ONE ABNEGATION,
FIVE Candor, two Erudite. Those are my initiates.
I’m told
that Candor and Dauntless have a fairly high mutual transfer rate—we usually
lose as many to them as we gain. I consider it my job to get these eight
initiates through at least the first round of cuts. Last year, when Eric and
Max insisted on the cuts, I fought them as hard as I dared. But it seems the
cuts are here to stay, all for the sake of the Dauntless Max and Eric want to
create—a faction of mindless brutality.
But I
intend to leave Dauntless as soon as I find out what Max and Jeanine are up to,
and if that’s in the middle of initiation, so much the better.
Once all
the Dauntless-borns—including Uriah, Lynn, and Marlene—are with us, I start down
the tunnel, beckoning them to follow with one hand. We walk down the dark
hallway toward the Pit doors.
“This is
where we divide,” Lauren says, when she reaches the doors. “The Dauntless-born
initiates are with me. I assume you
don’t need a tour of the place.”
She smiles,
and the Dauntless-borns follow her down the hallway that bypasses the Pit,
leading them right into the cafeteria. I watch them leave, and once they’ve
disappeared, I straighten up. I learned last year that in order for them to
take me seriously from the beginning, I have to be hard on them from the
beginning. I don’t have Amar’s natural charm, which won people’s loyalty with
just a smile or a joke, so I have to compensate in other ways.
“Most of
the time I work in the control room, but for the next few weeks, I’m your
instructor,” I say. “My name is Four.”
One of the
Candor girls—tall, with dark skin and an energetic voice—speaks up. “Four? Like
the number?”
I sense the
beginnings of an uprising. People who don’t know what my name means often like
to laugh at it, and I don’t like to be laughed at, especially not by a group of
initiates fresh from Choosing, who have no idea what they’re in for.
“Yes,” I
say testily. “Is there a problem?”
“No,” the
girl says.
“Good.
We’re about to go into the Pit, which you will someday learn to love. It—”
The Candor
girl interrupts again. “The Pit? Clever name.”
I feel a
swell of irritation, and I move toward her without really deciding to. I can’t
have someone cracking jokes about everything I say, especially not at the
beginning of initiation, when everyone’s attitudes are so malleable. I have to
show them all that I’m not someone to be messed with, and I have to do it now.
I lean in
close to her face and stare at her for a few seconds, until I see her smile
falter.
“What’s
your name?” I say, keeping my voice quiet.
“Christina,”
she says.
“Well,
Christina, if I wanted to put up with Candor smart-mouths, I would have joined
their faction,” I say. “The first lesson you will learn from me is to keep your
mouth shut. Got that?”
She nods. I
turn away, my heart throbbing in my ears. I think that did it, but I can’t be
sure, not until initiation really begins. I push through the double doors that
open up to the Pit, and for a moment, I see it like it’s for the first time,
the impossibly huge space, bustling with life and energy, the pulse of water in
the chasm, crashing against the rocks, the echoes of conversation everywhere.
Most of the time I avoid it because it’s so busy, but today I love it. I can’t
help it.
“If you
follow me,” I say. “I’ll show you the chasm.”
+ + +
The
Abnegation transfer sits at my table. For a moment I wonder if she knows who I
am, or if she’s somehow magnetized to me by an invisible force of Stiff that I
can’t help but give off. But she doesn’t look at me like she knows me. And she
doesn’t know what a hamburger is.
“You’ve
never had a hamburger before?” Christina says. Incredulous. The Candor are like
that, amazed that not everyone lives the way that they do. It’s one of the
reasons I don’t like them. It’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist to
them, but for the Abnegation, the rest of the world is all that exists, and it
is full of need.
“No,” Tris
says. For someone so small, she has a low voice. It always sounds serious, no
matter what she says. “Is that what it’s called?”
“Stiffs eat
plain food,” I say, trying out the slang. It feels unnatural, applied to Tris;
I feel like I owe her the courtesies I would owe any woman in my former
faction, deferential, averted eyes and polite conversation. I have to push
myself to remember that I’m not in Abnegation anymore. And neither is she.
“Why?”
Christina says.
“Extravagance
is considered self-indulgent and unnecessary.” She says it like she’s reciting
it from memory. Maybe she is.
“No wonder
you left.”
“Yeah.”
Tris rolls her eyes, which surprises me. “It was just because of the food.”
I try not
to smile. I’m not sure it works.
Then Eric
walks in, and everything goes quiet.
Eric’s
appointment to Dauntless leader was met with confusion and, in some cases,
anger. There had never been a leader so young before, and plenty of people
spoke out against the decision, voiced concerns about his youth and his Erudite
background. Max made sure to silence those concerns. And so did Eric. Someone
would be outspoken one day and silent, frightened the next, almost like he had
threatened them. Knowing Eric, he probably did, with soft-spoken words that
twisted together into malice, clever and calculated as always.
“Who’s
that?” Christina says.
“His name
is Eric,” I say. “He’s a Dauntless leader.”
“Seriously?
But he’s so young.”
I set my
jaw. “Age doesn’t matter here.” Connections
to Jeanine Matthews do.
He comes
toward us and drops into the seat next to me. I stare at my food.
“Well, aren’t
you going to introduce me?” he says lightly. Like we’re friends.
“This is
Tris and Christina,” I say.
“Ooh, a
Stiff,” says Eric, smirking. I worry, for a moment, that he’s about to tell her
where I came from, and I curl a hand
around my knee, clenching so I don’t lash out and smack him. But all he says
is, “We’ll see how long you last.”
I still
want to smack him. Or remind him that the last transfer we had from Abnegation,
who is sitting right next to him, managed to knock out one of his teeth, so who
knows what this next one will do. But with these new practices in
place—fighting until an opponent can’t stand, cuts after just a week of combat
training—he’s right, it’s unlikely that she’ll last very long, small as she is.
I don’t like it, but there it is.
“What have
you been doing lately, Four?” Eric says.
I feel a
prickle of fear, worried, for a moment, that he knows that I’m spying on him
and Max. I shrug. “Nothing, really.”
“Max tells
me he keeps trying to meet with you, and you don’t show up,” Eric says. “He
requested that I find out what’s going on with you.”
I find it
easy to discard Max’s messages, like they’re bits of garbage blown toward me by
the wind. The backlash from Eric’s appointment as Dauntless leader may not
bother Eric anymore, but it still bothers Max, who has never liked his protégé
as much as he was supposed to. He liked me, though I’m not sure why, since I
hole up alone while the other Dauntless pull together.
“Tell him I’m
satisfied with the position I currently hold,” I say.
“So he
wants to give you a job.”
There’s
that suspicious probing again, oozing from his mouth like pus from a new
piercing.
“So it
would seem.”
“And you
aren’t interested.”
“I haven’t
been interested for two years.”
“Well.
Let’s hope he gets the point, then.”
He hits my
shoulder, like he means it to be casual, but the force of it almost pushes me
into the table. I glare at him as he walks away—I don’t like to be pushed
around, especially not by scrawny Erudite-lovers.
“Are you
two . . . friends?” Tris asks.
“We were in
the same initiate class.” I decide to make a preemptive strike, to poison them
against Eric before he poisons them against me. “He transferred from Erudite.”
Christina
raises her eyebrows, but Tris disregards the word “erudite,” disregards the
suspicion that ought to be written into her very skin after a lifetime in
Abnegation, and says, “Were you a transfer too?”
“I thought
I would only have trouble with the Candor asking too many questions,” I say.
“Now I’ve got Stiffs, too?”
As it was
with Christina before, my sharpness is intended to slam doors before they open
too much. But Tris’s mouth twists like she tastes something sour, and she says,
“It must be because you’re so approachable. You know. Like a bed of nails.”
Her face
flushes as I stare at her, but she doesn’t look away. Something about her seems
familiar to me, though I swear I would remember if I had ever met such a sharp
Abnegation girl, even for just a second.
“Careful,
Tris,” I say. Careful what you say to me, is what I mean, careful what you say
to anyone, in this faction that values all the wrong things, that doesn’t
understand that when you come from Abnegation, standing up for yourself, even
in small moments, is the height of bravery.
As I say
her name, I realize how I know her. She’s Andrew Prior’s daughter. Beatrice.
Tris.
