Page 53 of The Sixth Fraction

“Let’s make a deal,” I say. “I’ll try to say something new, and you’ll listen. And if I don’t succeed, you’ll get off at the next stop.”

“That gives you about twenty seconds.”

My throat feels tight. I decide I have nothing to lose.

I don’t know anything about this boy except what Evelyn told me: that his commitment to Dauntless is wavering, for whatever reason. And I know what that’s like—I know every inch of it. So I’ll just tell him about myself.

“You chose the wrong faction, or you think you did,” I say. “You don’t quite fit no matter where you are. And the more you learn about the world, about this city, about all the things you were told, the more confused you feel about where to go, what to do.”

The words spill out of me like I’ve been waiting to say them for weeks, and maybe I have. Maybe I was just waiting for the opportunity.

“You think no one feels right anywhere, and they’re all just pretending.”

He doesn’t object. I keep going.

“Or you have to think that, because the alternative—that you’re the one who’s broken—is too much to bear.”

The train slows as it approaches the next station.

Four stands in the middle of the empty train car, his hands loose at his sides. He’s not holding on to anything, despite the sway of the train; his boots are planted and his body shifts this way and that, by fractions, to keep him steady. I don’t have trouble imagining him fighting off some factionless attacker on a patrol. He probably throws a great punch.

The station comes and goes. Four doesn’t jump off.

“Why did you join them?” he asks me, voice softer now.

I tried to think of an answer to give for this question as I walked to the train station. I could tell him about Abnegation erasing memories just because it finds them inconvenient, or the choked feeling I got when I thought about a lifetime of holding my tongue, or even the instant regret I experienced when I added my blood to the stones. But I don’t.

Instead I say something brand-new.

“I was disappearing,” I say. “I realized I could do more good by leaving than by staying. And . . . I figured that if I’m going to feel this way, if I’m going to feel wrong all the time, it may as well mean something. It may as well do something.”

Four nods. He walks over so he’s standing across from me, the gap of a doorway between us. I’m not bothered by standing so close to the edge anymore, no matter how the train tilts as it turns; it seems like he’s not bothered by it, either.

“And you just . . . left everyone you care about behind?” he says. “Because that’s what she wants me to do.”

I look out at the city. We’re high up, now, close to the entrance to Dauntless headquarters, though I’ve still never seen it. The marsh is behind us, and before us, the dark uneven shapes of buildings, the straight lines of cracked and broken streets, the arc of the fence that hems us all in.

And beyond it . . . who knows?

“I think caring about them doesn’t mean I owe them a version of myself that isn’t real,” I say.

I rock back onto my heels, surprised by the force of that, by the truth of it. It’s not something I’ve ever articulated to myself before. The only person I really left behind was my father, but knowing that he’s out there, shamed by my absence, disappointed in me, maybe even pretending he doesn’t have a daughter anymore—it aches somewhere deep that I couldn’t reach to soothe, even if I knew how. But when I think about what I owe him in exchange for giving me life, I come up empty. I didn’t ask to be born. I never promised to stay the same as I used to be. No one can promise that anyway.

“You really don’t know why she sent you?” Four asks, his voice lower now that he’s closer. He’s been staring at me, I realize, since I spoke last. Like he doesn’t know what to make of me, or like—like he’s bothered by what he sees, the way a person is bothered by a question they once knew the answer to but can’t now recall.

I shake my head.

“Because.” He laughs a little. “She took a guess, and she guessed right.”

The train is slowing again. Four grabs the handle next to the door while I’m still too stunned to respond.

“Tell her I’ll think about it,” he says to me, without looking back. Then he throws himself out of the train car, lands on light feet on the platform, and disappears from sight as the train turns.

Chapter 18

Four

Today is Visiting Day.