In the Shadows - DIVERGENT HIGH

Chapter 13

Caleb has been offered a place at the most prestigious sixth form in the country! You don't normally get offers from sixth form colleges, I was just planning to stay here, but will my parents will be ashamed of me for lack of ambition? This is the question that I keep coming back to as the night wares on, as the rich inky sky swallows the last orange light of the setting sun. This is the moment that I question my new decisions. This is the time that everything I know, have decided to believe in, to strive to be, is worth nothing. Who is surprised?
Certainly not me.
I will just have to sleep, if I can: get to the morning before it gets to me.
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Today, my morning disciplines are banished from sight. When I look in the mirror, my buttons are carelessly half-done and in the wrong holes, my blazer collar is sticking up like a classic vampire's cloak and my skirt is hitched up in my tights. There's no time to change the buttons so I yank my lapel and tug at my skirt whilst hoisting my ready-packed school bag onto one shoulder. I grab an apple, fumble with the key and run out of the door.
I jog to school, once again, but at every crossing I meet, I am held up for at least 5 minutes; when I finally manage to cross the road, my jog is a flat out sprint. Of course when I finally get to school - 5 minutes late over all which isn't too bad - all the blood and heat has rushed to my face and every part of me is sticky with sweat. Catching my image briefly in the vast window glass that faces me as I trip up to the doors, I make the decision to make myself a further 10 minutes late to try and become presentable before 28 fashion conscious teenagers. In the end, I begin to slap my legs and arms in attempt to draw the blood to them instead but I don't stop soon enough. It takes too long for me to notice that, instead of reducing the pinkness in my face, I am just ending up like one huge, pink, sweating mess. That has got to be the last time I wake up late; I am not going to sprint to school again.
Deciding that I can't afford to be any later that I already am, I take several huge breaths and walk slowly to my classroom.
I really didn't think this through did I? Not only would I make a scene by arriving 15 minutes late, I would also draw attention to myself by the fact that I looked so out of puff. You can't skive; the later you make it, the worse it will be. Well here goes... I push the door open with my moistened palm and slip into my seat at the back. "Hi Tris." Susan whispers to me, a twinkle in her eye, as I plonk down beside her. "Hey." I say, gasping a little.
"You look pretty overheated." She smuggles a little giggle.
"Oh please come off it. I woke up late so had to sprint to school."
"Oh. Wow. Don't you live like a mile away?
"No, only half a mile."
"Still that is quite impressive," She stated, her face convincingly holding the mask of awe.
"Hmm." I reply, scavenging inside my bag for my maths homework that is due today. "Crumbs," I exclaim in frustration, "I forgot my maths book, Ms Matthews isn't going to appreciate that; first I disrupt her class with an imaginary bee and now I forget my homework. She isn't going to let me off lightly."
"No she isn't." Ms Matthews steely voice crashes like a lately broken wave over my head. I draw in a shallow breath and raise my gaze to her clear, cutting, calculating electric blue eyes. Her jaw is set rigid, loathing, and her brows bear an unmistakable scowl. I scrape my chair back and stand up; she hisses "Come with me." I obey with my tail between my legs, whimpering.
I sit on the chair opposite to her plush red one and lower my eyes to my hands that tangle in my lap. I smooth out my skirt. I look up at her. Ready. "Somebody informs me that you, like I had expected, are divergent. Now I wouldn't like to jump to a miscalculated and uninformed decision now would I?"
I shake my head cautiously.
"So," she starts to rifle through her linearly-kept draw and, before long, extracts a needle filled with a clear, shimmering liquid, its viscosity like glue. I shudder at the prospect of the needle; I loathe them. Something tells me that she sees this and takes pleasure in my discomfort. That repulses me. I straighten up.
"I am about to insert this into your veins. You will have to complete a test. This is your aptitude test."
"I thought we weren't supposed to get them until the end of the year."
"That's true but it is urgent that I find out if you are divergent or not, don't you see, you are different: the kind of different we can't afford to keep." Without another word, she plunges the needle deep into my unsuspecting neck. I feel the liquid gush through my skin, into my veins, and my consciousness is gone.
Before me is a wall, behind; a wall. I am in a lift. And we are going down. Not stopping at the ground, burying under, further down, into the ocean. I can't breathe, the lift is filled with water, my lungs too. How do I survive? This isn't real. But it is a test, a test I can't afford to fail. What would a Dauntless do? Step one, find the source of the leak; at the bottom. I hold my sparse breath and desperately flail to pull of my constricting coat, to shove it in the leak, to block it.
The lift and the water vanish as if they never existed and I am faced with my family. I have a gun clasped in my tense grip. "You or your family."
I can't do it; I can't commit suicide, I can't pull the trigger on my family. I don't have to. But I must if I want to stay at the school. What would my parents think of me if I got kicked out, became the homeless: the factionless? Focus Tris. I take a deep breath, squeeze my eyes shut and hope that I have made the right decision...

A/N thanks for 919 views!!!! That is absolutely crazy and amazing, I can't thank you all enough! It is nearly 1k!
I hope you enjoyed it and that it made sense. I am sorry it was so late and was a bit of a filler chapter. I wish I had planned my path that I was going to take before I wrote the whole thing so that it wasn't all so rambly. I can only hope that you aren't all getting bored xxx