Four: A Divergent Collection (Divergent Series Story)

by Veronica Roth

“Intentions are the only thing they care about. They try to make you think they care about what you do, but they don’t. They don’t want you to act a certain way, they want you to think a certain way. So you’re easy to understand. So you won’t pose a threat to them.”

“Fear doesn’t shut you down,” I say. “It wakes you up. I’ve seen it. It’s fascinating.”

“But we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.”

because I know her, I know what she’s afraid of and what she loves and what she hates, but all she knows about me is what I’ve told her.

But instead of injecting myself with the other syringe, I offer her the box. This is supposed to be my way of evening things out, after all.

“You know, most boys would enjoy being trapped in close quarters with a girl.” “Not claustrophobic people, Tris!”

“Um . . . okay.” Okay, just do it, just say something real. “This one is from my . . . fantastic childhood. Childhood punishments. The tiny closet upstairs.” Shut in the dark to think about what I did. It was better than other punishments, but sometimes I was in there for too long, desperate for fresh air.

“Maybe you were cut out for Candor, because you’re a terrible liar,” I say.

She’s not dressed in the clothes of any faction, but she might as well be Abnegation, standing there waiting for me to hurt her, the way they would.

Tris stands in front of me, her arm up, tense from head to toe. She grits her teeth as the belt wraps around her arm, and then she pulls it free, and lashes out.

But she saw Marcus and she looked at him, with anger and without fear. She made me feel, not weak, but powerful. Strong enough to fight back.

“You got me through it,” I say.

I look away, not sure I can give voice to my reasons, because admitting them makes me a faction traitor, makes me feel like a coward.

“All your life you’ve been training to forget yourself, so when you’re in danger, it becomes your first instinct. I could belong in Abnegation just as easily.”

“That girl who let someone throw knives at her to spare a friend, who hit my dad with a belt to protect me—that selfless girl, that’s not you?”

“Maybe you were cut out for Candor, Four, because you’re a terrible liar.”

It sounds so good when she says it. Like it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

“Yes, that whopping two-year gap really is insurmountable, isn’t it?”

“I just don’t get it. I’m younger. I’m not pretty. I—” I laugh, and kiss her temple.

“Fine. You’re not pretty. So?” I move my lips to her cheek, trying to work up some courage. “I like how you look.” I pull back. “You’re deadly smart. You’re brave. And even though you found out about Marcus . . . you aren’t giving me that look. Like I’m . . . a kicked puppy, or something.”

She is worth trusting. With my secrets, with my shame, with the name that I abandoned. With the beautiful truths and the awful ones. I know it.

Somewhere between watching that belt curl around her arm in my fear landscape and telling her that selflessness and bravery were often the same thing, I made a decision.

Abnegation—part of her innate power comes from them, whenever she’s called upon to defend people who are weaker than she is. And I can’t stand to think of the men and women who are like her falling to Dauntless-Erudite weapons.

Strange, how quickly it became his house instead of mine, in my mind.

there’s still a part of him that’s my father, that tried to protect me because I’m Divergent.

His hand closes around my arm, tightly. I stare at it, for a second feeling dizzy, like I’m outside of my own body, already separating myself from the moment so I can survive it.

You can fight him, I think, as I remember Tris drawing back the belt in my fear landscape to strike him. I pull my arm free, and I’m too strong for him to hold on to.

She was equal to my trust, even if Marcus wasn’t. She, and her mother, and the rest of the faction she believes in, are still worth protecting. So that’s what I’m going to do.

She’s small, and thin—fragile-looking, like the impact with the net should have shattered her. Her eyes are wide and bright blue.

I feel, for a strange, brief moment, like I know her. Not from my time in Abnegation, not from school, but on a deeper level, somehow, her eyes and her mouth searching for a name, dissatisfied with the one she finds, just like I was.

“First jumper—Tris!”

This way, they’ll remember her, not for the gray she wears but for her first act of bravery.

People who don’t know what my name means often like to laugh at it, and I don’t like to be laughed at, especially not by a group of initiates fresh from Choosing, who have no idea what they’re in for.

“Well, Christina, if I wanted to put up with Candor smart-mouths, I would have joined their faction,” I say. “The first lesson you will learn from me is to keep your mouth shut. Got that?”

“No wonder you left.” “Yeah.” Tris rolls her eyes, which surprises me. “It was just because of the food.” I try not to smile. I’m not sure it works.

“Age doesn’t matter here.” Connections to Jeanine Matthews do.

“It must be because you’re so approachable. You know. Like a bed of nails.”

I would remember if I had ever met such a sharp Abnegation girl, even for just a second.

She’s Andrew Prior’s daughter. Beatrice. Tris.

I want to ask her why she would get one of her worst fears tattooed on her body, why she would want to wear the mark of her fear forever instead of burying it, ashamed.

“You look good, Tris,”

She smiles. And I wonder, for the first time, if she likes me. If she can still grin at me when I’m like this . . . well, she might.

This was the first place I ever felt strong.

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.

She doesn’t hold her breath. That’s good—one less bad habit to break. But she has a clumsy arm, awkward as a chicken leg.

“I think the Stiff’s taken too many hits to the head!” Peter says. “Hey, Stiff! Remember what a knife is?” I don’t usually hate people, but I hate Peter. I hate that he tries to shrink people, the same way Eric does.

“Hey, Peter,” Tris says. “Remember what a target is?”

“Why not? Are you afraid?” “Of getting stabbed by an airborne knife?” says Al. “Yes, I am!”

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

“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.