"Mine? Why mine?"
Jeanine's mild smile doesn't change. "Our information suggests that you were not alarmed by Tobias's abnormal result--that you were quite familiar with it, in fact. So I would like to see if that familiarity comes from experience."
"Your information," Amar says. "Information from where?"
"An initiate came forward to express his concerns for your and Tobias's well-being," Jeanine says. "I would like to respect his privacy. Tobias, you may leave now. Thank you for your assistance."
I look at Amar. He nods a little. I push myself to my feet, still a little unsteady, and walk out, leaving the door cracked open so I can stay and eavesdrop. But as soon as I'm in the hallway, Jeanine's assistant pushes the door shut, and I can't hear anything behind it, even when I press my ear to it.
An initiate came forward to express his concerns--and I'm sure I know who that initiate is. Our only former Erudite: Eric.
For a week, it seems that nothing will come of Jeanine Matthews's visit. All the initiates, Dauntless-born and transfer alike, go through fear simulations every day, and every day, I allow myself to be consumed by my own fears: heights, confinement, violence, Marcus. Sometimes they blur together, Marcus at the top of tall buildings, violence in confined spaces. I always wake half-delirious, shaking, embarrassed that even though I am the initiate with only four fears, I am also the one who can't dispel them when the simulations are done. They creep up on me when I least expect them, filling my sleep with nightmares and my waking with shudders and paranoia. I grind my teeth, I jump at small noises, my hands go numb without warning. I worry that I will go insane before initiation is done.
"You okay?" Zeke asks me at breakfast one morning. "You look . . . exhausted."
"I'm fine," I say, harsher than I mean to be.
"Oh, clearly," Zeke says, grinning. "It's okay to not be okay, you know."
"Yeah, right," I say, and I force myself to finish my food, even though it all tastes like dust to me, these days. If I have to feel like I'm losing my mind, I'm at least putting on weight--muscle, mostly. It's strange to take up so much space just by existing when I used to disappear so easily. It makes me feel just a little stronger, a little more stable.
Zeke and I put our trays away. When we're on our way out to the Pit, Zeke's little brother--Uriah is his name, I remember--runs up to us. He's taller than Zeke already, with a bandage behind his ear that covers up a fresh tattoo. Usually he looks like he's constantly on the verge of making a joke, but not right now. Right now he just looks stunned.
"Amar," he says, a little breathless. "Amar is . . ." He shakes his head. "Amar is dead."
I laugh a little. Distantly I'm aware that that's not an appropriate reaction, but I can't help it. "What? What do you mean, he's dead?"
"A Dauntless woman found a body on the ground near the Pire early this morning," Uriah says. "They just identified it. It was Amar. He . . . he must have . . ."
"Jumped?" Zeke says.
"Or fell, no one knows," Uriah says.
I move toward the paths climbing the walls of the Pit. Usually I almost press my body to the wall when I do this, afraid of the height, but this time I don't even think about what's below me. I brush past running, shrieking children and the people going into shops, coming out of them. I climb the staircase that dangles from the glass ceiling.
A crowd is gathered in the lobby of the Pire. I elbow my way through it. Some people curse at me, or elbow me back, but I don't really notice. I make my way to the edge of the room, to the glass walls above the streets that surround the Dauntless compound. Out there, there's an area sectioned off with tape, and a streak of dark red on the pavement.
I stare at the streak for a long time, until I feel myself comprehending that that streak comes from Amar's blood, from his body colliding with the ground.
Then I walk away.
I didn't know Amar well enough to feel grief, in the way I've taught myself to think of it. Grief was what I felt after my mother's death, a weight that made it impossible to move through each day. I remember stopping in the middle of simple tasks to rest, and forgetting to start them again, or waking up in the middle of the night with tears on my face.
I don't carry Amar's loss like that. I find myself feeling it every now and then, when I remember how he gave me my name, how he protected me when he didn't even know me. But most of the time I just feel angry. His death had something to do with Jeanine Matthews and the evaluation of his fear simulation, I know it. And that means that whatever happened is also Eric's responsibility, because he overheard our conversation and told his former faction leader about it.
They killed Amar, the Erudite. But everyone thinks that he jumped, or fell. It's something a Dauntless would do.
The Dauntless have a memorial service for him that evening. Everyone is drunk by late afternoon. We gather by the chasm, and Zeke passes me a cup of dark liquid, and I swallow it all without thinking. As the liquid calm moves through me, I sway a little on my feet and pass the empty cup back to him.
"Yeah, that seems about right," Zeke says, staring into the empty cup. "I'm going to get some more."
I nod and listen to the roar of the chasm. Jeanine Matthews seemed to accept that my own abnormal results were just a problem with the program, but what if that was just an act? What if she comes after me the way she came after Amar? I try to push the thought down where I won't find it again.
A dark, scarred hand falls on my shoulder, and Max stands beside me.
"You all right, Four?" he says.
"Yeah," I say, and it's true, I am all right. I am all right because I'm still on my feet and I'm not yet slurring my words.
"I know Amar took a particular interest in you. I think he saw strong potential." Max smiles a little.
"I didn't really know him," I say.
"He was always a little troubled, a little unbalanced. Not like the rest of the initiates in his class," Max says. "I think losing his grandparents really took a toll on him. Or maybe the problem was deeper. . . . I don't know. It could be that he's better off this way."
"Better off dead?" I say, scowling at him.
"That's not exactly what I meant," Max says. "But here in Dauntless, we encourage our members to choose their own paths through life. If this is what he chose . . . so much the better." He puts his hand on my shoulder again. "Depending on how you do in your final examination tomorrow, you and I should talk about the future you'd like to have here in Dauntless. You're by far our most promising initiate, despite your background."
I just keep staring at him. I don't even understand what he's saying, or why he's saying it here, at Amar's memorial service. Is he trying to recruit me? For what?
Zeke returns with two cups, and Max melts into the crowd like nothing ever happened. One of Amar's friends stands on a chair and shouts something meaningless about Amar being brave enough to explore the unknown.
Everyone lifts their glasses and chants his name. Amar, Amar, Amar. They say it so many times that it loses all meaning, the noise relentless and repetitive and all-consuming.
Then we all drink. This is how the Dauntless mourn: by chasing grief into the oblivion of alcohol and leaving it there.
All right. Fine. I can chase it too.
My final examination, my fear landscape, is administered by Tori and observed by the Dauntless leaders, including Max. I go somewhere in the middle of the pack of the initiates, and for the first time, I'm not even a little bit nervous. In the fear landscape, everyone is aware during the simulation, so I have nothing to hide. I jab myself in the neck with the needle and let reality disappear.
I've done it dozens of times. I find myself at the top of a high building and run off the edge. I get shut into a box and allow myself a brief moment of panic before slamming my shoulder into the right wall, shattering the wood with the impact, impossibly. I pick up a gun and shoot an innocent person--this time a faceless man dressed in Dauntless black--in the head without even thinking about it
.
This time, when the Marcuses surround me, they look more like him than they did before. His mouth is a mouth, though his eyes are still empty pits. And when he draws back his arm to hit me, he's holding a belt, not a barbed chain or some other weapon that can tear me apart piece by piece. I take a few hits, then dive at the nearest Marcus, wrapping my hands around his throat. I punch wildly at his face, and the violence gives me just a brief moment of satisfaction before I wake up, crouched on the floor of the fear landscape room.
The lights go on in the room beyond this one, so I can see the people inside it. There are two rows of waiting initiates, including Eric, who now has so many piercings in his lip that I find myself daydreaming about yanking them out one by one. Sitting in front of them are the three Dauntless leaders, including Max, all of whom are nodding and smiling. Tori gives me a thumbs-up.
I went into the examination thinking I didn't care anymore, not about passing, not about doing well, not about being Dauntless. But Tori's thumbs-up makes me swell with pride, and I let myself smile a little when I walk out. Amar may be dead, but he always wanted me to do well. I can't say I did it for him--I didn't really do it for anyone, not even myself. But at least I didn't embarrass him.
All the initiates who are finished with their final examination wait for the results in the transfer dormitory, Dauntless-borns and transfers alike. Zeke and Shauna whoop when I come in, and I sit down on the edge of my bed.
"How'd it go?" Zeke asks me.
"Fine," I say. "No surprises. Yours?"
"Awful, but I made it out alive," he says, shrugging. "Shauna got some new ones, though."
"I handled them," Shauna says with exaggerated nonchalance. She has a pillow across her knees, one of Eric's. He won't like that.
Her act breaks, and she grins. "I was pretty awesome."
"Yeah, yeah," Zeke says.
Shauna smacks him with the pillow, right in the face. He snatches it from her.
"What do you want me to say? Yes, you were awesome. Yes, you're the best Dauntless ever. Happy?" He hits her in the shoulder with the pillow. "She's been bragging nonstop since we started the fear sims because she's better at them than I am. It's annoying."
"It's just revenge for how much you bragged during combat training," she says. "'Did you see that great hit I got right in the beginning?' Blah, blah, blah."
She pushes him, and he grabs her wrists. She breaks free and flicks his ear, and they're laughing, fighting.
I may not understand Dauntless affection, but apparently I know flirtation when I see it. I smirk. I guess that resolves the Shauna question, not that it was really plaguing me. That was probably an answer in and of itself.
We sit around for another hour as the others finish their final exams, trickling in one after another. The last one to come in is Eric, and he just stands in the doorway, looking smug.
"Time to get our results," he says.
The others all get up and walk past him on their way out. Some of them seem nervous; others look cocky, sure of themselves. I wait until they're all gone before I walk to the doorway, but I don't go through it. I stop, crossing my arms and staring at Eric for a few seconds.
"Got something to say?" he says.
"I know it was you," I say. "Who told the Erudite about Amar. I know."
"I don't know what you're talking about," he says, but it's obvious that he does.