Great Dancers aren't great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion.

unkown

The most used letter in the English alphabet is 'E' while the least used letter is 'Q'.

Chapter 1

The average dance is about three minutes long.

They say that each minute of a dance takes an hour to learn, so a three minute dance takes three hours to learn.

Those hours don't include stretching, polishing the moves, or waiting for the choreographer to remember a move they didn't write down.

Add another 15 minutes onto those hours for learning formations.

There are also technique classes that teachers schedule every chance they get. These classes can be anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours.

This adds up to at least five hours of practice to learn one dance.

That's 300 minutes.

18,000 seconds.

All for one dance.

These 18,000 seconds exclude dress rehearsals and performances.

Do all of these things at least twice, if not three, four or even ten times, and you can get a feel for what a dancer does. You won't understand completely, but you're not meant to. That's part of the magic that I love.

That magic does come with a price.

Everyday ends with me collapsing into bed, but I don't mind.

I don't have friends either, I only have fellow dancers. We mingle out of necessity and loneliness, but what we call friendship is actually a strange, mutual respect for each other.

I don't get to see my family a lot, but I don't have time to waste on missing them.

I can not imagine living another life.

To me, a life without dance is no life at all.

"Somebody call the ambulance!" screamed Marcus, our resident choreographer, as he rushed to my side.

I didn't dare to move. My arms were lying raggedly at my side, but they felt alright. My legs were another matter. I couldn't feel my right one while my left leg burned with a pain that centered in my thigh.

People raced around the studio either on their phones or forming a circle near me. They kept asking if I was okay.

I glanced at the pained spot in my thigh.

"W-what the hell?" I stammered.

A bullet wound was on my thigh, staining the floor with fresh blood. Frantically looking for the shooter, I noticed broken glass all over the studio floor. An alarming red reflected off the shards.

All of the blood made my head spin.

"Tris," Will said. He kneeled near my head and stroked my hair. "It'll be alright, okay? The ambulance will be here soon and you'll be back in the studio before you know it. A bullet wound can't stop Tris Prior, right?" His voice shook at the end. "Right?"

I tried to tell him that not even the apocalypse could stop Tris Prior, but instead I puked and lost consciousness.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x

I woke up as the ambulance drove over a pot hole. Two paramedics surrounded me, reporting to each other that I had woken up. A breathing mask was over my face and the lower half of my body was numb.

"On a scale of one to ten, how bad is the pain?" a masked paramedic asked.

"Numb," I breathed.

A voice in the back of the ambulance chuckled. "Numb isn't a number, Tris," Will grinned and walked to my side. "If you have enough energy to be sassy, I think I wasted my time worrying whether you'd live or not."

I tried to grin back, but my face was broken. "Can you… call my family? They'll… want to know." I was having trouble catching a breath.

"I called Caleb. He said he'd call your parents and tell them what happened. He also said that I should never allow you into the dance studio again until all of the gangs in Chicago are wiped out."

"It was… a gang?" I coughed.

Will shrugged. "Everyone says that the bullet had strayed from a gang fight. I mean, this is the city. A gang fight isn't like a rare Pokemon card."

A car horn blared.

The ambulance did a donut, throwing all passengers roughly to the side. The breathing mask disconnected as I rolled off the gurney and landed near Will.

There was silence for a moment as we realized that something was wrong.

I didn't see the car when it rammed the side of the ambulance, but I certainly felt it.

x.x.x.x..x.x.x.x.x.x.

I had woken up two hours ago in a stereotypical white hospital room. The experience was enhanced when I realized that my clothes had been replaced by a childish hospital gown. Tubes ran in and out of my body, but I couldn't move to see what they were connected to.

The 'Call Nurse' button taunted me. I stared at the gleaming red button that sat on the edge of the bed and just out of arm's reach.

It wasn't long before a nurse and, soon after, the doctor came in.

"You've had a pretty unlucky day, Mrs. Prior, so I am excited to give you some positive news. Your injuries were initially life threatening, but they've been patched up nicely," Dr. Flat said as he leafed through his clipboard. "The bullet wound ripped through tendons in your thigh, so we put stitches in. There were deep cuts from glass on your arms and torso, so those are stitched as well. Three fingers on your right hand are broken from the crash. We tested you for head trauma, but didn't find anything. Do you have any questions?"

I had a lot of questions. Would the bullet wound affect my dancing? Was Will okay? Where did he go? What happened to the car that hit us? Did the police learn anything about the person who shot me?

But I couldn't ask any of them because, when I opened my mouth to speak, no sound came out.

A/N- I plan on making this story have short chapters that are updated often. The problem with that is that I'm going out of town tomorrow, so the 'often' part of the previous sentence doesn't kick in until Saturday or Sunday.

I know a lot of stuff happened in this first chapter, but I'd like feedback on what you think of what's happened, so please review