Chapter 7: The Bullet Hit Him in the Head
I walk into the house after school. It is a normal day. I forgot my history homework but my teacher didn't punish me. We played baseball during the lunch break with some of the Amity students. I had a geography pop quiz in the afternoon. I got the bus as usual and walk from my stop to my house.
"I'm home!" I call, putting my keys in the bowl.
Mom is normally home from work when I get back from school. Today she does not answer my call.
"Mom?" I repeat, panic growing inside me. She usually leaves a note in the bowl of keys so I see it when I get home if she's going to be late.
"I'm here, Emra," I hear her voice. A wave of relief floods through me.
I head in the direction of her voice.
"Are you in the kitchen?" I yell.
"Yes. Emra, don't come in. Please," she replies.
I ignore her. She generally says this because her hair is messed up or because her contact has slipped and she's making weird faces to put it back in; I don't care about any of those things. She's my mom, for goodness sake. I push the door open and walk into the kitchen.
There is a man on his knees in the kitchen. Mom is holding my gun to his head. This is not usual or normal.
She has already pulled the trigger.
I yelp and jump forward, but I am too far away. I wouldn't have been able to do anything, anyway.
The man's head lurches away from my mother as though she hit him. He lies there, on the ground. Bleeding. Dead. The hole on the left of his head is seeping horribly coloured liquid. A mixture of red and gray.
I feel sick.
"I'm sorry you had to see that," my mother says.
I can't speak.
"I've wanted to do that for years. I didn't want it to happen like this but I took the first chance I got."
I can't even hear her words.
"Help me hide it, please," she begs.
I shake my head.
"Do you realise who this was?"
I jerk awake. That dream was not so much scary because of its content. The dream was scary because it followed exactly what happened. It terrifies me that these events actually happened. I am sweating and breathing heavily. I kick the blankets off me. I notice that in my sleep I took my shirt off. I leave it off. I'll have to get dressed soon anyway.
I turn my wrist over to look at my watch. It says that the time is forty nine minutes past two.
I lean my head back and groan. This is a lot earlier than normal. Not for the first time, I miss my books. I'm not much of a reader, but at least I was given something to do in the hours before the world woke up.
I sneak over to the Erudite transfer's bed. He is on the bottom bunk, thank goodness. It would be so much harder if he was on the top. I slowly push my hand under his pillow. He shifts a little and I freeze. He rolls away from me and I relax again. As I suspected, there is a book under his pillow. I turn it over and see it is a really old book. Really old. It's by Charlotte Brontë, and I know she died hundreds of years ago. I groan internally, but it's better than nothing.
I go back to my bed and read. A lot of it is confusing, and some parts are in ancient French, but I skip over these bits and manage to finish before anyone wakes up. I get the gist of it. It is based around the lies one of the characters tell; he lies that he isn't married and he lies about the crazy woman in the attic, claiming she isn't his wife. He gets found out, and everything goes downhill from there. I know my lies will ruin me also.
I am turning to the last page when Frank sticks his head over the side as usual.
"What are you reading?" he asks.
I hold up the book so he can see the title as I finish.
"Did you start that today?" He gapes at the length. I nod.
I quietly go to replace it under the transfer's pillow.
"You must have been up for ages. Aren't you tired?" Frank asks.
"No, I always go to bed early," I remind him.
Frank has relaxed a lot since yesterday when he found out I wasn't really gay.
"It's not that it's a bad thing," he'd had to quickly explain himself, "But it's just hard to get used to. If I found out you were a mass murderer, as long as you didn't kill me I'd be okay with it, but it would be hard to get used to."
Oh, why did he have to use the murderer analogy?
"You'd better get dressed," says Frank. "You're the first one getting "interrogated" this morning."
All too soon I was on stage and having truth serum injected into me again.
I realise that I have a choice. The woman who gave me my aptitude test said that the Erudite would experiment on me if they found out I was Divergent. I would probably live. But I wouldn't be able to handle that. I'm far too squeamish. In fact, I'd rather die.
They give out the death penalty sometimes. Only for convicted murderers. Only if you're older than sixteen. I am sixteen.
"Is there anything you'd rather was kept hidden?" asks Jack Kang.
I take a deep breath. I can do this.
"Yes," I say.
Suddenly, I see my mother in the crowd. I lock eyes with her.
"Six months ago… I killed a man."
Nobody claps.
"How?" asks Mr Kang.
"He was shot in the head with my gun." It is not a lie. It was my gun.
Two men come on stage and drag me down the steps. I don't struggle; I knew this would happen.
"Emra!" I hear my mother's voice shriek. I turn to see her shuffling along the row of people to get out of her seat. She runs towards me.
"Mrs Veritine, he has to be questioned."
"But… He's so young… His life is just beginning…"
"I've thrown it all away now," I say to her.
She knows I don't mean by killing the man. She knows I mean by taking the blame for it.
I am dragged down a long corridor and slung into a cell. It is cold and dark, and I can't tell how long I'm there. I try to sleep, but every time I fall asleep I have a snippet of a memory that wakes me up hard.
All night I dream over and over again my mother's voice saying, "He is the man who killed your father."