Page 1 of The Sixth Fraction

1

Stiff

Chapter 1

Beatrice

Our household’s mirror is behind a sliding panel in the wall upstairs, and I’m allowed to stand in front of it once every three months, when my mother cuts my hair.

It’s the same choreography every time. I take the stool out of the hall closet and carry it over. She brings the scissors and the comb from the drawer in the bathroom. I sit. She slides the panel back. And I stare into my own eyes, hoping I’ll see something different this time.

But I’m the same. Small, pale. Bright blue eyes. Plain face. Dull blond hair. I want to keep staring, try on all my different expressions so I know what they look like. But even though I’m allowed to look at my reflection right now, I’m not supposed to revel in it. That would be vanity.

I look away.

My mother takes out the pins that are keeping my bun in place and then drags her fingers through my hair to unwind it. It would be easy to let this carry on the way it always has, this comforting ritual. But today I think of my brother, Caleb, how he’s been cutting his own hair for years, and my mother’s small smile and the tug of the comb make me feel like a child.

“Can I do it?” I ask her, nodding to the scissors.

She hesitates for only a moment before putting the scissors in my hand. I pinch my hair between two fingers the way I’ve seen her do it, and I think about shifting them higher, so I trim off more than just an inch. What if I cut my hair at my chin? Could I be someone different then?

Don’t be ridiculous, I tell myself. A haircut doesn’t change a person.

But I’m just so desperate to be different. To be the person I’m supposed to be.

Desperate to be the person who fits here, in our faction, in our home, instead of the one who doesn’t.

I close the scissors over the first lock of hair, and cut.

Chapter 2

Beatrice

My mother is humming.

She only ever hums when she cooks. I never recognize the tune. Right now she’s chopping carrots for the soup, and she chops in time with the music.

I slide my knife along the cutting board to get the last onions into the pot. They sizzle in the oil.

“Thank you for doing that,” she says to me. “They always make me cry.”

“Of course.”

I wash the cutting board right away and look at the cross-stitch of our faction’s motto that hangs over the sink. Them before I. Mrs. Black made it. The little knots are tight and even.

My father taps the door frame. “The council leader is almost here.”

My mother looks up and smiles. She seems at ease, like the most important man in the city coming over for dinner is nothing to fret about. She puts her carrots in the pot and pours a jar of vegetable broth over carrots and onions both. Then we stand together at the counter to chop the herbs, rosemary for her and thyme for me.

In these moments, I think that I can belong here. Working side by side with my mother. A quiet song in a quiet kitchen. The beautiful simplicity of an Abnegation life spent searching for ways to help other people, in actions big and small. My mother has accomplished both. She organizes volunteers to help the factionless and to restore the worn-down parts of the city; people in our faction routinely come to her for counsel; and my father, always so convinced of his own point of view, seeks her wisdom constantly. How can I not want that for myself? A life well-lived. A guarantee of meaning.

It’s not that I don’t want it, I guess. It’s that I’m not right for it.

“Are you nervous for tomorrow?” she asks me—quiet, like it’s a secret.

Tomorrow is the aptitude test. It will tell me . . . everything. Who I am. Where I belong. It will tell me what to choose. How to untie this knot inside me that’s been getting tighter and tighter for months.

Our city is divided into five factions. Each one wraps itself around a virtue like people huddled around a hearth fire. For our faction, that virtue is selflessness. For Erudite, intelligence. For Amity, kindness. For Candor, honesty. And for Dauntless, bravery. Everything we do—our jobs, our clothes, the way we speak, the way we act—has its foundation in our virtue of choice.