Divided

I'm not just Divergent. I am Divided. Like my parents. Like my world. Something big is happening, and they all think that Tris is the center of it. But they're wrong. I am.

Chapter 1

I pull the brush slowly through my long dark reddish hair. It's soft against my head. I've always loved my hair and used to fall asleep when my mother brushed it at night, singing softly and telling me stories. My favorites were always her least favorites; the ones about my father. They grew up together in Amity, and fell in love. He was tall and handsome, with brown hair and dark green eyes, the same as mine. They were quiet and peaceful, but they knew they only wanted the best for each other. He would take her to beautiful places in the forest, so different it felt like another world. They were in love, and things happened past what society says they were supposed to, and when she slit her palm over the Amity bowl, she carried me inside of her.

She waited for him to join her, but he never did. When my father shed his blood, he spilled it over glass and joined the Candor. In the dead silence of the Choosing Ceremony my mother's sobs seemed to echo off the walls. The discord almost made her fail Amity initiation, but she pulled through. It wasn't hard for us to make a life there. After all, they're good and kind people. She made friends that stayed with her every step of the way, friends that still visit almost every day.

Though my mother and my 'Aunts' have been gentle towards me my whole life, something inside me has always told me that something is missing. A lot of things actually…

I gaze into my own green eyes in the mirror and sigh. Today's the day. Today they test us all and tell us where we belong. After today I can finally stop waking up every morning and looking in the mirror wondering who looks back at me. Today I'll finally know who I am.

I grab my green jacket and cover my shoulders, swiping my bag on my way out the door. Another day rises and I'm here to greet it. The long sweeping grass fields seem to glow in the sunrise. Adjusting my bag on my shoulder, I take a deep breath of crisp morning air before starting the journey to school. The pebbles of the trails crunch beneath my feet at every step and I marvel at the sound. I will never get tired of the beauty that lies in every inch of Amity. Fog swirls through my mother's apple orchard. They're in bloom now, and dew coats the buds, glittering in the morning light.

The shade traces patterns onto the world around me as I enter the woods surrounding my school and I begin to run, as I do every morning. There's something freeing about it, feeling my hair whip in the wind, stinging my shoulders. Wind rushing past me, limbs pulling in effort, I feel alive. Roots and undergrowth try to make me fail, try to slow me down or make me fall, but I won't let them. These woods are mine. The world is mine.

I'm gasping by the time I make it to the cafeteria, lungs on fire and throat raw. I collapse next to Daisy and Rachelle, gulping down the bottle of water that they had for me. They didn't even have to ask that I'd need one. They just knew me that well.

Katie sat across from me, dark hair hiding her face as she munched on an apple while deeply engrossed in a book, as she nearly always was. She didn't even have to look up as she said, "Hey Tara. Have a nice run?"

I smirk at her. "Always."

Daisy isn't her normal self. Her hair is pulled up into a high ponytail instead of wearing it in waves as she usually did, and that in itself was suspicious. She also wasn't talking, which normally only happened when she was sleeping or eating. Her blue eyes flicked this way and that. "Daisy…" I murmured softly, worried about her. She still wouldn't look at me. "Daisy!" Finally she met my eyes. I placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing softly. "It'll be okay. There's no need to be nervous. Whatever happens will happen if it's meant to be. Besides you know that you can always pick where you want to end up. The test is just a suggestion."

"But what if I can't decide? What if the test is wrong?"

I might have laughed if it was any other situation. "The test is instinctual. It's more of a personality test than anything." Besides, whoever heard of the test being wrong? You either are something or you aren't, it's as simple as that.

Rachelle snorts, her eyes glistening. "I don't know what you're so freaked out about, Day. I'm excited! I want to go right now! I want to know what I am, who I am, and I want to know ASAP." I knew that feeling.

As I rebraided my hair, I couldn't help but wonder if my father's aptitude test had been what made him leave us. I also wondered if his ideals could be transferred to me just by blood, or did I have to be around him to have Candor in me? Does it matter that he transferred after I was conceived? What if I did turn out to have an aptitude for Candor?

Maybe I did. I was raised thinking lying was high treason against a loved one and the quickest way to get someone to hate you. One lie leads to another, and soon the whole thing snowballs into one massive lie that's so big that people don't know how to trust you anymore. Trust is the one of the most treasured things in the world anyone can give another person.

Betrayal is the second worst feeling in the world to me. Like everything you thought was a lie. Like everything you built your world on was nothing. It's second only to guilt. Having to look someone in the eyes and see the pain there and know that not only can you do nothing to help, but you were the one who put it there… Just thinking about it is enough to stir every memory of every time, intentional or not, that I've hurt someone like that and it hurts me too.

Empathy; that's what mother always called it. The way my heart pulls to shreds when I see her or my friends crying. The way I find laughter contagious. The way I always want to make them smile in any way that I can. We do this, she says, as an act of kindness towards the people we love, in the same way that I would never lie to them, not even over something small. I tell everybody the truth, or half-truths when I'm absolutely forced to. Does that make me Candor?

"Tara Callaway?" a short woman with spiky hair calls out.

I guess we'd find out.