The Erudite Girl

The First Erudite Transfer

I woke up to the sun shining right in my face. I sat up and groaned, my head pounding. Why did the sun always shine right in my face?! I groped around and touched something hard. That jolted me awake. I had fallen asleep reading a book I wasn't supposed to have.

"Cate?" a voice asked from beside me. It was Grace Smith my best friend. She slept next to me in the dorm. I stuffed the book under my pillow and sat up trying to look like I just woke up.

"Yeah?" I said sleepily.

"Are you awake?" I rolled over so that I could see her. Her blond hair hung in a curtain around her face and her expression looked worried. That's when I remembered. Today was the choosing ceremony. My stomach turned over. After today I was planning not to ever see Grace again.

"Yeah," I said again. "Are you scared for today?" Something flickered across her gaze.

"A little," she admitted. I was dying to tell her about my decision but I knew she'd be disappointed. I was too, but I had to get out of Amity. Suddenly we were interrupted by harp music playing out across the dorm that signaled that it was time to get up. All through the dorm I heard the normal chorus of good mornings as everyone began to getting out of their beds. Of course. It was the same thing every morning.

Thousands of years ago there was a huge war, where humans almost went extinct. There were so few of them left that they knew they had to develop a better system in order to keep the peace. Conflict arose again, this time people couldn't decide what was the cause of conflict. Finally they come up with system. They divided into 5 factions that each had their own idea of what people should do in order to keep the peace. I was born into Amity, the faction were they believed that people should be friendly and peaceful all the time. It sounds great but I hated having to socialize with people all the time. I lived, ate, and breathed my best friends and everyone else in the faction. Most girls my age in Amity lived with their parents, but my parents were killed in a freak accident years ago, so now I lived in a make-shift orphanage in the Amity Headquarters.

The other factions consisted of Candor, where they believed that people should always be truthful, Dauntless where they believed that people should always be brave, Abnegation, where they believed that people should always be selfless, and Erudite, where they believed that people should always be smart, and knowledgeable. I personally really wanted to be in Erudite. I wanted to be able to have the answers to all my questions and not have to read stolen books under the covers while everyone was asleep anymore. I wanted to be able not to always have to hang out with people and be nice all the time.

A voice from beside me jolted me out of my thoughts. "Hey," my other best friend Amy James said. "How'd you sleep?"

"Pretty good," I answered. She wasn't at all scared, Amy was Amity through and through. Nothing made her mad and she loved being with her friends. It's not that I didn't, I just wasn't social like everyone else. Like an Amity should be.

"I wish we didn't have the choosing ceremony," she said getting up and rummaging in her chest for a dress. "Leanne was going to throw a party today and she was going to have super fun party games." I had to stifle a sigh of relief. I hated Leanne's parties. We always had to play things like "would you rather" and participate in sing-offs which were incredibly embarrassing.

"Oh was she really?" Grace replied. "Poor Leanne, she's probably so disappointed." I waited until she had gotten up too and slipped the book out from under my pillow and under the mattress where I had my precious hidden supply of books. Then I got up and pulled on a yellow skirt and red sweater, following a chatty Grace and Amy to the bathroom.

After about 20 minutes we headed to the eating hall. On a normal day we would eat a very predicable breakfast of what they called "Friendship bread" and some kind of fruit. Then we would walk a couple miles to school. I loved school. When I was little I used to take so much pride in my good grades and how I always knew the correct answer. That's when my parents began to get worried and force me to play outside instead of study. That was when I learned that people in Amity don't always know the answers, they don't study. I began to force myself to get average grades which killed me, but I knew that's what my teachers expected to see.