Tris had been a Fringer for as long as she could remember. Not through any choice of her own, of course - in Sol Del Salvian you tended to stay where you were born. 

And unfortunately for Tris, that was the Fringe.

She remembered, as a child, not fully understanding why the Fringe was any worse than the Core. Why the people on the outskirts of Sol Del Salvian had it so much worse. All she knew was that everyone had a strict curfew and sometimes people went missing.

As a child, she played in the shadow of the great black dome, leaned against its sturdy strength, never thought about somewhere outside of the dome. There were rumors, of course, rumors that she gained access to as she aged, but she never quite believed them. A world outside their dome? It seemed like the stuff of stories.

As she grew older, she learned. Learned that the Fringers were the people who lived on the bottommost level and the outermost squares, among the greatest diversity, the thickest plant life. At first, she thought that would be a good thing - more plants equaled more fruits, which equaled less hunger, right? Besides, the plants were all so pretty - stretching far above Tris' head, glowing gently when the light began to dim.

That was before she understood the reasoning behind the strict curfew. She had to learn about it the hard way, but then, most people did.

Everyone had told the children to stay indoors at night. To dash for the nearest house at the first sign of fading light. But none of them had really understood why until Tris' sister broke the rule.

It was her older sister, pretending for at least the third time that week to be attending the Shrine of Light. In reality, Tris' sister was about as far away from being a good Voice of Light as one could get: she was busy snorting mashed roots somewhere even more Fringe than their tiny home.

She never came back. When the adults thought Tris wasn't listening, they said that the plants took her. They always said that in hushed voices, like the plants would hear them and eat them, too. But as Tris became more aware of the mysterious disappearances, another thing became clear: the plants ever only took people at night. And the plants that did take people seemed to glow brighter, grow taller, than the rest.

It was a fact of the Fringe that at some point, everyone would lose some. To the violence, to the plants - sometimes, it was a 50/50 chance as to which would claim you first.

Realistically, though, the odds were often tipped in favor of the plants.

But what choice did they have? They were Fringers. They lived in the same communities they had been born in and were considered lucky if they died indoors. They watched their friends, family members get taken at night, presumably by the same plants they picked fruits from the next day.

It was a line of thought that Tris had gone down many times before, to no avail. She continued to pick fruits every morning, bring them to her still-thriving family, stare through the window up at the squares above. So much possibility in the higher levels. So many options...

She had applied to an art school a few weeks ago. Art was a cutthroat industry, incredibly hard to break into, and assuming she had the skills required to get accepted into a school, Tris had no idea where she would scrounge up the money. But she remained hopeful. She prayed at their local Shrine every day, worked about three jobs any given week (more if there was more work to be had) and practiced art with every spare breath she had.

She hoped that her past - her history as a Fringer - would garner her some sort of interest in the upper squares. Some fancy woman would read her words, look at her pictures, and feel incredibly sorry for the poor Fringers living miles below her. Sorry for long enough to pay Tris, at least, before she returned to doing whatever fancy women did in the upper squares.

That was her dream, at least: preying on the richs' emotions to scrabble her way up the social ladder. It wasn't a great plan, but it was better than most Fringers' plans - try to hold down a job, barter enough each week to survive, try to keep most of the children, don't look at the plants head-on.

"Mail," her mother called, bustling into the dining room, removing her shawl. Climate control demanded that nights be kept at a more frigid temperature, although nobody knew exactly why. Or maybe just Fringers didn't know - it was impossible for Tris to identify all of the areas in which she was ignorant.

She rushed over to her mother, setting down her youngest brother and extending a hand eagerly. Today was the day that responses from the school were due back, and even if she hadn't made it, she would be getting at least a consoling rejection letter.

"Here you are. Calm down, girl, it's not the end of the world if you don't get in," her mother reminded her dryly, handing her a thick piece of paper.

And it's the beginning of the world if I do get in, Tris silently retorted, running her fingers along the coarse material made from the fibers of plants no longer bearing fruit. She opened the letter, trying not to let her hands shake too badly.

Her mind only processed one word before shutting down entirely: Congratulations.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," her mother remarked. "What does it say?"

"I got in," Tris choked out. "I got in!"

The dining room erupted into cheers and whoops, all of her siblings and her mother crowding around her, asking to feel the letter, hold the letter, read the letter.

"Where's Dad?" Tris asked her mother over the bouncy children's heads.

"Out in the fields, working," she replied. "Go tell him, I'll finish taking care of these rascals." She waved Tris out the door, eagerly shutting it behind her.

Tris couldn't help it. She took off at a run, down the comfortably familiar streets of the square, knowing where to jump over potholes and when to turn and smile to friends she was passing.

"Hey, hey, Tris, what's the big rush?" someone called out to her.

Out of breath, unable to speak, Tris just held her letter aloft and kept running.

Finally, she reached the fields - an expanse dedicated entirely to the plants: their cultivation and care. Her father had worked here since well before he had even met her mother. Tris had always thought it a biting sort of irony, that her father had to return to work every day to feed the monsters that had supposedly stolen his daughter. But then,  she ate fruit borne by those monsters every day. The only difference between them was that what her father did put that fruit on the table and kept the remaining children alive.

She ran through the rows, careful not to touch the plants more than she had to, desperately asking anyone she could recognize if they had seen her father. Finally, someone directed her to him. He was already sweating, panting for breath as he and two other men worked to fell a dying plant.

"Dad!" she shouted, leaping over someone's sloppily abandoned tools to reach him.

Her father turned to face her, instinctively smiling both at her unexpected appearance and her obvious jubilation. "What is it, Tris?" he asked. "Is everything alright?" A habit, she supposed, that came from living in the Fringe all his life - even with all the nonverbal clues highlighting her joy, he had to first check that everyone was okay.

"Everything's fine, Dad. Better than fine. I got accepted!" She brandished her letter for him to read, but he didn't even bother. He swept her up in a hug so tight that she couldn't breathe.

"Tris, that's amazing!" He turned back to his crew, shouting loud enough for all the fields to hear. "My daughter got into art school!"

Cheers and whoops erupted around her, both from family friends and complete strangers. It didn't matter whether or not they knew her - in that moment, she was everyone's daughter, everyone's wife or mother or sister, managing to scrape some sort of life for herself outside of the Fringe.

Tris hadn't felt this happy in a long time. Not since before her sister was taken, not since she began to understand what it meant to be a Fringer - not since she had played in the shadow of the dome, not realizing how much of a disadvantage came with being able to touch its surface.