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“Delusion?” I repeat. “You mean you haven’t…” I raise my eyebrows. “Oh. Oh. I just assumed…” That because I am so absorbed by him, everyone else must be too. “Um. You know. ”
“Well, you assumed wrong. ” He looks away. His cheeks are bright, like he’s embarrassed. “You can tell me anything, you know,” he says. He takes my face in his hands, his fingertips cold and his palms warm. “I am kinder than I seemed in training. I promise. ”
I believe him. But this has nothing to do with his kindness.
He kisses me between the eyebrows, and on the tip of my nose, and then carefully fits his mouth to mine. I am on edge. I have electricity coursing through my veins instead of blood. I want him to kiss me, I want him to; I am afraid of where it might go.
His hands shift to my shoulders, and his fingers brush over the edge of my bandage. He pulls back with a puckered brow.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
“No. It’s another tattoo. It’s healed, I just…wanted to keep it covered up. ”
“Can I see?”
I nod, my throat tight. I pull my sleeve down and slip my shoulder out of it. He stares down at my shoulder for a second, and then runs his fingers over it. They rise and fall with my bones, which stick out farther than I’d like. When he touches me, I feel like everywhere his skin meets mine is changed by the connection. It sends a thrill through my stomach. Not just fear. Something else, too. A wanting.
He peels the corner of the bandage away. His eyes roam over the symbol of Abnegation, and he smiles.
“I have the same one,” he says, laughing. “On my back. ”
“Really? Can I see it?”
He presses the bandage over the tattoo and pulls my shirt back over my shoulder.
“Are you asking me to undress, Tris?”
A nervous laugh gurgles from my throat. “Only…partially. ”
He nods, his smile suddenly fading. He lifts his eyes to mine and unzips his sweatshirt. It slides from his shoulders, and he tosses it onto the desk chair. I don’t feel like laughing now. All I can do is stare at him.
His eyebrows pull to the center of his forehead, and he grabs the hem of his T-shirt. In one swift motion, he pulls it over his head.
A patch of Dauntless flames covers his right side, but other than that, his chest is unmarked. He averts his eyes.
“What is it?” I ask, frowning. He looks…uncomfortable.
“I don’t invite many people to look at me,” he says. “Any people, actually. ”
“I can’t imagine why,” I say softly. “I mean, look at you. ”
I walk slowly around him. On his back is more ink than skin. The symbols of each faction are drawn there—Dauntless at the top of his spine, Abnegation just below it, and the other three, smaller, beneath them. For a few seconds I look at the scales that represent Candor, the eye that stands for Erudite, and the tree that symbolizes Amity. It makes sense that he would tattoo himself with the symbol of Dauntless, his refuge, and even the symbol of Abnegation, his place of origin, like I did. But the other three?
“I think we’ve made a mistake,” he says softly. “We’ve all started to put down the virtues of the other factions in the process of bolstering our own. I don’t want to do that. I want to be brave, and selfless, and smart, and kind, and honest. ” He clears his throat. “I continually struggle with kindness. ”
“No one’s perfect,” I whisper. “It doesn’t work that way. One bad thing goes away, and another bad thing replaces it. ”
I traded cowardice for cruelty; I traded weakness for ferocity.
I brush over Abnegation’s symbol with my fingertips. “We have to warn them, you know. Soon. ”
“I know,” he says. “We will. ”
He turns toward me. I want to touch him, but I’m afraid of his bareness; afraid that he will make me bare too.
“Is this scaring you, Tris?”
“No,” I croak. I clear my throat. “Not really. I’m only…afraid of what I want. ”
“What do you want?” Then his face tightens. “Me?”
Slowly I nod.
He nods too, and takes my hands in his gently. He guides my palms to his stomach. His eyes lowered, he pushes my hands up, over his abdomen and over his chest, and holds them against his neck. My palms tingle with the feel of his skin, smooth, warm. My face is hot, but I shiver anyway. He looks at me.
“Someday,” he says, “if you still want me, we can…” He pauses, clears his throat. “We can…”
I smile a little and wrap my arms around him before he finishes, pressing the side of my face to his chest. I feel his heartbeat against my cheek, as fast as my own.
“Are you afraid of me, too, Tobias?”
“Terrified,” he replies with a smile.
I turn my head and kiss the hollow beneath his throat.
“Maybe you won’t be in my fear landscape anymore,” I murmur.
He bends his head and kisses me slowly.
“Then everyone can call you Six. ”
“Four and Six,” I say.
We kiss again, and this time, it feels familiar. I know exactly how we fit together, his arm around my waist, my hands on his chest, the pressure of his lips on mine. We have each other memorized.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I WATCH TOBIAS’S face carefully as we walk to the dining hall, searching for any sign of disappointment. We spent the two hours lying on his bed, talking and kissing and eventually dozing until we heard shouts in the hallway—people on their way to the banquet.
If anything, he seems lighter now than he was before. He smiles more, anyway.
When we reach the entrance, we separate. I go in first, and run to the table I share with Will and Christina. He enters second, a minute later, and sits down next to Zeke, who hands him a dark bottle. He waves it away.
“Where did you go?” asks Christina. “Everyone else went back to the dormitory. ”
“I just wandered around,” I say. “I was too nervous to talk to everyone else about it. ”
“You have no reason to be nervous,” Christina says, shaking her head. “I turned around to talk to Will for one second, and you were already done. ”
I detect a note of jealousy in her voice, and again, I wish I could explain that I was well prepared for the simulation, because of what I am. Instead I just shrug.
“What job are you going to pick?” I ask her.
“I’m thinking I might want a job like Four’s. Training initiates,” she says. “Scaring the living daylights out of them. You know, fun stuff. What about you?”
I was so focused on getting through initiation that I barely thought about it. I could work for the Dauntless leaders—but they would kill me if they discover what I am. What else is there?
“I guess…I could be an ambassador to the other factions,” I say. “I think being a transfer would help me. ”
“I was so hoping you would say Dauntless-leader-in-training,” sighs Christina. “Because that’s what Peter wants. He couldn’t shut up about it in the dorm earlier. ”
“And it’s what I want,” adds Will. “Hopefully I ranked higher than him…oh, and all the Dauntless-born initiates. Forgot about them. ” He groans. “Oh God. This is going to be impossible. ”
“No, it isn’t,” she says. Christina reaches for his hand and laces her fingers with his, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Will squeezes her hand.
“Question,” says Christina, leaning forward. “The leaders who were watching your fear landscape…they were laughing about something. ”
“Oh?” I bite my lip hard. “I’m glad my terror amuses them. ”
“Any idea which obstacle it was?” she asks.
“No. ”
“You’re lying,” she says. “You always bite the inside of your cheek when you lie. It’s your tell. ”
I stop biting the inside of my cheek.
“Will’s is pinching his lips together, if it makes you feel better,” she adds.
Will covers his mouth immediately.
“Okay, fine. I was afraid of…intimacy,” I say.
“Intimacy,” repeats Christina. “Like…sex?”
I tense up. And force myself to nod. Even if it was just Christina, and no one else was around, I would still want to strangle her right now. I go over a few ways to inflict maximum injury with minimum force in my head. I try to throw flames from my eyes.
Will laughs.
“What was that like?” she says. “I mean, did someone just…try to do it with you? Who was it?”
“Oh, you know. Faceless…unidentifiable male,” I say. “How were your moths?”
“You promised you would never tell!” cries Christina, smacking my arm.
“Moths,” repeats Will. “You’re afraid of moths?”
“Not just a cloud of moths,” she says, “like…a swarm of them. Everywhere. All those wings and legs and…” She shudders and shakes her head.
“Terrifying,” Will says with mock seriousness. “That’s my girl. Tough as cotton balls. ”
“Oh, shut up. ”
A microphone squeals somewhere, so loud I clap my hands over my ears. I look across the room at Eric, who stands on one of the tables with the microphone in hand, tapping it with his fingertips. After the tapping is done and the crowd of Dauntless is quiet, Eric clears his throat and begins.
“We aren’t big on speeches here. Eloquence is for Erudite,” he says. The crowd laughs. I wonder if they know that he was an Erudite once; that under all the pretense of Dauntless recklessness and even brutality, he is more like an Erudite than anything else. If they did, I doubt they would laugh at him. “So I’m going to keep this short. It’s a new year, and we have a new pack of initiates. And a slightly smaller pack of new members. We offer them our congratulations. ”
At the word “congratulations” the room erupts, not into applause, but into the pounding of fists on tabletops. The noise vibrates in my chest, and I grin.
“We believe in bravery. We believe in taking action. We believe in freedom from fear and in acquiring the skills to force the bad out of our world so that the good can prosper and thrive. If you also believe in those things, we welcome you. ”
Even though I know Eric probably doesn’t believe in any of those things, I find myself smiling, because I believe in them. No matter how badly the leaders have warped the Dauntless ideals, those ideals can still belong to me.
More pounding fists, this time accompanied by whoops.
“Tomorrow, in their first act as members, our top ten initiates will choose their professions, in the order of how they are ranked,” Eric says. “The rankings, I know, are what everyone is really waiting for. They are determined by a combination of three scores—the first, from the combat stage of training; the second, from the simulation stage; and the third, from the final examination, the fear landscape. The rankings will appear on the screen behind me. ”
As soon as the word “me” leaves his mouth, the names appear on the screen, which is almost as large as the wall itself. Next to the number one is my picture, and the name “Tris. ”
A weight in my chest lifts. I didn’t realize it was there until it was gone, and I didn’t have to feel it anymore. I smile, and a tingling spreads through me. First. Divergent or not, this faction is where I belong.
I forget about war; I forget about death. Will’s arms wrap around me and he gives me a bear hug. I hear cheering and laughing and shouting. Christina points at the screen, her eyes wide and filled with tears.
1. Tris
2. Uriah
3. Lynn
4. Marlene
5. Peter
Peter stays. I suppress a sigh. But then I read the rest of the names.
6. Will
7. Christina
I smile, and Christina reaches across the table to hug me. I am too distracted to protest against the affection. She laughs in my ear.
Someone grabs me from behind and shouts in my ear. It’s Uriah. I can’t turn around, so I reach back and squeeze his shoulder.
“Congratulations!” I shout.
“You beat them!” he shouts back. He releases me, laughing, and runs into a crowd of Dauntless-born initiates.
I crane my neck to look at the screen again. I follow the list down.
Eight, nine, and ten are Dauntless-borns whose names I barely recognize.
Eleven and twelve are Molly and Drew.
Molly and Drew are cut. Drew, who tried to run away while Peter held me by the throat over the chasm, and Molly, who fed the Erudite lies about my father, are factionless.
It isn’t quite the victory I wanted, but it’s a victory nonetheless.
Will and Christina kiss, a little too sloppily for my taste. All around me is the pounding of Dauntless fists. Then I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to see Tobias standing behind me. I get up, beaming.
“You think giving you a hug would give away too much?” he says.
“You know,” I say, “I really don’t care. ”
I stand on my tiptoes and press my lips to his.
It is the best moment of my life.
A moment later, Tobias’s thumb brushes over the injection site in my neck, and a few things come together at once. I don’t know how I didn’t figure this out before.
One: Colored serum contains transmitters.
Two: Transmitters connect the mind to a simulation program.
Three: Erudite developed the serum.
Four: Eric and Max are working with the Erudite.
I break away from the kiss and stare wide-eyed at Tobias.
“Tris?” he says, confused.
I shake my head. “Not now. ” I meant to say not here. Not with Will and Christina standing a foot away from me—staring with open mouths, probably because I just kissed Tobias—and the clamor of the Dauntless surrounding us. But he has to know how important it is.