Chasm

Chapter 6

TRIS POV

Most of the initiates are worn as they stumble out of the training room to dinner, believing that the worst is over and not anticipating the extent of their soreness tomorrow morning—at least some of them, anyway. Christina and I, along with the other returning transfers, are fully aware that the pain doesn't stop throughout the entire initiation process. We will be the ones to wisely get a head start on sleep tonight.

While I am tender from the day's work, I am not as wrecked as I was last year on the first day of training. Maybe that is because I skipped the shooting this morning; however, my muscles are familiar with the movements I forced on them today during punching practice, despite using them this way about a year ago.

Fortunately, the rest of training today was spent relearning the same combat moves that were taught to us last year. Four demonstrated on a punching bag and in the air before setting us loose to prepare for our upcoming fights. He didn't bother to fix anything I did, and I don't know if that is because I didn't need help, or if he is just done assisting me.

I suppose it is the latter. I mean, I have shoved him away with cutting remarks any time he has tried to strike a conversation or offer me something, like he did earlier regarding gun training.

But while I want to feel no remorse over the way I have been treating him, it is natural for it to eat away at me. I don't enjoy disrespecting people who don't deserve it; I guess that in spite of what he has done to me, my previous attachment to him makes me view him as innocent sometimes.

Trying to forget about all of it—the haunting relationship, the tiring day of training—I tune into the conversation at the dinner table that doesn't have anything to do with either.

"I see that Peter made a friend," Christina says, staring a few tables over where he sits with Jessica, the blonde, snobby girl from Erudite, and her friend, who I have learned is named April.

"Not surprising," I comment, though I am not usually one to gossip. But the two are so fitting as friends that I can't help but blurt something out.

Christina shakes her head and reaches for a dinner roll. "She's desperate. Did you see how she was staring at Four today?"

A flare of irrational jealousy burns beneath my cheeks, and I will myself to suppress it. "No."

"It's true," Uriah pipes up. "Full-on ogling. Even I noticed."

This shouldn't matter to me; he isn't mine to claim. But the fact that she is trying to steal something that was once mine agitates me because it has only been a day and I already have a simmering rivalry with Jessica.

She meets my eyes from across the tables between us, and then turns away with a contemptuous expression still written on her face.

"And she spent the whole time during gun training showing off," Christina says. "It was pathetic. It isn't that difficult to shoot the general center of the target." Unless you're me. "We were all doing it; you're not special."

This reminds me of last year when she took cuts at Peter, Molly, and Drew from across the training room in a not-so-secret manner. I smile when I remember her saying that she was doing them a favor by reminding them that they weren't God's gift to the world. Now that I know what they are capable of—stabbing sleeping people in the eyes, throwing defenseless people in the chasm—it doesn't make me uncomfortable to disrespect them anymore. Though it does make me want to keep a discerning eye on Jessica, despite the fact that I am not afraid of her.

Our conversation settles to a lull when a blonde boy with a cocky smile takes the seat next to Uriah. That makes four of us now, since Dez is mysteriously missing from the table.