am not strong enough. The ground grows bigger and bigger.
I don’t slow down for another minute at least but sail parallel to the ground, like a bird.
When I slow down, I run my fingers over my hair. The wind teased it into knots. I hang about twenty feet above the ground, but that height seems like nothing now. I reach behind me and work to undo the straps holding me in. My fingers shake, but I still manage to loosen them. A crowd of members stands below. They grasp one another’s arms, forming a net of limbs beneath me.
In order to get down, I have to trust them to catch me. I have to accept that these people are mine, and I am theirs. It is a braver act than sliding down the zip line.
I wriggle forward and fall. I hit their arms hard. Wrist bones and forearms press into my back, and then palms wrap around my arms and pull me to my feet. I don’t know which hands hold me and which hands don’t; I see grins and hear laughter.
“What’d you think?” Shauna says, clapping me on the shoulder.
“Um…” All the members stare at me. They look as windblown as I feel, the frenzy of adrenaline in their eyes and their hair askew. I know why my father said the Dauntless were a pack of madmen. He didn’t—couldn’t—understand the kind of camaraderie that forms only after you’ve all risked your lives together.
“When can I go again?” I say. My smile stretches wide enough to show teeth, and when they laugh, I laugh. I think of climbing the stairs with the Abnegation, our feet finding the same rhythm, all of us the same. This isn’t like that. We are not the same. But we are, somehow, one.
I look toward the Hancock building, which is so far from where I stand that I can’t see the people on its roof.
“Look! There he is!” someone says, pointing over my shoulder. I follow the pointed finger toward a small dark shape sliding down the steel wire. A few seconds later I hear a bloodcurdling scream.
“I bet he’ll cry.”
“Zeke’s brother, cry? No way. He would get punched so hard.”
“His arms are flailing!”
“He sounds like a strangled cat,” I say. Everyone laughs again. I feel a twinge of guilt for teasing Uriah when he can’t hear me, but I would have said the same thing if he were standing here. I hope.
When Uriah finally comes to a stop, I follow the members to meet him. We line up beneath him and thrust our arms into the space between us. Shauna clamps a hand around my elbow. I grab another arm—I’m not sure who it belongs to, there are too many tangled hands—and look up at her.
“Pretty sure we can’t call you ‘Stiff’ anymore,” Shauna says. She nods. “Tris.”
I still smell like wind when I walk into the cafeteria that evening. For the second after I walk in, I stand among a crowd of Dauntless, and I feel like one of them. Then Shauna waves to me and the crowd breaks apart, and I walk toward the table where Christina, Al, and Will sit, gaping at me.
I didn’t think about them when I accepted Uriah’s invitation. In a way, it is satisfying to see stunned looks on their faces. But I don’t want them to be upset with me either.
“Where were you?” asks Christina. “What were you doing with them?”
“Uriah…you know, the Dauntless-born who was on our capture the flag team?” I say. “He was leaving with some of the members and he begged them to let me come along. They didn’t really want me there. Some girl named Lynn stepped on me.”
“They may not have wanted you there then,” says Will quietly, “but they seem to like you now.”
“Yeah,” I say. I can’t deny it. “I’m glad to be back, though.”
Hopefully they can’t tell I’m lying, but I suspect they can. I caught sight of myself in a window on the way into the compound, and my cheeks and eyes were both bright, my hair tangled. I look like I have experienced something powerful.
“Well, you missed Christina almost punching an Erudite,” says Al. His voice sounds eager. I can count on Al to try to break the tension. “He was here asking for opinions about the Abnegation leadership, and Christina told him there were more important things for him to be doing.”
“Which she was completely right about,” adds Will. “And he got testy with