Four: A Divergent Collection (Divergent Series Story)

by Veronica Roth

There are no safe rooms, no safe truths, no safe secrets to tell.

“You’re the one who has to live with your choice,” she says. “Everyone else will get over it, move on, no matter what you decide. But you never will.”

“I’m nobody. That’s what being factionless is.”

that resisting is worth doing.”

“I’d rather eat out of a can than be strangled by a faction.”

I don’t even think about refusing to tell him.

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

The man whose knuckles I know better than his embrace.

I know better than to think he’ll leave and mull things over and come back apologizing. He never does that.

He will return with a belt, and the stripes he carves into my back will be easily hidden by a shirt and an obedient Abnegation expression.

I wince as his fingers stabilize my head, and hope he doesn’t see it, doesn’t see how even his slightest touch terrifies me.

I wonder if he even remembers what happened yesterday, or if he’s already shoved it into a separate compartment in his mind, keeping his monster half separate from his father half.

“Don’t worry about me handling the pain,” I say. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

I put it on my desk, next to the stack of books, and leave my bedroom, closing the door behind me.

and I am on fire with this thought, this need, this chance to escape.

I think of the lies I have told, year after year, about this bruise or that cut, the lies of omission I told when I kept Marcus’s secrets.

I think of the peace of the Amity orchards, the freedom I would find there from violence and cruelty.

This is for your own good is what Marcus said before the first blow fell. As if hitting me was an act of self-sacrifice. As if it hurt him to do it. Well, I didn’t see him limping around the kitchen this morning.

I think of the fear swallowing me last night until I couldn’t feel, until I couldn’t breathe. I think of the years that have ground me into dust beneath my father’s heel.

They are too perfect, too kind, for someone like me to be driven into their arms by rage and fear.

The truth is, I want my choice to drive a knife right through my father’s heart, to pierce him with as much pain and embarrassment and disappointment as possible. There is only one choice that can do that.

I am free.

I did it, I put that expression on his face. I am not the perfect Abnegation child, doomed to be swallowed whole by the system and dissolved into obscurity. Instead, I am the first Abnegation-Dauntless transfer in more than a decade.

not here, among the people I hoped would be my new friends, my new family. I can’t—I won’t—be Marcus Eaton’s son anymore.

I’m free here, free to snap at people and free to refuse them and free even to lie.

Now the question is, how do the Dauntless get off the roof?

Afraid of some kind of hidden violence inside of me, wrought by my father and by the years of silence my faction forced on me.

I fall to my knees and squeeze my arms against my ears like they can protect me, but nothing can protect me, nothing.

He’s smiling a little. I do see some pity in that smile, but not as much as I thought I would.

“I wouldn’t want to tell people my name either,”

Before the fear landscape, I was just someone they could step on, on their way to Dauntless membership. Now I’m like Eric—someone worth watching out for, maybe even someone worth being afraid of.

Amar gave me more than a new name. He gave me power.

“My name is Four,” I say. “Call me ‘Stiff’ again and you and I will have a problem.”

Someone who can cut back. Someone who’s finally ready to fight. Four.

It’s camaraderie and friendship and flirtation, and none of it is familiar to me.

“Amar, I dare you to go into the Erudite library while all the Noses are studying and scream something obscene.”

She doesn’t know that I came here to escape the life I was meant for, that I’m fighting so hard to get through initiation so I don’t have to admit that I’m an imposter. Abnegation-born, Abnegation result, in a Dauntless haven.

“But you should know that about Dauntless—girl, guy, whatever, it doesn’t matter here. What matters is what you’ve got in your gut.”

“Elderly Dauntless sometimes take a flying leap into the unknown of the chasm when they hit a certain age. It’s that or be factionless,”

“Hey, Noses! Check this out!” All the Erudite in the lobby look up from their books or screens, and the Dauntless burst into laughter as Amar turns, mooning them.

I want to have some kind of reminder that while wounds heal, they don’t disappear forever—I carry them everywhere, always, and that is the way of things, the way of scars.

That is what this tattoo will be, for me: a scar.

“He’s an initiate,” Amar says. “They’re all cut and bruised at this point. You should see them all limping around together. It’s sad.”

The Abnegation say, in hushed voices, that the problem with many Erudite is their selfishness, but I think it is their arrogance, the pride they take in knowing things that others do not.

It occurs to me that I did that, it was me, and fear creeps back in, a different kind of fear this time. A fear of what I am, what I might be becoming.

But I know that for every good thing that comes along, there is always a cost. What is the cost of being Dauntless?

Zeke yawns into his coffee, but he points out his family to me: his little brother, Uriah, sits at one of the other tables with Lynn, Shauna’s little sister.

I am about to answer no, but right at that moment Shauna’s chin slips off her hand and she smashes her chocolate muffin with her face.

How she stands with her knees locked, how she doesn’t hold up a hand to protect her jaw, how she punches from her elbow instead of throwing her body weight behind each hit.