“Not now.” He glances around. “Meet me back here at eleven thirty. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”
I nod, and he turns away, leaving just as quickly as he came.
“Where have you been all day?” Christina asks when I walk back into the dormitory. The room is empty; everyone else must be at dinner. “I looked for you outside, but I couldn’t find you. Is everything okay? Did you get in trouble for hitting Four?”
I shake my head. The thought of telling her the truth about where I was makes me feel exhausted. How can I explain the impulse to hop on a train and visit my brother? Or the eerie calm in Eric’s voice as he questioned me? Or the reason that I exploded and hit Tobias to begin with?
“I just had to get away. I walked around for a long time,” I say. “And no, I’m not in trouble. He yelled at me, I apologized…that’s it.”
As I speak, I’m careful to keep my eyes steady on hers and my hands still at my sides.
“Good,” she says. “Because I have something to tell you.”
She looks over my head at the door and then stands on her tiptoes to see all the bunks—checking if they’re empty, probably. Then she sets her hands on my shoulders.
“Can you be a girl for a few seconds?”
“I’m always a girl.” I frown.
“You know what I mean. Like a silly, annoying girl.”
I twirl my hair around my finger. “’Kay.”
She grins so wide I can see her back row of teeth. “Will kissed me.”
“What?” I demand. “When? How? What happened?”
“You can be a girl!” She straightens, taking her hands from my shoulders. “Well, right after your little episode, we ate lunch and then we walked around near the train tracks. We were just talking about…I don’t even remember what we were talking about. And then he just stopped, and leaned in, and…kissed me.”
“Did you know that he liked you?” I say. “I mean, you know. Like that.”
“No!” She laughs. “The best part was, that was it. We just kept walking and talking like nothing happened. Well, until I kissed him.”
“How long have you known you liked him?”
“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t. But then little things…how he put his arm around me at the funeral, how he opens doors for me like I’m a girl instead of someone who could beat the crap out of him.”
I laugh. Suddenly I want to tell her about Tobias and everything that has happened between us. But the same reasons Tobias gave for pretending we aren’t together hold me back. I don’t want her to think that my rank has anything to do with my relationship with him.
So I just say, “I’m happy for you.”
“Thanks,” she says. “I’m happy too. And I thought it would be a while before I could feel that way…you know.”
She sits down on the edge of my bed and looks around the dormitory. Some of the initiates have already packed their things. Soon we’ll move into apartments on the other side of the compound. Those with government jobs will move to the glass building above the Pit. I won’t have to worry about Peter attacking me in my sleep. I won’t have to look at Al’s empty bed.
“I can’t believe it’s almost over,” she says. “It’s like we just got here. But it’s also like…like I haven’t seen home in forever.”
“You miss it?” I lean into the bed frame.
“Yeah.” She shrugs. “Some things are the same, though. I mean, everyone at home is just as loud as everyone here, so that’s good. But it’s easier there. You always know where you stand with everyone, because they tell you. There’s no…manipulation.”
I nod. Abnegation prepared me for that aspect of Dauntless life. The Abnegation aren’t manipulative, but they aren’t forthright, either.
“I don’t think I could have made it through Candor initiation, though.” She shakes her head. “There, instead of simulations, you get lie detector tests. All day, every day. And the final test…” She wrinkles her nose. “They give you this stuff they call truth serum and sit you in front of everyone and ask you a load of really personal questions. The theory is that if you spill all your secrets, you’ll have no desire to lie about anything, ever again. Like the worst about you is already in the open, so why not just be honest?”
I don’t know when I accumulated so many secrets. Being Divergent. Fears. How I really feel about my friends, my family, Al, Tobias. Candor initiation would reach things that even the simulations can’t touch; it would wreck me.
“Sounds awful,” I say.
“I always knew I couldn’t be Candor. I mean, I try to be honest, but some things you just don’t want people to know. Plus, I like to be in control of my own mind.”
Don’t we all.
“Anyway,” she says. She opens the cabinet to the left of our bunk beds. When she pulls the door open, a moth flutters out, its white wings carrying it toward her face. Christina shrieks so loud I almost jump out of my skin and slaps at her cheeks.
“Get it off! Get it off get it off get it off!” she screams.
The moth flutters away.
“It’s gone!” I say. Then I laugh. “You’re afraid of…moths?”
“They’re disgusting. Those papery wings and their stupid bug bodies…” She shudders.
I keep laughing. I laugh so hard I have to sit down and hold my stomach.
“It’s not funny!” she snaps. “Well…okay, maybe it is. A little.”
When I find Tobias late that night, he doesn’t say anything; he just grabs my hand and pulls me toward the train tracks.
He draws himself into a train car as it passes with bewildering ease and pulls me in after him. I fall against him, my cheek against his chest. His fingers slide down my arms, and he holds me by the elbows as the car bumps along the steel rails. I watch the glass building above the Dauntless compound shrink behind us.
“What is it you need to tell me?” I shout over the cry of the wind.
“Not yet,” he says.
He sinks to the floor and pulls me down with him, so he’s sitting with his back against the wall and I’m facing him, my legs trailing to the side on the dusty floor. The wind pushes strands of my hair loose and tosses them over my face. He presses his palms to my face, his index fingers sliding behind my ears, and pulls my mouth to his.