Growing Up Dauntless

Chapter 2 (Tobias)

I'm doing a time jump to Dare. Tris is going to make her first real appearance in Tobias's life there.

The training room smells like effort, like sweat and dust and shoes. Every time my fist hits the punching bag it stings my knuckles, which are split open from a week of Dauntless fights.

"So I guess you saw the boards," Amar says, leaning against the door frame. He crosses his arms. "And realized that you're up against Eric tomorrow. Or else you would be in the fear landscape room instead of in here."

"I come in here, too," I say, and back away from the bag, shaking out my hands. Sometimes I clench my hands so hard I start to lose feeling in my fingertips.

I almost lost my first fight, against the Amity girl, Mia. I didn't know how to beat her without hitting her, and I couldn't hit her - at least, not until she had me in a choke hold and my vision was starting to go black at the edges. My instincts took over, and just one hard elbow to her jaw knocked her down. I still feel guilt curling up inside me when I think about it.

I almost lost my second fight, too, against the bigger Candor boy Sean. I wore him out, crawling to my feet every time he thought I was finished. He didn't know that pushing through pain is one of my oldest habits, learned young, like chewing on my thumbnail, or holding my fork in my left hand instead of my right. Now my face is patchworked with with bruises and cuts, but I proved myself.

Tomorrow my opponent is Eric. Beating him will take more than a clever move, or persistence. It will take skill I don't have, strength I haven't earned.

"Yeah, I know." Amar laughs. "See, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what your deal is, so I've been asking around. Turns out you're in here every morning and in the fear landscape room every night. You never spend any time with the other initiates. You're always exhausted and you sleep like a corpse."

A drop of sweat rolls down the back of my ear. I wipe it away with my taped-up fingers, then drag my arm across my forehead.

"Joining a faction is about more than getting through initiation, you know," Amar says, and he hooks his fingers in the chain that the punching bag dangles from, testing it's strength. "For most of the Dauntless, they meet their best friends during initiation, their girlfriends, boyfriends, whatever. Enemies, too. But you seem determined not to have any of those things."

I've seen the other initiates together, getting pierced together and showing up to training with red, studded noses and ears and lips, or building towers out of food scraps at the breakfast table. It never occurred to me that I could be one of them, or that I should be.

I shrug. "I'm used to being alone."

"Well, I feel like you're about to snap, and I don't really want to be there when it happens," he says. "Come on. A bunch of us are going to play a game tonight. A Dauntless game."

I pick at the tape covering one of my knuckles. I shouldn't go out and play games. I should stay here and work, and then go to sleep, so I'm ready to fight tomorrow.

But that voice that says "should," now sounds to me like my father's voice, requiring me to behave, to isolate myself. And I came here because I was ready to stop listening to that voice.

"I'm offering you some Dauntless status for no particular reason othe than that I feel bad for you," he says. "Don't be stupid and miss the opportunity."

"Fine," I say. "What's the game?"

♡♡♡♡ ♡♡♡♡ ♡♡♡♡

"The game is Dare." A Dauntless girl, Lauren, is holding on to the handle on the side of the train car, but she keeps swaying so she almost falls out, then giggling and pulling herself back in, like she isn't suspended two stories above the street, like she wouldn't break her neck if she fell out.