Dauntless High School

Chapter 43

A/N: I'm so sorry I have been away so long! I struggled with this chapter, so I put it aside and took a break that turned out to be pretty much for the whole summer. It was just so easy to enjoy the good weather and let the computer gather dust. Anyway, I tried it in Tris's POV and wasn't really happy with it. Then I tried writing it from Uriah's POV and still was not satisifed. Finally I combined both versions and decided it was time to call it good and move on. So, I hope it doesn't disappoint.

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URIAH

At first when I woke up, everything was just... surreal. Like I was in some alternate reality or, I don't know. Everything just felt weird. I didn't know where I was, or what had happened. Hell, I hardly knew who I was. I didn't recognize any of the faces hovering over me. There was a man in a white coat, with short white hair, bald on top, asking me to do things like squeeze their hand and follow a light. One of them pinched my hand really hard, so I moved it away from them.

There were several ladies, some of them around my mom's age, some only ten or so years older than me, all of them dressed in scrubs. My eyes came more into focus and I saw the popcorn ceiling and the white walls, the weird machines, and slowly the pieces came together: I was in a hospital. What happened, or why I was here, I had no idea, but at least I had some idea of where I was.

Then they started asking things like how old was I (sixteen ― my birthday was last month), who is the current president, and simple math sums. It was harder than it should have been to speak. Talking is never hard for me -- I can always find something to say, and my teachers are forever complaining that I can't seem to keep my mouth shut. It took till 9th grade for me to mostly remember to raise my hand in class, and I never quite got the art of whispering, so I'm always getting in trouble in class for talking to the people around me. I remember recently in Government class, the teacher made me move seats to the front of the room, away from Tris. Teachers are always doing that kind of stuff. Tris always reminds me that if I would just learn to whisper, maybe we could still sit together. Anyway, it's usually easy for me to talk but right now it is like my tongue is having trouble doing what my brain tells me to. It's making me anxious.

Anxious. That's a word I learned after my dad died. I was 11. For a long time it was like I couldn't quite relax. I would have nightmares a lot -- nightmares about the fire that killed Dad, he was saving someone and didn't make it out. Nightmares about police coming to tell me that Mom was gone now too. Nightmares where I was lost and couldn't find my family, not any of them. At night I would lay in bed and try to relax and go to sleep, but I kept finding that I was tensing up my muscles all over my body. Mom told me I was anxious. I didn't feel as safe with Dad gone.

It was one of those nights, soon after I turned 12, that I first snuck out. Sometimes I would climb into bed with my mom. But then Zeke teased me for that, so I stopped. I tried going to my brother's room, but I didn't want to wake him, I already seemed like enough of a baby for going to my mom in the past. So I snuck out at three in the morning and I walked the half-mile to Tris's house. When I got there, I just stood outside for a while, wondering if Tris would tease me like Zeke had. In the end I decided it was worth the risk -- I was anxious and I couldn't sleep and I didn't want to be alone.

Tris had showed me where the spare key was hidden when I walked home with her after school to work on a science project. (Well, maybe she didn't show me by choice -- I annoyed her by following a step behind everywhere she went and finally she just gave up trying to hide it.) It was still in the same place, so I let myself in the side door off the kitchen. I tiptoed through her house and up to her room, making sure to avoid the third step from the bottom, because it always creaked.