Page 96 of The Sixth Fraction

I look at the clothes that are left. I’m good at passing as a Dauntless, and I wouldn’t mind seeing their headquarters for the first time. But my mother asked me to talk to Caleb.

“Erudite,” I say.

Today, I decide, is going to be different. I’m tired of carrying my Abnegationness like a stone around my neck. I’m tired of people seeing only that—uptight, quiet, passive—when they look at me. So when Sly offers me the stack of clothes, and the hisses start again as the others anticipate me leaving the room, I do the thing I’m afraid to do.

I take off my jacket. I untie my boots.

Everyone around me is talking, shouting, hissing. I ignore the noise and the roaring of my blood in my ears. I pull my shirt over my head.

Beneath it, I wear a tight tank top, but it’s still the most skin I’ve ever showed in public. And rippling across my left shoulder, in a patch of shiny pink skin that spans from my spine to my arm, is the burn I got in the fire.

When the people behind me see it, they go quiet. At first I think it’s another insult, their silence. Like my scarred skin is so hideous they’re trying to think of another nickname for me. But then I realize the Mender is one of the people standing behind me. And I wonder if their silence is actually respect.

Bolstered by that thought, I tug the blue dress over my head and then take off my pants underneath it. I think about the Erudite girls I’ve seen. Shoulders back and relaxed. Heads high. Confident and alert. Sometimes haughty, but not too much—too much is too much, as Sly likes to say.

I roll my shoulders back as I button up the dress, and then I eye the belt that was tucked inside it. The belt might be a trick; sometimes the Foxes do that to see if we’ll fall for it. The dress doesn’t need a belt, and an Erudite woman would probably find it to be unnecessarily restrictive.

I leave the belt aside, and slip my feet into the flat, round-toed shoes. Then I run my fingers through my hair to smooth it down. I’m still getting used to its new length. The haircut was a necessity after the fire—the ends of my hair were burnt in places, and it was easier to just get rid of it. Christina was the one who did it, cutting a straight line above my collarbone. She tried to talk me into bangs.

I braid my hair from crown to nape, tie it off with a rubber band, and tuck the end under so it’s hidden. Then I reach into the pocket of my discarded pants for my secret weapons.

The Foxes want to see transformation. And I know how to give it to them.

I take out the pocket mirror and the stick of eyeliner that Christina gave me. Then I smudge it carefully onto my eyelid, right along the lash line, the way she taught me. When I’m finished, my eyes stand out, made even brighter by the blue in my dress.

Makeup isn’t any more practical than the belt was, but sometimes Erudite vanity triumphs over their practicality. The balance between the two is intuitive, so I’m just betting that a belt’s restrictiveness is more offensive to an Erudite than a little harmless eyeliner. It’s a gamble, but I think it’ll pay off.

“No belt?” Sly asks me.

I don’t look away. I don’t shift my weight, or clear my throat, or look for validation anywhere else. I say, as crisply I can manage: “Why would I need one?”

Rory whistles—in encouragement or approval, I can’t tell. Sly smiles a little.

“See you tonight, recruit,” she says, and it’s a victory.

Erudite headquarters is right across from Millennium Park, where the bulging, mirrored sculpture shaped like a bean glints in the sun. It’s made up of a row of buildings along Michigan Avenue that used to be separate but are now connected internally, if not externally. The result is a patchwork of exteriors, one shorter and accented with red brick, one taller and made of gray stone, one pale with tall windows.

I haven’t spent much time in the Erudite sector. No Abnegation has. The enmity between our factions has ramped up in the last few years, but it’s always been there. It hasn’t always been clear to me why—there’s nothing inherently selfish about the pursuit of knowledge, and there’s nothing inherently ignorant about dedicating yourself to others. But now that I’m on the outside, I can see more clearly that both Erudite and Abnegation are rigid and proud, and it’s their similarities that cause the problem, not their differences.

I try to walk like I belong there. I’m surprised by how pleasant it all seems. The Erudite like to picnic in Millennium, or teach classes on the steps outside their buildings, or mill around on the sidewalk. A pair of women sit under a tree in the park, a chess set between them. A group of little boys on the sidewalk experiment with a homemade paper sundial. The streets are clean, and there are no weeds in the park, no overgrown bushes or dead tree branches.

I walk past a man with the stringed instrument—it looks like a fiddle, but I’m not sure—and he smiles up at me. I’m too startled to smile back. I’m not used to people noticing me at all.

I cross the street and make my way to the entrance, a pair of glass doors that opens at my approach. Beyond the stone exterior of the building is all glass, uneven panes that remind me of shards of ice. The floor shimmers like sunlit water. In the center of the lobby is a glass sculpture of an eye, the Erudite symbol. Water sloshes in its giant iris, turned by some kind of hidden mechanism.

It’s so grand it takes my breath away for a moment, and then someone bumps into me and I realize I shouldn’t be staring, shouldn’t be awed, if I want to go unnoticed. So I put my head down and walk to the left, the map of Erudite headquarters that I memorized now blank. I have no idea where I’m going; I just follow the flow of foot traffic.

I find myself in another huge space, this one a dining hall. There’s a glass ceiling, but each pane is a different color, arranged in a rainbow. It casts colorful shapes on the floor. I join the line for food, hoping I can figure out how it all works just by watching people.

“What are you doing?” someone behind me demands. I wince, hoping they’re not speaking to me, but I feel a tap on my shoulder, and I’m forced to turn. Behind me is a stern-looking man, maybe in his early twenties, who points toward the side of the room. “Did you really think you could pass as any older than sixteen? Go back to your seat until you’re dismissed.”

My cheeks are hot. I realize, too late, that all the young people in the room are sitting at the far end, waiting for their turn in the line. I stammer out an apology and walk over to those tables—but I can’t sit at them, not without anyone knowing who I am. So I rush toward the door instead. I need to find a quieter place to spend my hour; I need to remember how to get to the first-floor library—

“Beatrice?”

I tense at his voice; I relax at his voice. I turn to see Caleb standing behind me, a look of incredulity on his face. If I hadn’t heard him speak, though, I’m not sure I would have recognized him right away. His dark brown hair is grown out, long enough now to curl behind his ears. He’s wearing a blue collared shirt, starched and stiff, and a blazer in the same deep blue I’m wearing myself. He’s in jeans. His shoes are polished.

“Caleb,” I say, like it’s a gasp.