"Are you nervous?" Susan asked me as I brushed my hair in our dorm room. I briefly wondered who would take our dorm when we switched factions.
"A little," I smiled sheepishly.
She smiled reassuringly at me but it was quickly replaced by a nervous expression.
"I hope we get in the same faction. I don't want to go where I won't know anyone," Susan worried.
"I just hope that I don't get stuck in a music faction," I sighed. "I'll get eaten alive if I'm put in Candor or Amity!"
"Yeah, you can't sing or play an instrument to save your life," she giggled.
"Don't rub it in."
Susan had almost gotten into Candor for her piano skills but her paintings outweighed her piano playing. She loved taunting me.
I glared at my canvas. I had to finish it by the end of the day and there were only twenty minutes left! But it was missing something. Something that would make it realistic, as if it was an exact replica of the ocean. But what could give it that feel? I had been to the beach once with my parents and Caleb when I was seven. I remember smelling the salty air, getting sand between my toes, and the seagulls swooping down trying to steal our food.
I jumped in my seat (which got me a few strange looks from my classmates). Seagulls! I painted three seagulls flying above the churning waves and grinned. Finished.
"Time to pack up!" Mrs. Jones called. "If you didn't finish your landscape then you may stay after for an hour to finish up. When you're done cleaning, sit down so you can receive your new fations."
Susan and I shared an anxious look as we stood up to put away our supplies.
"How do you think we get our factions?" I asked her.
"I don't know. Maybe there's a test," she shrugged. "Or maybe they randomly assigned them to us."
"I hope I got Erudite," I said. "I'm not that bad of a dancer."
As we were about to sit down, Susan said to me, "Cross your fingers."
Mrs. Jones reached into her private storage cabinet and pulled out a glass bowl filled with white papers.
"In this bowl, there are twenty papers, one for each of you, with one of the factions written on each," Mrs. Jones explained, holding the bowl up for everyone to see. "Each faction has five papers. I'm doing this in alphabetical order according to your last names. When I call your name, you come up here, close your eyes, and take one paper out of the bowl."
She held out the attendance list to read from and called the first name, "Jonathon Aberran."
Jonathon walked to the front of the room, plunged his hand into the bowl and pulled out a paper.
A bunch of voices asked him, "What'd you get?"
"Amity," he whispered back.
"Susan Black."
Susan stood up with shaking legs. I gave her an encouraging nod. She walked to the front of the room, dug her hand around in the bowl, and took one out like Jonathon had done.
When she sat back down next to me, I leaned over to her and said, "Well?"
She glanced down at her paper and breathed a sigh of relief, "Candor."
I smiled for her. She got something she's good at. Susan was praying all morning not to get Dauntless. Luckily she didn't because she has a fear of public speaking.
More and more people went and pulled out their slips. Amity, Erudite, Candor, Dauntless. The amount of papers got fewer and fewer and I soon realized that I would have a limited selection compared to the first few people.
"Beatrice Prior," Mrs. Jones said.
I stood up feeling suddenly nervous. What if I got in Amity? Would they throw me out of the school because I was such a horrible singer? Where would I go to school then? Some ghetto public school?
When I got to the front, I stuck my sweaty hand into the bowl with my eyes shut. My hand mixed around the few papers at the bottom of the bowl and pulled one out. Without looking, I went back to my seat.
Susan gave me an expecting look so I unfolded the paper and read the loopy word.
"Dauntless," I whispered.