All characters are owned by Veronica Roth. Please let me know what you think. I am so proud to be sharing my first writing bouts about a book I feel so passionately about.
Chapter 1
"How drab.." Christina looks around taking in her surroundings as she enters the threshold of what once was Natalie and Andrew Prior's home, her friend's home, a murderer's home. She shakes her head and thinks to herself, No I cannot think like this. She is my friend, I understand why now. I'm glad to stay here, rather than in some stranger's home. I lost her again.. This time it's entirely my fault. Why didn't I tell someone she left sooner? She shakes her head again, but this time in a guilt ridden way. Blinking back tears, she looks at her companions still on the stoop, Lynn, Uriah, and Zeke.
Christina decided to enter the home first; she has nothing left to lose. Her first love is gone. A feeling she can never get back of butterflies and swimming thoughts and secret touches and stolen kisses, is lost forever. Obviously there are no surveillance cameras in the homes of members of Abnegation, so her act of dauntlessness was not quite so.
"All clear," she sighs as she recalls the day her small group decided to leave for the Abnegation sector, right After Tris left the Dauntless compound in the dead of night. Four cornered her that morning at breakfast; he looked troubled and desperate, demanding to know if she had seen Tris. He disappeared for a few hours only to return, informing the group in a riotous speech that they had to join the Factionless in the Abnegation's neighborhood in order to triumph over the Erudite. Before the cheering died, however, Christina noticed him slip out of the crowd, toward the street exits.
"Where are you going? We need you!" She demanded.
"To die with her," Four retorted. "She is dying for everyone. I will die for her, so she won't be alone."
"You, you are selfish! You are just too scared to face the world without her!" She screamed at him while the tears streamed down her face, soaking her shirt. She realized she was talking about herself in that moment, how she yearned to be with her first love after she learned his sad fate. Her emotions overcame her as she collapsed into a ball and sobbed uncontrollably for minutes on end. It was only when she realized that he did not come to comfort her that Four had disappeared.
Snapping Christina out of her reveriw is a cloud of dust as Uriah enters the room and throws himself onto the couch with a loud flop. He coughs incessantly for a few moments, swatting at the dusty air. With a raspy voice he says "It's itchy, but soft. Dibs! You all can fight it out for the rest of the rooms!"
The remainder of the group pauses to look at each other a moment, its Lynn who breaks for the stairs first. But unfortunately for her, Zeke is springier. He reaches the staircase as she the stairs, grabs the railing and leaps over it 5 steps ahead of her. Unfortunately for him, Lynn is more cunning.
"How do you propose to get Shauna up the stairs, Mr. I can jump leaps and bounds?" she quips.
Zeke stops dead in his tracks while the floor creaks beneath him and glares at Lynn open mouthed for just a second. A second long enough for her to push him to the floor of the landing with a loud groan and a hop over him. Immediately she claims the room to the left, Christina hopping over him as well claims the one to the right.
Despite the dig, Lynn and Christina allow Zeke the larger bedroom once shared by the Priors. She is a good sister deep in her heart and is hopeful that one day, and dreams it is tomorrow, that Shauna can walk up those stairs. She even resigns herself to help Zeke carry her chair up them every day, if it means a sense of normalcy for someone whose life is forever altered because of her selfish actions. Lynn's room looks fairly plain, but as she moves a dresser into the closet to clear space for Hector several books fall to the floor, she picks one up staring at it in a questioning way, Synaptic Functions of Brain Chemistry. Ew, she opens a window, aims for the nearest fire and flawlessly makes her shot.
"Chris, how is your room?" She calls across the hall.
Christina takes in her quarters; everything is neat, just a little too neat, hospital corners on the bed, gleaming windows, impeccably folded clothing, and not a single adornment on the wall or dresser. It's obvious though, a girl lived here. "It's definitely Tris's. Plain but in an "I am trying too hard to fit in" kind of way." Christina calls back as she ventures back into the tiny hallway. "What's up? Why are you just standing there?" She eyes Zeke up and down trying to figure out why he has been immobile for several minutes while the others claimed their bedrooms. She quickly realizes his foot fell through the floor, revealing a large hole, full of papers.
"What the?" Lynn joins them in the hallway. As Zeke removes his foot from the hole, she grabs a paper. "Oh my god! They are letters, dozens of them, to Tris!" She picks them up and throws them in the air, as they cascade over them the group stairs up in awe, each grabbing a different letter before it hits the floor.
