Insurgent (Divergent, #2)

by Veronica Roth

foolish. We walk in a small pack, Peter cradling his bloody arm to his chest—the arm that I shot—and Marcus with his hand on Peter’s shoulder, keeping him stable. Caleb wipes his cheeks every few seconds, and I know he’s crying but I don’t know how to comfort him, or why I am not crying myself. Instead I take the lead, Tobias silent at my side, and though he does not touch me, he steadies me.

“Sometimes,” he says, sliding his arm across my shoulders, “people just want to be happy, even if it’s not real.”

“I wish we were alone,” he says. “I almost always wish that,” I say.

I am Divergent, so I am not nobody, there’s no such thing as “safe,” and I have other things on my mind than playing house with Tobias. And so, apparently, does he.

But everyone recognizes Marcus’s surname. I can tell by the clamor that rises in the room after Tobias speaks. The Candor all know Marcus is the most influential government official, and some of them must have read the article Jeanine released about his cruelty toward his son. It was one of the only things she said that was true. And now everyone knows that Tobias is that son. Tobias Eaton is a powerful name.

I am the only thing that kept him in the faction he wanted to leave. I am not worth that. Maybe he deserves to know.

“Just to clarify,” says Niles. “Are you telling me that you were almost murdered by the Erudite . . . and then fought your way into the Dauntless compound . . . and destroyed the simulation?” “Yes,” I say. “I think I speak for everyone,” he says, “when I say that you have earned the title of Dauntless.”

“I think it would be easier to fight in a dress,” says Marlene, tapping her chin. “It would give your legs freer movement. And who really cares if you flash people your underwear, as long as you’re kicking the crap out of them?”

Ruthlessness and cold logic, it seems, can accomplish almost anything, including putting one and a half factions to sleep.

I am playing hide-and-seek with the Divergent, but I’m not the only person who’s “it.”

should probably be afraid. But instead a hysterical laugh bubbles inside me, because I just remembered something: Maybe I can’t hold a gun. But I have a knife in my back pocket.

I am nervous to have him here, mixing the sad remains of my family life with the sad remains of my Dauntless life.

We can’t attack without Candor, I think, unless we have the factionless.

I used a gun like this to defend my father and brother from simulation-bound Dauntless. I used it to stop Eric from shooting Tobias in the head. It is not inherently evil. It is just a tool.

I have a message for the Divergent. I am Divergent. This is not a negotiation. No, it is not. It is a warning. I understand. Every two days until one of you delivers yourself to Erudite headquarters . . . I will. . . . this will happen again. It will never happen again.

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.

My father: Erudite-born, Abnegation-grown. He often found it difficult to live up to the demands of his chosen faction, just as I did. But he tried, and he knew true selflessness when he saw it.

Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.

I wish I could tell my parents that I will die like the Abnegation. They would be proud, I think.

“I don’t . . .” I sound like I am being strangled. “My family is all dead, or traitors; how can I . . .” I am not making any sense. The sobs take over my body, my mind, everything. He gathers me to him, and bathwater soaks my legs. His hold is tight. I listen to his heartbeat and, after a while, find a way to let the rhythm calm me. “I’ll be your family now,” he says.

“I love you,” I say. I said that once, before I went to Erudite headquarters, but he was asleep then. I don’t know why I didn’t say it when he could hear it. Maybe I was afraid to trust him with something so personal as my devotion. Or afraid that I did not know what it was to love someone. But now I think the scary thing was not saying it before it was almost too late. Not saying it before it was almost too late for me. I am his, and he is mine, and it has been that way all along. He stares at me. I wait with my hands clutching his arms for stability as he considers his response. He frowns at me. “Say it again.” “Tobias,” I say, “I love you.” His skin is slippery with water and he smells like sweat and my shirt sticks to his arms when he slides them around me. He presses his face to my neck and kisses me right above the collarbone, kisses my cheek, kisses my lips. “I love you, too,” he says.

Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind. Marcus is not good or bad, but both. Well, he is probably more bad than good. But that doesn’t mean he’s lying.

faction. We share a common enemy, but does that make us friends?

“Let me get this straight. So you left the Dauntless compound to get ready for war . . . and took your makeup bag with you?” “Yep. Figured it would be harder for anyone to shoot me if they saw how devastatingly attractive I was,” she says, arching an eyebrow.

In the midst of meeting new people and making plans, I forgot that my plan is to walk straight into a battle that could claim my life. Right after I realized that my life was worth living.

“Oh! Sorry, Nando.” The jolt knocked his glasses askew. He smiles at Christina and takes the glasses off, shoving them into his pocket. “Nando?” I say to him. “I thought the Erudite didn’t like nicknames?” “When a pretty girl calls you by a nickname,” he says, “it is only logical to respond to it.”

“You need to trust me, Beatrice,” he says, chin wobbling. “After you helped her torture me? After you let her almost kill me?” “I didn’t help her tort—” “You certainly didn’t stop her! You were right there, and you just watched—” “What could I have done? What—” “You could have tried, you coward!” I scream so loud my face gets hot and tears jump into my eyes. “Tried, and failed, because you love me!”

The logical puzzle: In a fight between two perfect equals, how can one win? The answer: One can’t.

Christina slumps against me, and I slump against her, so we hold each other up.

I think it again: that Johanna Reyes might still be beautiful. Except now I think that she isn’t just beautiful in spite of the scar, she’s somehow beautiful with it, like Lynn with her buzzed hair, like Tobias with the memories of his father’s cruelty that he wears like armor, like my mother in her plain gray clothing.

“That’s what I thought,” he says. Pride is the flaw in every Dauntless heart. And it is in mine.