My eyes are too blurry to see her, but I feel her when she wraps her arms around me and squeezes so hard it hurts. She smells like coconut oil and she feels strong, exactly like she was during initiation into Dauntless, when she hung over the chasm by her fingertips. Back then—which was not so long ago—she made me feel weak, but now her strength makes me feel like I could be stronger too.
We kneel together on the stone floor, and I clutch her as tightly as she clutches me.
“It’s already done,” she says. “That’s what I meant to say. That the forgiving was already done.”
All the Dauntless go quiet when I walk into the cafeteria that night. I don’t blame them. As one of the Divergent, I have the power to let Jeanine kill one of them. Most of them probably want me to sacrifice myself. Or they are terrified that I won’t.
If this were Abnegation, no Divergent would be sitting here right now.
For a moment I don’t know where to go or how to get there. But then Zeke waves me over to his table, looking grim, and I guide my feet in that direction. But before I make it there, Lynn approaches me.
She is a different Lynn from the one I have always known. She doesn’t have a fierce look in her eyes. Instead she is pale and biting her lip to hide its wobble.
“Um . . .” she says. She looks to the left, to the right, anywhere but at my face. “I really . . . I miss Marlene. I’ve known her for a long time, and I . . .” She shakes her head. “The point is, don’t think that my saying this means anything about Marlene,” she says, like she’s scolding me, “but . . . thank you for saving Hec.”
Lynn shifts her weight from one foot to the other, her eyes flicking around the room. Then she hugs me with one arm, her hand gripping my shirt. Pain shoots through my shoulder. I don’t say anything about it.
She lets go, sniffs, and walks back to her table like nothing happened. I stare at her retreating back for a few seconds, and then sit down.
Zeke and Uriah sit side by side at the otherwise empty table. Uriah’s face is slack, like he’s not completely awake. He has a dark brown bottle in front of him that he sips from every few seconds.
I feel cautious around him. I saved Hec—which means I failed to save Marlene. But Uriah doesn’t look at me. I pull out the chair across from him and sit on the edge of it.
“Where’s Shauna?” I say. “Still in the hospital?”
“No, she’s over there,” says Zeke, nodding to the table Lynn walked back to. I see her there, so pale she might as well be translucent, sitting in a wheelchair. “Shauna shouldn’t be up, but Lynn’s pretty messed up, so she’s keeping her company.”
“But if you’re wondering why they’re all the way over there . . . Shauna found out I’m Divergent,” says Uriah sluggishly. “And she doesn’t want to catch it.”
“Oh.”
“She got all weird with me, too,” says Zeke, sighing. “‘How do you know your brother isn’t working against us? Have you been watching him?’ What I wouldn’t give to punch whoever poisoned her mind.”
“You don’t have to give anything,” says Uriah. “Her mother’s sitting right there. Go ahead and hit her.”
I follow his gaze to a middle-aged woman with blue streaks in her hair and earrings all the way down her earlobe. She is pretty, just like Lynn.
Tobias enters the room a moment later, followed by Tori and Harrison. I have been avoiding him. I haven’t spoken to him since that fight we had, before Marlene . . .
“Hello, Tris,” Tobias says when I’m close enough to hear him. His voice is low, rough. It transports me to quiet places.
“Hi,” I say in a tight little voice that does not belong to me.
He sits next to me and puts his arm on the back of my chair, leaning close. I don’t stare back—I refuse to stare back.
I stare back.
Dark eyes—a peculiar shade of blue, somehow capable of shutting the rest of the cafeteria out, of comforting me and also of reminding me that we are farther away from each other than I want us to be.
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m all right?” I say.
“No, I’m pretty sure you’re not all right.” He shakes his head. “I’m going to ask you not to make any decisions until we’ve talked about it.”
It’s too late, I think. The decision’s made.
“Until we’ve all talked about it, you mean, since it involves all of us,” says Uriah. “I don’t think anyone should turn themselves in.”
“No one?” I say.
“No!” Uriah scowls. “I think we should attack back.”
“Yeah,” I say hollowly, “let’s provoke the woman who can force half of this compound to kill themselves. That sounds like a great idea.”
I was too harsh. Uriah tips the contents of his bottle down his throat. He brings the bottle down on the table so hard I’m afraid it will shatter.
“Don’t talk about it like that,” he says in a growl.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “But you know I’m right. The best way to ensure that half our faction doesn’t die is to sacrifice one life.”
I don’t know what I expected. Maybe that Uriah, who knows too well what will happen if one of us does not go, would volunteer himself. But he looks down. Unwilling.
“Tori and Harrison and I decided to increase security. Hopefully if everyone is more aware of these attacks, we will be able to stop them,” Tobias says. “If it doesn’t work, then we will think of another solution. End of discussion. But no one is going to do anything yet. Okay?”
He looks at me when he asks and raises his eyebrows.
“Okay,” I say, not quite meeting his eyes.
After dinner, I try to go back to the dormitory where I’ve been sleeping, but I can’t quite walk through the door. Instead I walk through the corridors, brushing the stone walls with my fingers, listening to the echoes of my footsteps.
Without meaning to, I pass the water fountain where Peter, Drew, and Al attacked me. I knew it was Al by the way he smelled—I can still call the scent of lemongrass to mind. Now I associate it not with my friend but with the powerlessness I felt as they dragged me to the chasm.
I walk faster, keeping my eyes wide open so it will be harder to picture the attack in my mind. I have to get away from here, far from the places where my friend attacked me, where Peter stabbed Edward, where a sightless army of my friends began its march toward the Abnegation sector and all this insanity began.