Who am I?

Chapter 18

Tobias Eaton

"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 the train isn't suspended two stories above the street, like she wouldn't break her neck if she fell out.

In her free hand is a silver flask. It explains a lot.

She tilts her head. "First person picks someone and dares them to do something. Then that person has a drink, does the dare, and gets a chance to dare someone else to do something. And when everyone has done their dare—or died trying—we get a little drunk and stumble home."

"How do you win?" one of the Dauntless calls out from the other side of the train car. A boy who sits slouched against Amar like they're old friends, or brothers.

I'm not the only initiate in the train car. Sitting across from me is Zeke, the first jumper, and a girl with brown hair and bangs cut straight across her forehead, and a pierced lip. The others are older, Dauntless members all. They have a kind of ease with one another, leaning into one another, punching one another's arms, tousling one another's hair. It's camaraderie and friendship and flirtation, and none of it is familiar to me. I try to relax, bending my arms around my knees.

Maybe I really am a Stiff.

"You win by not being a little pansycake," Lauren says. "And, hey, new rule, you also win by not asking dumb questions.
"I'm gonna go first, as the keeper of the alcohol," she adds. "Amar, I dare you to go into the Erudite library while all the Noses are studying and scream something obscene."
She screws the cap on the flask and tosses it to him. Everyone cheers as Amar takes the cap off and takes a swallow of whatever liquor is inside.

"Just tell me when we get to the right stop!" he shouts over the cheering.

Zeke waves a hand at me. "Hey, you're a transfer, right? Four?"

"Yeah," I say. "Nice first jump."

I realize, too late, that it might be a sore spot for him—his moment of triumph, stolen by a misstep and loss of balance. But he just laughs.

"Yeah, not my finest moment," he says.

"Not like anyone else stepped up," the girl [Shauna] at his side says. "Is it true you only had four fears?"

"Hence the name," I say.

"Wow." She nods. She looks impressed, which makes me sit up straighter. "Guess you were born Dauntless."

I shrug, like what she says might be true, even though I'm sure it's not. She doesn't know that I came here to escape the life I was meant for, that I'm fighting so hard to get through initiation so I don't have to admit that I'm an imposter. Abnegation-born, Abnegation result, in a Dauntless haven.

The corners of her mouth turn down, like she's sad about something, but I don't ask what it is.

"How are your fights going?" Zeke asks me.

"All right," I say. I wave a hand over my bruised face. "As you can clearly tell."

"Check it out." Zeke turns his head, showing me a large bruise on the underside of his jaw. "That's thanks to this girl over here."

He indicates Shauna with his thumb.

"He beat me," Shauna says. "But I got a good shot in, for once. I keep losing."

"It doesn't bother you that he hit you?" I say.

"Why would it?" she says. I opened my mouth but before any reply. We all heard some shuffling. All of our heads jerks towards the direction of the noise.

A figure came out and tilted its body to one of the walls of the train. Amar slowly headed towards the figure with a piece of wood in his hand. The girl shrieked in a high pitch sound. Both of them shouted together. However when I heard closely I noticed that Amar's shriek was higher.

"Matthews, you scared me till hell!" he exclaimed

"Says the boy who was coming towards me with a piece of wood in his hand" Emily said while hitting him with a book of what seemed to have a picture of a brain on the cover.

We all there were just laughing our butts off at them. Maybe this 'friend thing' isn't so bad I thought to myself.

Amar and Emily gave us deathly glare

"What faction did you come from initiate?" Lauren asked.

Emily glanced at her book and back at Lauren "I wasn't a candor that's for sure."

Zeke snorted "Your humor isn't that of an Erudite."

She gave off a mischievous smirk "Maybe I'm a Divergent" and with that she jumped off the train.