona."

I stand up, not very confidently, and walk over to room 1-B. When I walk inside, I scowl. A gray-clothed Stiff stands on the far side of the room. "Ugh, Stiff. Do you actually have the brains to administer my test?"

The Stiff nods. "I believe I can handle it," she says, handing me a vial of clear liquid. "I'm Louisa. Please drink this."

I eye the vial suspiciously. "Why?"

"Please."

I wonder if she truly is selfless, buying the "food for the factionless" act, or if she is a plaything of the government leaders, agreeing on everything they say. Probably, she's the latter. Still, the drink is probably required. I tilt it into my mouth as she connects a wire to the back of my neck. I jerk away. "What are you doing?"

LouiStiff sighs. "Don't worry. The wires are necessary for the aptitude test to begin."

I glare at her, but sit still as she connects one wire to my earlobe, another just above my eyebrows.

"Ready?"

I nod, and she clicks a few commands into a huge computer I somehow managed to overlook.

"Your test will begin in- 3, 2, 1," the computer voice says and I black out.