"Sometimes crying or laughing are the only options left, and laughing feels better right now."
Veronica Roth, Divergent

Eleanor p.o.v.

When I pull myself slitely up,stand on the tip of my toes on of my moms old boxes, I have a view on the Erudites and Selfless People. That's propably one of the perks of living in the highest building of The Peaceful area. Not that I had never seen those areas,or never had any contact with people from other factions... just not much.

When I'd take the bus, when I'd go to a bookshop or just pass one on the streets, it was just someone who passed by. No unity, no association with eachother, no bonding, just everyone living on his or her little island. all seperated from eachother but in the same see, as neigbours. That didn't really fit the Peaceful image.

Your neighbour was your friend. Your friend was your family. your family was a part of you. It was what I've been told since I was little. All for one. It was a lovely image, propably one of the things I apreciated most about Amity .

But the image was taken as a picture, a picture of the ideal life. But the ideal life wasn't always like real life. The people on that picture were all smiling, the people on the streets didn't always smile. The eyes of the people on the picture were just little holes with colours, but the ones of the people on the street had a glint in their eyes when they smiled. That kind of glint that could only shine when there has been darkness to show its brightness.

Maybe those people didn't always smile but there was nothing forced. And if it was forced, why was that?

What was hidden? What was the reason of that misfortune? Was there something going on? That was never told, never shown, not in that picture. It was hidden, it wasn't told cause that would lead to insurgence. And the people all looked happy, and that was what they wanted to see, so that as what they saw. All the rest was overlooked. Better to ignore the things, by confessing them they only became real. That's what I've learned living in that very own image.

Sometimes I see my friends, which we all were in Amity, trying to talk with ones from other factions.

You have your dauntless people who were garding the gates, The few Selfless people that sometimes help on the fields, we see less of the Erudites who are always busy and even less of the Candors but that is mostly just avoiding eachother.

The avoidance is there to prevent misunderstanding. Which is always funny, the reaction of the Peaceful when they speak to a habitant of Candor,or at least try to speak even if it is just a one sided debat. One would try to learn the other something, and the other would just nod so the other would be justified and drop it, and later still do whatever the hell they wanted to do.

These kind of thoughts regulary come up to my head. It is a way to make me feel a part of something bigger. Or like my mum would say when only we are around: like a nerdish Erudite.

With a smile I got off the box and looked around. The area was small and three-cornered, and died in many colours, from yellow to purple with little pictures hanging on the walls. It is something typical of my mother. The bed in the middle is unmade and sheets of paper lay spread on the ground. Which is pretty typical of me.

"Eleanor dear, can you come down?"

My mums voice sounds threw the room and I walk over to the ladder that leads to a small hall and make my way to the living room,which is a small place with low ceiling en chandeliers. The kitchen is right next to the living room,the whole house is small but packed up with stuff.

"Ah honey there you are, are you going to help me with the cakes? Stefany is coming and I haven't even made tea yet." Out of the kitchen comes a tall woman with redish hair that I have too, maybe with a little bit more curles, and with a smile that is always present on her round face.

"Mum, have you really been cooking all day? No wonder that woman can't climb the stairs anymore with a stomach like she is pregnant for 12 months, it's already a miracle she can fit in to the elevator."

"The woman just has a good appetite, what's wrong with that? Come on, to the kitchen you whiner." Winking she throws the towel she was holding in her hand at me and loudly starts to sing a song about some shy girl falling in love with a pretty, mysterious, dangerous boy. The sad part is that she always sings that song while cooking so I memorized every single word of the cheesy lyrics. And so, as been done many times before, I take a deep breath and started singing along about how the boy had let her fall and that she was drowning in broken pieces of her own heart.

That my voice sounds like the sound a dying cat made, is not a secret. Whatever the overly kind people around me said. But the song was absolutely rubbish,which is also not a secret. But a rubbish voice plus a rubbish song ecualed a bestseller here.

our mathematics rock... Erudites beware...

Spencer p.o.v.

"Shht, be quiet guys, they're coming!"

" Praise the Lord! And they're only-" I checked my unexcisting watch "45 minutes late!"

" You're just a bucket full of sunshine, aren't you Spencer ?"

" Watch out, you'll get burned."

"Har har..." wild curly locks that belonged to Dave came in my face when he suddenly turned to lean over the railing to look at the train that was coming with a dazzling speed.

3 figures could be seen (or maybe can't be seen) on one of the old, never used buildings close to the factionless area were 3 teenagers on the roof, freezing there fingers off.

" What idiot came up with this idea?" Said the darkest of the 2 girls. She had her arms around her and was anxiously looking down. Her righthand held the iron railing and where there were holes in her gloves, her skin started to dry.

" What would you've done rather Tess, making soup with Saggy Free? 'Cause if that's what you want, by all means, go. One more time that soup with what he calls 'spices' that he finds in the garbage of the Erudites and I'll jump on the fastest train to-"

Tess raised her eyebrows "To where exactly Dave?"

Dave went with his hand through his brown curls, something he always did when he was thinking or frustrated.

" Not so many places to go for one without a faction right, smartarse?"

" I have to disagree with you on that." Said Dave smirking " If you don't belong anywhere, every road is a new journey, to a new place for you to start."

I snorted and decided that before he could continue his rant, I'd add something too "Yeah, 'cause the moment you'd step on the bus and say-" With a high pitched voice i continued " 'Hey, why not visit Erudite today? That'd be lovely, absolutely marvelous' you'd be thrown out of the bus faster than you could say factionless."

Dave's face hardened hearing the name of his old faction that he had left for Dauntless 3 years ago. "Yuk, rather Factionless and free than with a faction in society where saying A instead of B equals high treason and -"

" Oh God, not again" Tess shook her head what made her dark curls fall into her eyes.

" Look, over there! It's coming near!" I ran to the railing and took one of the little bags out of the bucket on the ground.

" Ah, now that's more like it..." With a dangerous glint in her eyes Tess too took a bag out of the bucket on my right.

" Really, what's better than this? Wild and free, like a bird bitches!" Dave looked with a creepy smile at the approaching train and took 2 bags out of the bucket. Tess and I looked for a split second at each other and slowly took a step right. If Dave had, yet again, one of his 'moments' we knew that we should give it to him and never forget the rule: 'Rather laughing from a distance than burnig as an accomplice.' A rule that ironically, he himself came up with.

" When they get to the third poal." He yelled "Then they are closest to us and easiest to hit." , it became harder to hear eachother properly, the train was taking turns and was slowing a bit down as it came closer.

" Let's get this party started..." I said and started to count

5-4-3-2...

" Eat shit dirty slags!" With a cry, Tess threw her first bag on the roof of the train and green gunk spread itself over the first wagon.

" Enjoy the meal suckers!" I wiped my red hair out of my face and threw my bag too and quickly one bag after another went flying towards the train, the air smelled like all the junk had found in the garbages and sewers to put in the bags.

The train passed the poal, made a bend and drove a little slanting.

Just what we were waiting for.

Pierced faces were looking wide eyed up.

"Ahahaha bull's eye!" Dave jumped in glee and pointed at a figure with a green head that was running wildly from side to side. Some smarter Dauntless were moving tot the other side of the train where they couldn't be hit but most of them were standing on the edge yelling and making obscure handgestures.

"Oh, you guys make it too easy for us." Tess made such a nice shot that the bag hit the wall on the inside of the train. The shouting of the Dauntless was so loud, it was audible even on top of the buildings where we stood. It sounded as music to my ears...

" Come on then! Come on! You want more? Is that what you want huh?" Without any hesitation Tess threw bags towards the people on the train as if she had done this several times before.

Which she had.

Not just several times.

Many times.

Every first friday of the month actually.

" I love it so much when she acts like that" Dave looked her op and down which he did regualary when he thought Tess wasn't looking. Watching Dave acting like a pervert wasn't something that very endearing so I focused on the face of a boy with piercings that covered more than half of his face, which perhaps was a good thing. Who'd know?

"What was that honey? You want more? Well of course, here it comes!" It'd be pretty mean if I said that he looked better with the green junk on his face than with his piercings, but my father always said: "Honesty has no borders." Like the factionless Candor he thought he was.

For about 2 years, it was us 3 as a group. How that happened could've been an amusing or nice union, but that wasn't the entire thruth. I had known Dave for over a year. He came from Erudite but chose Dauntless, but didn't make it in the end. That still bothered him. He held a grudge that has been there since he had came here, with lost hope and dreams,but thankfully he never acted out of despair and slowly he became my best friend.

It was the year after his arrival that Tess came. She came from Dauntless and also became factionless 'cause she couldn't make it there, though unlike Dave she did tell what the reason she wasn't accepted was and how life was back there. 2 years older than me, one year younger than Dave and fitted perfectly in our group the moment she came.

Then there's me. 16 years old and pretty good the only one in the surrounding that has been made factionless before the age of 16. With my dad, I lived in a left building close to the others. My father was the only relative I knew.

He grew up in Candor en eventually chose for Candor at the age of 16 what was propably the reason why he had told me all of this the minute I asked him. He also told why he became Factionless. Then he'd look at me with those green eyes I had too and sound like he was in a different place. When I was little I used to call it 'the creepy old people face', but later realised that he, like Dave, held a grudge. Though his went deeper. He had just turned 16 when he met my mother, and my mother was a 15 year old Candor. They met eachother and after the whole shebang, one thing led to another, balabing balaboeng and I was on my way! 9 months later my dad was made factionless and she became a 16 years old girl that no faction wanted.

Candor said that it was foolish, a girl of only 16 years old getting knocked up ( sometimes it would suddenly come up in my head that my mum at my age was already deflowered, where I didn't even know how to kiss someone) and asked who the father was.

Then my father had done something that proved he wasn't a Candor. He said he didn't was the father and that the children weren't his. So he left her and went away, but thanks to the Erudite's DNA system they could still find out that he was indeed the father. And when the truth came in, it came in for him as a real bitch.

As a 7 year old kid I had found it pretty traumatizing that he had left her alone and lied.

but now I rather just stay with the simple remark: 'you just couldn't keep it in your pants,could you?'

It even felt uncomfortable thinking about it, but the honest Candor system said that he was the one who actually knocked her up and so they declared him factionless. My father liked to joke about and say: 'even when you weren't born you were a pain in the ass.'

Yeah, thanks a lot dad.

My mother however was sent away to the faction that tolerated the situation most. Amity. That was also something that I didn't understand. My mother wasn't only pregnant with me, but also from another child. I had a twin. I still had a twin. To be honest they thought it'd be for the best if they'd give one to the father and one to the mother. On black and white it was 2 shared by 2 made 1. So that was why I've never know my twin. So there was only 1 matter left. Who'd go with who. Eventually their choice changed everything.

'Cause that father of mine just couldn't keep it in his pants... Honestly...

Amity would've been the place that'd be 'most supportive and accepting' for the child and my parents had to decide who'd go there with our mother. That choice had as result; my current life.

Sometimes I wondered how it'd be to live with my mother, how it'd be to live in a nice house. To always have a warm home and just to be accepted. That's propably one of the most painfull things I thought. To not be good enough to fit anywhere so not accepted anywhere.

You became alone, worthless, helpless and dependent on Abnigation.

Who always tried to give the nicest of their meals, and kept the rest.

Not that I hated my life, I quite liked my life. I may have never known how it was to eat a fresh meal or go to school or not having neighbours you could smell from a distance.

But I had...

I had...

I had enough. Which made all of it not seem so bad at all.

The screams and shouts on either side of me started to sound as one noise in the wind. 16 years old and being born in a unofficial home would be the worst I thought. But with these two people next to me, I did feel home. Like a certainty in an unknown world. Wherever we went, wherever we couldn't go, if we wanted it there was a way. Maybe I didn't have a home, I did have a family. Between them was where I belonged.