CHAPTER NINE
JAMES
The door to the dormitory bangs open and in files my fellow initiates, led by Simon. He scoffs at me and climbs up onto his bunk. Kathryn and Addie emerge from behind him and go sit together on Katie's bunk, conversing quietly in hushed whispers.
Eve gives me a smile, takes a towel and heads off for the bathroom. Bill does the same.
Rob sits cross-legged in front of Dakota on her bunk, and they talk and kiss occasionally.
They all want to stay away from me. And I can't blame them, for having witnessed what I did.
I don't even know why I did that. I can barely remember what I even did. I know that I kicked him a few times but I didn't know how bad the damage was. It was only when Tris winded me that I started to realise how bad the situation was. When I realised that I had kicked ERIC, a dauntless leader.
And then I realised I was blacking out.
I woke up in a hospital bed, a couple hours later.
When I asked for a nurse, no one came, so naturally I took care of myself. I found an ice pack in a fridge in the next room, put it to my head and left the building without a second thought.
When I opened the front doors, however, I got punched in the face. Or maybe hit in the face, I'm not all that sure of whether or not it was a fist; it was a little bit too hard to account for as knuckle. They kicked me in the stomach a multitude of times and then left me there until I gained consciousness.
"You have been knocked out, twice in one day." Was all I could think of.
If you've ever woken up on concrete, it's the worst feeling in the world. My stomach ached, it literally felt like they had ruptured several organs just by kicking me. In a scrabble of limbs I eventually heaved myself up onto my legs. I turned around to face two guards.
They took me by the arms, and dragged me along behind them like I was a dead body. They threw me onto the first bed they saw and told me to try to catch some sleep.
"You couldn't just stay in that bed, now boy, could you?" one of them says to me.
"I would keep an eye open, if I were you." I could see behind the slightly tinted mask that this other guard was a woman, though she had a deep, burley voice.
Fear was what kept me awake the whole night, I barely caught any sleep at all.
At 7:00am, another guard woke me up, and sent me off to the dining hall. I felt better then, despite having had an estimate of five minutes of sleep.
I stumbled on down the rail-less pathways and found myself keeping a steady pace by the time I walked into the dining hall. I noticed out of the corner of my eye, Tris sitting alone, watching me.
"You can go and sit with Dakota if you want, guys, she'll be mad if you take sides." I told Eve, Rob, and Bill as they sat down next to me.
"Dakota, doesn't hold grudges-" said Rob.
"-And neither do I." Eve smiled and handed me a blueberry muffin.
"Thanks." I told her.
Bill gave her a sneaky look. "What?" she asked.
"The only reason you don't hold a grudge is because you were brought up that way."
"Shut up." She laughed and punched him in the arm, but I could see he was not in the Amity mood this morning. He frowned at her and loudly threatened "Don't ever tell me to shut. Up." Eve's smile faded quicker than a bolt of lightning. "Keep away from Dakota." He said, pointing a spoon at me. He scraped his chair as he got up and left the dining hall.
"Someone's on their period." Said Robert. Eve's face contorted in what I would have thought was disgust, but she couldn't help supressing a laugh. Rob smiled at the both of us. "Don't worry man, she'll get over it. It wasn't even that bad, really. She's just staying away because of, well…"
"What I did to Eric, yeah, I'd think I was a dangerous guy too." Eve and Rob didn't have anything else to say. Silence replaced our conversation.
It wasn't long until yet another guard came and found me in the dining hall and told me to get up, he was taking me to the Dauntless leaders. While we walked, when I kept back a little, to rest my body from the pain, he would tug on my shirt and order me to go faster.
"Some of us have to go to work. Some of us care about this faction, some of us know the true meaning of Faction before blood." He spat.
I understood why people seemed to think that I was a disrespectful teenager with absolutely no regard for the Dauntless, but I thought they could be a little sympathetic, I was only sixteen after all.
But this isn't Abnegation.
"Faction before Blood."
That sentence lingered in my head, ringing continuously, not stopping until the words were engraved on the inside of my brain. The guard brought me to a room deep underground, a room with cold, white marble floors, rich, black, wooden pillars and a council table, which towered high above my head.
"Bet you weren't expecting this." A woman with long dreadlocks that went down to her thighs spoke from the table.
"Sorry?" I said, confused.
"You're not here to apologise, you imbecile. You're here to pay for what you've done." She took a wine glass from somewhere beneath my sight of reach and took a long sip of the dark red liquid. When she placed it down she licked her lips and sighed.
"I think it's about time to start this thing, how 'bout you, son?" she clapped her hands and at once a guard appeared from a door to the left.
"Get this boy a chair to sit in, and go and find everyone; Jesus, we should have started this an hour ago."
I stood and watched the woman (whose name was Cherrie, according to the rectangular block of metal in front of her.) as she poured more wine into her glass. My eyes travelled from her name block to the rest at the table.
Elequine, Quentin, Max, and Eric.
I shivered as I read the name Eric. Would he be here to decide my punishment?
A bald woman shouted "CHERRIE!" as she walked in and they hugged before she sat in front of the block that read 'Elequine.'
"Who's this?" she asked while taking Cherrie's bottle of wine.
"That is the kid who thinks he can fight us." Elequine nearly smashed the wine bottle down.
"Well, goddamned, Cherrie." She climbed up onto the table and raised her fists jokingly. "Come on, come on, let's fight, come on, come on, what you got?" Cherrie laughed and laughed and Elequine sat back down.
"Aw, girl you are bad." They laughed and patted each other and steadily got drunk. It took a full hour before I was able to sit down and an extra sixteen minutes before Quentin and Max arrived.
"Ladies." They both said politely.
"Oooooooooh! We being professional now?"
"I worry about how you drunks came to be two fifths of our council." Said Max darkly.
"I worry about how you can be so serious all the time, loosen the strings, here, here, have some wine." Elequine put the wine bottle to his mouth and pretended to make him chug it.
"My first order of business as the true leader is to fire both of you."
"Well you can't fire both of us once I'm dead. There ain't no way I'm giving up this job. I will carry it to my grave." Said Cherrie proudly.
"Who said I wasn't considering killing as a way of firing?"
"ENOUGH!" shouted Quentin. Max looked down at the papers he had brought in and handed them to Cherrie and Elequine without looking at them.
They both decided to pipe down and listen to Quentin.
"Now, Mr James, do you know why we have taken you out of your first stage of initiation?" asked Quentin.
"Yes."
"Do you know what the consequences are for what you have done?"
"No."
"Do you regret your actions?"
"Yes."
"Did you know that Eric has not woken up since you performed your actions?"
"No."
"Did you know that if he falls into a coma, you will be considered a threat to society and be forced to live with the factionless?
"You might as well just throw me out now." I said. I knew and know now that I don't belong here. They knew I didn't belong here but they were infuriated with my answer.
"WHY DON'T YOU JUST RUN OFF AND JUMP OVER THAT CHASM?"
"YOU'D RATHER SLOWLY DIE BY STARVING AND ROTTIN' TO DEATH THAN BE PART OF SOCIETY, OF A COMMUNITY?"
Cherrie and Elequine, despite being highly intoxicated seemed to be following what I was saying, and put up a very valid argument. They had dismissed me and told me to stay in my dormitory until they had come to a decision of what to do with me.
So here I am now, waiting for them to make their decision, watching my classmates whisper about me, silently judge me, and stay far away from me.
I don't belong here.
Just a year ago when my parents' friend's children left abnegation, everyone was shocked. Everyone except for the children's mother, and my parents. They told me, they sat me down and told me the night before the choosing ceremony:
"You will pick whatever you feel comfortable with. You will not consider us, you will consider yourself." It was the first time my mother had told me to be selfish, she was being her own selfless person, giving me the gift of harbouring no guilt or pain, she gave me the gift of being my own person.
"What happened to Natalie and Andrew Prior, may happen to us. But we are fine with this. Please, please, choose whatever you feel comfortable with." My father said. He was almost begging me. Tears came out of both my parents' eyes that night.
Their last wish to me was to choose what I felt comfortable with, so I did.
I followed Tris, and chose Dauntless.
It's so unfortunate that I only realised now that I don't belong here.
I don't belong with the Dauntless.
I don't belong with the Abnegation.
I belong with the Factionless.
A cold splash of water is what wakes me up this time. Ice cubes slide down my body and water drips from my hair.
"What the-" A masked figure puts a hand to my mouth and drags me out of the dormitory. I can see behind me more masked figures are doing the same thing to the others. Simon thrashes and thrashes as two of the mysterious figures pull him through the door frame.
The only difference between what's happening to them and I, is that I'm being dragged away in another direction. The person dragging me puts a blindfold around my eyes and orders me to walk. He keeps a stick pointed to my back (which I soon realise is a gun) to keep me from doing "anything stupid."
I can hear the thrashing of the water from the chasm somewhere off into the distance.
"Wh-ertres-gong-on?!" I shout as I'm shoved to the floor. When my blindfold is removed I'm greeted with the last face I wish to see.
Eric.
"What's going on?" I ask him.
"The others are going to play paintball. We're going to play a game." I try to scream but he balls the blindfold up and shoves it in my mouth.