The Initiate: A Divergent Story. Veronica Roth

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СКАЧАТЬ is he okay with your choice?” he says. “Visiting Day is coming up, you know.”

      “No,” I say distantly. “He’s not okay with it at all.”

      My father will not come on Visiting Day. I’m sure of it. He will never speak to me again.

      The Erudite sector is cleaner than any other part of the city, every scrap of trash or rubble cleared from the pavement, every crack in the street shored up with tar. I feel like I need to step carefully rather than mar the sidewalk with my sneakers. The other Dauntless walk along carelessly, the soles of their shoes making slapping sounds like pattering rain.

      Every faction headquarters is allowed to have the lights on in its lobby at midnight, but everything else is supposed to be dark. Here, in the Erudite sector, each building that makes up Erudite headquarters is like a pillar of light. The windows we walk past feature the Erudite sitting at long tables, their noses buried in books or screens, or talking quietly to one another. The young and the old mix together at every table, in their impeccable blue clothing, their smooth hair, more than half of them with gleaming spectacles. Vanity, my father would say. They are so concerned with looking intelligent that they make themselves fools for it.

      I pause to watch them. They don’t look vain to me. They look like people who make every effort to feel as smart as they are supposed to be. If that means wearing glasses with no prescription, it isn’t my place to judge. They are a haven I might have chosen. Instead I chose the haven that mocks them through the windows, that sends Amar into their lobby to cause a stir.

      Amar reaches the doors of the central Erudite building and pushes through them. We watch from just outside, snickering. I peer through the doors at the portrait of Jeanine Matthews hanging on the opposite wall. Her yellow hair is pulled back tight from her face, her blue jacket buttoned just beneath her throat. She’s pretty, but that’s not the first thing I notice about her. Her sharpness is.

      And beyond that—it could just be my imagination, but does she look a little afraid?

      Amar runs into the lobby, ignoring the protests of the Erudite at the front desk, and yells, “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. The Erudite behind the desk run around it to catch him, but Amar pulls up his pants and runs toward us. We all start running, too, sprinting away from the doors.

      I can’t help it—I’m laughing too, and it surprises me, how my stomach aches with it. Zeke runs at my shoulder, and we go toward the train tracks because there’s nowhere else to run. The Erudite chasing us give up after a block, and we all stop in an alley, leaning against the brick to catch our breath.

      Amar comes into the alley last, his hands raised, and we cheer for him. He holds up the flask like it’s a trophy and points at Shauna.

      “Young one,” he says. “I dare you to scale the sculpture in front of the Upper Levels building.”

      She catches the flask when he throws it and takes a swig.

      “You got it,” she says, grinning.

      By the time they get to me, almost everyone is drunk, lurching with each footstep and laughing at every joke, no matter how stupid it is. I feel warm, despite the cool air, but my mind is still sharp, taking in everything about the night, the rich smell of marsh and the sound of bubbling laughter, the blue-black of the sky and the silhouette of each building against it. My legs are sore from running and walking and climbing, and still I haven’t fulfilled a dare.

      We’re close to Dauntless headquarters now. The buildings are sagging where they stand.

      “Who’s left?” Lauren says, her bleary eyes skipping over each face until she reaches mine. “Ah, the numerically named initiate from Abnegation. Four, is it?”

      “Yeah,” I say.

      “A Stiff?” The boy who sat so comfortably beside Amar looks at me, his words running together. He’s the one holding the flask, the one determining the next dare. So far I’ve watched people scale tall structures, I’ve watched them jump into dark holes and wander into empty buildings to retrieve a faucet or a desk chair, I’ve watched them run naked down alleyways and stick needles through their earlobes without numbing them first. If I was asked to concoct a dare, I would not be able to think of one. It’s a good thing I’m the last person to go.

      I feel a tremor in my chest, nerves. What will he tell me to do?

      “Stiffs are uptight,” the boy says plainly, like it’s a fact. “So, to prove you’re really Dauntless now … I dare you to get a tattoo.”

      I see their ink, creeping over wrists and arms and shoulders and throats. The metal studs through ears and noses and lips and eyebrows. My skin is blank, healed, whole. But it doesn’t match who I am—I should be scarred, marked, the way they are, but marked with memories of pain, scarred with the things I have survived.

      I lift a shoulder. “Fine.”

      He tosses me the flask, and I drain it, though it stings my throat and lips and tastes bitter as poison.

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