Page 10 of The Sixth Fraction

“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

He gives me a strange smile. Fond, but a little sad, like he knows I’m thinking of leaving Abnegation, of leaving our family, and he’ll miss me.

I’ll miss him, too.

Chapter 6

Beatrice

My hands are sweaty. I can see the Hall of Factions from the bus stop, the glass walls of its newer wing catching the sunlight. Behind it is the long line of buildings on Michigan Avenue, locked together like soldiers in a shield wall.

We get off the bus and walk in a group to the Hall, looking like a flock of pigeons in our Abnegation grays. Once we reach the entrance, we stand to the side as the other faction members arrive with their sixteen-year-olds in tow. I can see them all through the glass, gathered in groups beneath their faction banners. There are rows of chairs arranged there now, but no one is sitting yet.

I spot Uriah walking toward the entrance. He grins at me and waves, and I smile back at him.

Once everyone else arrives, Marcus Eaton leads us in. It might be my imagination, but I can feel contempt radiating from the Erudite section of the Hall—and maybe the rest of it, too, though most of the other factions regard us with pity, not hostility. Poor Stiffs, so repressed.

According to my father, the source of Erudite’s loathing is their leader, Jeanine Matthews. Each of the other factions has a representative on the city’s council, though the task of making final decisions mostly falls to Abnegation, since a selfless leader is a trustworthy leader. Jeanine Matthews is Erudite’s representative, and as my father likes to say, attitudes trickle downhill—from Jeanine to her advisory board, and from the advisory board down to the rest of the faction.

Jeanine stands behind the line of metal bowls in a blue suit with sharp shoulders, her shirt buttoned up to her throat. Her hair—blond, like mine, though a darker shade—is smooth and pinned behind each ear. She watches us file into the Hall, expressionless, and then it’s time for Caleb and me to line up behind the other sixteen-year-olds, waiting in line right in the center of the room. There are ninety of us, a smaller class than usual, and of those, there are only twelve from Abnegation.

I feel a warm hand squeeze mine: my father’s. And it might seem like nothing, to the others, but to me, knowing how sparing my fellow Abnegation are about affection . . . it makes me want to burst into tears.

Can I leave my family? Can I bear it?

I find my place in line—or, rather, I wait for Caleb to find his, since the line is in order of age, from oldest to youngest. Anyone who turned sixteen since last spring’s Choosing Ceremony will choose their new faction today—people usually delay a child’s enrollment in school if they’re born in the latter half of the year, so they won’t have to attend for longer than their peers—and there’s some muttering about birthdays in the line, “What time were you born on April twenty-fourth, though?” And “Oh, you’re March seventh? I’m March eighth, so I guess I should get behind you.” I take my place behind Caleb, born two minutes later, and let the ones who are younger than I am line up behind me.

Marcus Eaton stands at the table, right in the center, with Jack Kang, representative of Candor, on his right and Johanna Reyes, representative of Amity, on his left. He brings his hands together, and the room gets quiet.

The Dauntless are the last to follow suit. Like Uriah, they seem at ease, chatting with their neighbors, their arms slung over the back of their chairs, their feet tapping on the floor as they wait. I try to imagine myself among them, all in black, my hair no longer pinned so tightly to my head that my scalp aches, my smiles no longer met with a sharp look or a raised eyebrow.

I feel a pang of longing for the person I could be, there. But how can I be sure that if I chose Dauntless, I wouldn’t just be a Stiff in black clothing—an impostor? The test didn’t even work for me. Tori’s assessment of my results was just a guess.

“Welcome,” Marcus Eaton says, and he’s smiling, but he has a way of making even smiling look serious. “Welcome to this year’s Choosing Ceremony. Welcome to the day we honor the philosophy of our founders, which tells us that everyone has a right to choose their own place in this world.”

I look at Caleb’s hands, hanging loose at his sides. They’re shaking. Without thinking, I reach for one and grip him tightly. He squeezes back.

“Long ago, when our founders created this city, they shed the archaic categories that once separated people—the political, the religious, the cultural, the superficial—and embraced a new understanding of human nature. That understanding was this: Human beings are united in that they are deeply flawed. For any society to live in harmony, they said, those flaws needed to be corrected. Defining new priorities was the best path to accomplishing that goal. Yet they could not agree on what the most egregious of those flaws was.”

I look at the banners hanging from the glass ceiling, representing the five flaws our founders blamed . . . and the five corrections to those flaws. Movement catches my eye through the skylights, but it’s fleeting—probably just a bird.

“Some of them blamed aggression and cruelty, and they called themselves Amity,” Marcus says, and Johanna Reyes, standing at the metal bowl that holds dark earth, spreads her hands over it. The Amity exchange smiles. Their clothes are bright and expressive. Red and yellow, of every shade, sometimes creeping toward orange or brown. To me, even though they’re not dressed alike, they all look the same. Kind. Warm. Relaxed.

Joining them has never been an option for me. I’ve never been relaxed a day in my life.

“Some of them blamed ignorance and disinterest, and they called themselves Erudite.”

I could never choose Erudite. Not when they hate us so much.

“Some of them blamed duplicity and secrecy. They called themselves Candor.”

I think of the secret burning inside me: Divergent.

“Some of them blamed selfishness and ego. They called themselves Abnegation.”

I do blame selfishness; I can feel it in myself, driving me to complain, and lie, and demand things I haven’t earned. I can feel it even now.

“And some of them blamed cowardice and weakness of character. They called themselves Dauntless.”