Free Four: Tobias Tells the Divergent Story (Divergent, #1.5)

by Veronica Roth

This was the first place I ever felt strong. Every time I breathe this air I feel it again.

All except her, with her deliberate movements, her blond head slipping between the shoulders of taller initiates. She doesn’t try to look comfortable with the blades balancing on her palms, and that is what I like about her, that she knows these weapons are unnatural yet she finds a way to wield them.

The other factions call us brutish, as if we don’t use our minds, but that is all I do here.

I don’t usually hate people, but I hate Peter.

it takes more bravery for Al to say no than for Eric to force him to get a knife to the back of the head, which is something Eric will never understand.

And it will probably end with a lost eye or a pierced throat; with horror, as every fight I’ve witnessed has, each one driving me further and further from the faction I chose as a haven.

I feel like someone is pressing me into a mold that does not fit my body, forcing me into the wrong shape.

Dauntless brutes—bullies, Lower Level children—that is what we are, beneath the tattoos and the piercings and the dark clothing.

She tips her chin up and looks at me with that Abnegation stubbornness I know so well.

She may have left them, but they are what’s making her strong.

I can’t tell her it will be okay, not with Eric here, but I can tr...

she’s not pretty, that word is too small. She is not like the girls I used to stare at, all bend and curve and softness. She is small but strong, and her bright eyes demand attention. Looking at her is like waking up.

“You about done, Stiff?” I say. Stiff. That’s why you’re strong, get it? She looks angry. “No.” Why on earth would she get it? She can’t read minds, for God’s sake.

I don’t really need her eyes to be on mine, but I feel better when they are.

“If I wanted to hurt you, don’t you think I would have already?”

she was just like me, putting aside her gray clothes but not really putting them aside, never really putting them aside because she knows the secret, that they are the strongest armor we can wear.

I can’t leave now. I like her too much. There, I said it. But I won’t say it again.