Page 8 of The Sixth Fraction

Uriah is all ease. It’s in the way he smiles, like that’s just how his mouth wants to move. The way he walks, like he has nowhere to be. And the way he talks, too, telling me about his older brother, Zeke, who’s a Dauntless wall guard—a prestigious position among the Dauntless—and what his friend Marlene said on the train that morning that made everyone double over in laughter.

“You can just take me to the bus stop,” I say, when it’s in view. “I feel fine now, and it’s a long way—”

Uriah raises an eyebrow at me. “You do realize that the longer it takes me to walk you home, the less time I have to spend at school today.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought about that. I look at the little curl of his lip and decide to try something. “So are you saying it would be an act of selflessness for me to let you walk me home?”

For a second he seems a little startled. Not used to an Abnegation girl making a joke, I guess. Then he puts on a serious expression and says, “Oh, definitely.”

“Then I guess I have no choice.”

“Guess not.”

His smile is wide and white. My answering one is a little more careful.

I don’t usually walk through the city like this, with no urgency or purpose, just looking at the buildings around me. So many of them are empty, their doors locked and their windows boarded. It seems impossible to me that there were ever enough people to fill them.

As we pass beneath the elevated train tracks that run through this part of the city like a seam, I think I see a glimmer of light through one of the windows. A low flame. It must be a factionless haunt; sometimes they live in unoccupied buildings outside their sector. As far as I know, no one has taken a census of the factionless population. My mother’s last estimate was two hundred, based on the ones who come to the donation centers and the ones who agree to work for the city, driving trains or maintaining its plumbing and electricity, in exchange for whatever provisions they need.

My father always says they deserve our deepest sympathy. That it’s a fate worse than death, to live without community, without purpose, without meaning.

We turn toward the marsh. The smell of it is on the wind, algae and mud. I wrinkle my nose.

“Zeke told me the back door of the Hall is always open,” Uriah says. “Want to go in? See the Choosing Ceremony room?”

The Hall of Factions is positioned close to the marsh, right in the city’s center. My stomach lurches at the thought of tomorrow’s Choosing Ceremony. I nod, not trusting myself to speak.

I’m saying you’re a Divergent. Tori’s voice lives in my mind now, right alongside my father’s. It’s dangerous. For you and for everyone you tell. I know myself well enough to know I won’t be telling anyone—and not because I’m just that selfless. Because I don’t want them to know there’s something wrong with me.

We walk around the older part of the building, which is a stately structure made of gray stone, with huge columns at the entrance. The back section is different, though, long and narrow, white and glass. There, I stare through the windows at the faction banners, which hang in the center of the space, as Uriah pushes the door open with his shoulder.

“I was here two years ago, for Zeke’s ceremony,” Uriah says. “You ever been to one?”

“No. What’s it like?”

The floor is polished stone, so our words and footsteps echo. I wince at the sound of my own voice, amplified, but the noise doesn’t seem to bother Uriah.

In the middle of the room, under the banners where the faction manifestos hang, is a long table with five metal bowls on top of it. The bowls would be too big for me to wrap my arms around, and there’s something different in each one: glass, for Candor; stones, for Abnegation; coals, for Dauntless; earth, for Amity; and water, for Erudite.

We stand in front of the table, Uriah looking at the Dauntless coals, and me at the Abnegation stones.

“Each person choosing gets a knife.” He sounds more serious than he has since I met him. “A small one. You cut into your hand, just enough to draw blood. And then you put your hand over one of the bowls.” He thrusts one hand out over the Dauntless bowl, palm down. “Kind of brutal, actually.”

“It’s symbolic,” I say. “Give your blood to your new faction—so they become your new family.”

“Like I said—brutal, if you’re switching factions.”

I glance at him. “Are you . . . thinking about it?”

“Aren’t you?” It’s his turn to shrug. “Doesn’t everyone at least consider it?”

I look up at the banners. Erudite’s—blue, naturally—catches my eye. Apparently I acted like an Erudite during the aptitude test. My faction hates Erudite, and the feeling seems to be mutual. But as I read their manifesto, Every question that can be answered must be answered, I think about what a relief it would be to ask any question I want and receive an answer. To argue with an adult like Marcus Eaton and feel like he was actually listening.

Still, my attention is drawn back to the middle of the banners, to the black one that belongs to Dauntless. To the phrase that has always been my favorite: We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another. When I was a child, I asked my father if that meant the Dauntless were selfless like the Abnegation, focused on standing up for each other. He laughed a little and said, Every faction tries to look out for its own, Beatrice. Ours is the only one that tries to look out for everyone, whether they belong to us or not.

I feel a dull ache in my chest at the thought of him. If I leave, what will become of him? Of both my parents? Will they hate me for abandoning them? Mourn me like I died?

They’ll have Caleb, I tell myself. They’ll be fine.