Four: A Divergent Collection (Divergent Series Story)

by Veronica Roth

I throw the knife and look away when she winces, too relieved to feel bad for hurting her. I did it.

I want to explain about Eric and how badly he wants to hurt me and everyone I even remotely care for, or about how I know where her strength comes from and wanted to remind her, but she doesn’t give me a chance.

But then she was here and 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.

“I know you go to headquarters every so often,” she says, looking down at her hands. “Zeke told me.” Zeke. That traitor.

“But I think you should have figured out by now that if there’s something you want to hide, it’s probably also something you need to talk about.”

I’ve trusted her in a way I don’t trust anyone else. Someone who has seen you that weak and doesn’t use it against you is worth that trust, I think. But it’s still hard to admit another vulnerability to her, to even speak the words out loud.

“So you go back to see her,” she says. “No,” I say. “No, that’s not why.” “But that’s part of it.”

“I just keep wanting to see if she’ll still be there. I’m just . . . waiting for the day when I’m . . . past it. When I’ve moved on.”

“Time doesn’t do shit.”

“The thing about moving on is, you have to move.”

In the first, I fly high above the city in an airplane that has run out of fuel. I tumble toward the ground, with no chance of rescue. In the second, I am immobile as a dark force—usually with David’s face, or Marcus’s—attacks the ones I care about. In the third, I am in pain, and there is no relief. All I can do is endure. In the fourth, she dies.

I no longer look at him and ask myself why he’s alive when she isn’t.

“Rowdy recruits.” I grin. “Yeah, because you don’t know anything about that, Chris.”

At least when this place was just for memories, it was mine. But now, like this? This bright, cheerful space is someone else’s.

“It wasn’t exactly what I expected. As it turns out, you have to be charming to make it anywhere.”

“Charming, and a bit of a liar,” he says sympathetically. “You should talk to Cara about that; it’s a source of endless frustration for her.”

“You remembered the city name!” She smiles. “I knew you’d develop an interest in geography one day, now that there are maps available.”

“I have to admit, I called it Philadelsburg,” I say. “Caleb corrected me.” She snickers. “Philadelsburg was good. But did Matthew tell you our news?”

Another friendship I love

“Well, we’re getting married, is the news.”

KNEW ITTT, the way she said it though

My eyes still search for faction divisions even now, but I don’t find any—even in myself, my shirt Candor white, my jeans Erudite blue, and my shoes Dauntless black. We are just people now.

Hands close over my shoulders and I tense, suppressing the urge to twist and grab and shove. You’re not in danger, I think to myself. Not anymore.

But I have been all right, really. It’s just been difficult for me to be around people, and I’m not sure how to explain that to her.

Whenever she called on me to speak to people from outside the city, I went cold at the first sign of their judgment, their scrutiny. That’s not the way to get things done, she told me, and I agreed, but I couldn’t escape the person I was. Am.

I’m tired of people telling me meaningless things and pretending they’re what she wanted. “You didn’t know her. You can’t say that.”

“Evelyn strikes again?” she asks me, jogging to catch up. “I watched this old footage of fighting moose,” I say. “Two stubborn, horned things just colliding over and over again. That’s what Evelyn and I are.”

But for the first time in a long time, when I go over the memory in my mind, I think of Christina, too.

I’m surprised by how much I understand what she’s saying.

“Like she would know,” she says, and I laugh, because it’s just so perfect, that we would say the same thing about my mother.

“Eighteen is too young to think you can’t ever have anything else that’s good, Tobias. Too young not to mess everything up over and over again, or . . . heal. It’s too young, and you’re too . . .” She trails off. “You’re too good to not live your own

Christina’s fingers move, her index and middle fingers hooking around mine. Her grip is strong and warm. Her dark skin, unblemished, contrasts with mine. “This okay?” she asks without looking at me. “Yeah,”

“And if you think I’m tough on you, you don’t know how bad it can get.” “Candor smart-mouth,” I say.

Poor me, I’m Christina, I have to actually teach people things,’” I say, mimicking her. “Talk to me after you’ve tried to wrangle volunteers at the crack of dawn.” “Oh, shut up.” She smacks me with a sweaty hand wrap. “That was wet,” I say to her.

“This isn’t some kind of . . . experiment, is it?” she says. “To see if you’ve moved on?” “What? No, it’s . . . I’m—I’m just . . . finally moving,” I say.

“This okay?” I say. She puts a hand over my wrist, pulls me toward her, and smiles. Our foreheads touch. “Yeah,” she says. “It is.”

She is the first one I tell when something goes well, or when something goes poorly. Or when something goes, period.

We work, and dream. We fight, and we laugh, and we fall in love. We move. And we mend.