They don't look at me the way they look at the other girls. I am not flirted with or smiled at with duplicity, like they want to break the rules with me. I am not fought over, biceps aren't flexed for me, and bullets aren't shot through the bulls eye for me.
I am undesirable, and that's how I'd like to keep it, but for good reason.
I intimidate.
I can see right through them; those animals, just looking for a way to get some ass.
Once upon a time, I could pretend to care for looks and cat-calls. I could blush my way through a group of boys, but one day, I just decided it wasn't worth it. The lies, the obvious attraction to the wrong thing- why hide anymore? I was going to be a Dauntless prodigy, I would be desirable not because of my body or my face, but because I could whoop those scrawny bitches in the ass.
The day I decided not to care anymore was the day I shaved my head. The night before the Choosing Ceremony- when Shauna was out with friends, Hector asleep, and our parent's still working- I took my father's clippers from the sliding cabinet in their bathroom, and turned them on. The feel of choice, the idea of freedom was a few seconds away, but, like always, I chose to look at what I was giving up. My eyes glinted in the light above my head, golden brown as always, too sweet. My nose and lips were directly from my mother's face, though I always seem to be scowling- or so I'm told. My hair hung around me like a curtain, a little-girl's hiding place. It, too, like my eyes, was a light shade of golden brown, wavy; pretty. But I didn't want to be pretty- I wanted to be feared, a force to be reckoned with. I smiled at myself in the mirror.
So I did it. I lifted the clippers to my scull, and slowly, those once-wavy locks surrounded me. A nest for a bird of prey. I cleaned them up, put them in the waste basket, and didn't look at myself in the mirror as I turned off the lights.
I raced to the Hub before my family the next day, my black hoodie covering my almost-bare scalp, telling them I was nervous.
When I stepped onto that circle with all the factions displayed before me, I removed my hood, revealing myself as I cut my palm, heard the sizzle of my blood on the coals. I did not search for my family after. I followed the others to back to the Dauntless compound in silence, letting them rake their eyes over the bareness of my head. I didn't care.
Only one thought coursed through my head, anyway.
I am brave.