the split

chapter 3

We finally stepped up to the blonde woman.

"Well? Names?" She snapped. I coughed.

"Caleb Prior and Bea... Beatrice Prior" I replied. She gave me a look and said,

"which is it?"

"W-what?" I said. I cursed myself for stuttering. I'm one third dauntless for crying out loud!

"Bea or Beatrice?" Oh. I took a deep breath and replied confidently,

"Bea. My name is Bea." She tapped at her computer for a minute before frowning and saying,

"Well it's Beatrice on our files"

I cleared my throat. This was not going as planned.

"Yes... but I want to be called Bea now" the lady nodded as if she got that a lot and handed me two keys with name tags.

"One for you and one for your brother. You are both on floor 11. Dinner is at 8 sharp." With that, she waved us to the lift and started the routine again with whoever was behind us. We stepped into the lift and pressed number 11. As we were going up, Caleb said,

"This is so exciting! Right, Beatr- Bea?" I didn't have the heart to reply. Besides, the lift had just stopped. As we stepped out I saw a long corridor, completely blue; it had a pastel blue ceiling, doors and walls, with a deeper blue carpet. I threw Caleb his key.

"Meet back here at 5 to 8?" He asked. I nodded yes. Then I opened my door and gasped, for the second time that day. The door opened onto a gorgeous living room area with a cosy bedroom off the side and a massive glass desk next to the floor to ceiling window. On the desk was two large computers, lots of paper, pens, notebooks and even an ipad.

  I could hardly believe my eyes. All this money they spent on us... why? It had gone beyond crazy. Was it just my Abnegation mind, unused to what was the norm everywhere else? I truly had no idea, and I didn't want to deal with it. I was just being a normal stiff, just not used to actual things that were extravagant and excessive.

  I wandered into my new room, wondering if they would have given me anything blue to wear. I immediately saw my closet and could see clearly that it was stuffed with blue clothes; it was made of glass. However, there seemed no way to open it. I looked around and noticed a tablet imbedded into the wall which read press okay. Naturally, I did as instructed. A new screen appeared, on which seemed to be the contents of my wardrobe, categorised, labelled and numbered for good measure. Unsure what to do, I pressed on a simple baby blue dress I could wear to dinner. Seconds later, the glass slid open and some contraption I could barely see behind the clothes lifted up the dress on its hanger and pushed it out towards me. Cautiously, I took it. Immediately the hanger swung back into position, the glass shut once more and the spot where my dress had been on the tablet now said simply press to put back. I'll experiment with that later.

  I checked the time on my new navy bedside clock. 7:53. I'd better get dressed quickly and get out to dinner. There were some shoes lined up along one wall, I picked out a pair of pastel blue flats and got ready.

  Precisely 3 minutes later, I opened my door to see a smartly dressed Caleb waiting for me. He frowned slightly at his watch (7:56- a minute later than we had agreed) but said nothing. We headed downstairs in the lift as he chatted on about how lovely it all was.

"You look beautiful Bea" he said, taking me by surprise. He's my brother, aren't they supposed to hate you and punch you and never give you compliments?  Before I could reply, the lift opened and we were suddenly thrown into a swarm of initiates, waiting for someone to let them into the dining room.

  Soon after we arrived, at precisely 8:00, a man waved us in.

"It is chicken, peas and potato tonight. After you have finished, stay where you are as there will be some important announcements made" he said. Chicken... When was the last time I had chicken?

  We came into the hall and sat down at a table with Lola and a few others, some I recognised, some I did not.

"Hey!" One boy called, "aren't you those stiffs? Why did you transfer? What was wrong with your old faction? Were they... bad to you? Have they been doing bad things they've kept a secret from everyone? I heard that all the stiffs had been stealing food!" I scowled at him. How did he dare say that? He didn't even know me! Abnegation never kept secrets. If he was talking about those rumours that we were keeping food that we said we'd give to the factionless...

"Bea... Bea stay calm" I knew Caleb didn't understand why I was getting angry. I am part dauntless I wanted to scream. I'm not afraid of you. It scared me that I was overreacting so much. It was just a comment, but somehow it had got under my skin...

"Bea... Bea...no...Bea" Caleb.

"Bea are you okay?" Lola.

"Bea?" Caleb.

"Bea?" Lola.

I'm not dauntless. I'm divergent.