In twos and threes, laughing, chattering Amity poured into the Mess Hall to break bread together as a newly remade faction. I chose a seat at the end of a far table. Almost immediately, the seats next to me became occupied and I was greeted by three carefree smiles.
"I'm Brooke; this is my brother, Glen." Twin pairs of grey eyes with long, dark lashes creased at the corners as they met mine. She nodded in the direction of the third, a pale, fresh-faced, lanky boy a couple years from his Choosing. "That's Mason. We picked that stray up somewhere along the way."
He grinned good-naturedly at her before turning his attention to me.
"You got a name, Stiff?"
Brooke cuffed his arm with a frown, accepted his embarrassed shrug as an apology, then looked at me expectantly. But I had hardly heard the familiar insult as I scanned the crowd absentmindedly, already lost in thought.
There is a word from an old, forgotten language; a rich, rolling word; one I had encountered many years ago that had taken root and refused to be pushed back into the recesses of my mind.
When I was a child, I would accompany my older sister on the weekly giving days encouraged by our faction. Every week, she would leave school holding my hand, and every week, as soon as we were out of sight of the teachers and other students, she would sling her own Volunteer satchel over my free shoulder and run home, leaving me to give to the factionless myself. I remember being terrified the first time I saw her wicked, retreating smirk. The factionless, although spoken of as a downtrodden people in need of pity and help, were (at best) carefully avoided, as one would a cockroach or an abandoned, ownerless coat on the street. At worst—I did not want to think of what happened to them.
I had carefully rewrapped both bread loaves from each Volunteer satchel in their protective cloth before leaving them on a bench on the outskirts of factionless territory. As I shouldered the bags and turned to leave, I suddenly felt an unfamiliar weight against my hip. Spooked as a stray cat, I had sprinted as fast as I could back to my faction's side. Once I reached the boundary, I had looked back over my shoulder to see an old, stooped man pick up one of the loaves, look up at me—and raise his hand in a small gesture of thanks. I remember turning back around and running home as fast as I could, refusing to leave my room until my parents had returned to an untidy, unprepared living unit and encouraged me to come downstairs.
I couldn't sleep that night out of fear of what could be lurking in my satchel. I cursed myself for not dropping it behind me on the street, yet was grateful that I didn't have a punishment waiting for me because of it. I imagined time bombs, dead animals, even a severed head. Finally, I plucked up the courage, lifted a corner of the top flap of the bag, and peeked inside.
It was a book.
Beautifully bound, with a creamy off-white cover and deep green spine, it lay in my tattered bag like a diamond in dust.
One moment was wasted in frozen, uncomprehending shock. Another was spent wondering how the man had managed to obtain it, not to mention keep it in such good condition (to the former thought, I concluded that he must have been Erudite, as only they are allowed to own books; to the latter, I'm still unsure). By the third, I was cautiously admiring the cover and turning the ivory pages. I spent the night with a carefully guarded candle held dangerously near, creating a bizarre, breathtaking world within my own, one filled with roiling ocean and an untamable, uncontainable beast.
The next week, my sister and I both repeated our respective procedures. This time, however, instead of a dead sprint, I left the bench at a fast walk, breaking into a half-jog as I neared familiar Abnegation territory. I looked over my shoulder again, but did not see the man. Surprised, I stopped in my tracks, only remembering how fast my legs could carry me when a different factionless emerged from a nearby alley.
I never saw the man again. I suppose factionless do not stay in one place for very long.
That night had left a searing, slow-burning ember in my memory. I began to steal books. With every opportunity that arose—there were never nearly enough—I would slip the paper treasures into my school satchel whenever we visited Erudite during the annual Inter-Faction Week. It was here, several years later, when I stumbled upon that strange, perfect word.
From its resemblance to a more familiar word, I had thought it to mean sunrise, that pale, steady lightening from grey to blue. I believed I could encompass that steadiness one day; that I would rise patiently and ceaselessly from grey to blue, and perhaps, when the moment came, I would be able to surpass even that and make my way into lightest, softest red.
But something had changed. I had seen an impossible, divinely new version of something I had always believed to be subtle, constant, and sure. And although it was not what I had previously associated with that word—so carefully cultivated until it had grown into a name reserved solely for my own consciousness—it was something I could aspire to become. Maybe the time for softness and subtlety was over. Maybe it was time to radiate upward and outward and from within.
Rowan
I don't remember my own Choosing, only that I had afterwards looked back at my cheering faction in time to see a pair of oversized eyes looking back at me. They were so richly dark brown that they looked almost black. They were softly lined at the corners and reflected the lights from the ceiling so that they seemed to house entire constellations. I remember those eyes, the shyly encouraging curve of the lips, the soft clapping of hands resting carefully, one on top of the other, in a lap, and nothing else. Even when those eyes slid past me to the next Chooser, the smile dimming just a shade, I felt as if I were anchored firmly to the ground, aware of all of the lights and sounds around me for the first time in months.
I rode back to my faction in a daze and walked mechanically to the Mess Hall, surrounded by laughter and conversation yet unable to hear it. But then my gaze somehow found her and everything came rushing back in a torrent of organized cacophony. I chose a seat parallel to her at an adjacent table, so as to avoid staring, yet I couldn't help but observe her.
As she glanced around the dining hall, her eyebrows momentarily contracted at the too-wide, glazed looks surrounding her. A moment later, realization dawned on her face as she noticed people instinctively reaching for the bread before all the other food, sometimes squabbling with each other in order to get the biggest and best piece. When the small scuffles had died down and everyone started passing around the other food, she casually took a tiny piece of crust and laid it in her plate, away from all the other food.
She was smart, observant: I hadn't realized they were lacing the bread for years. Until my mother had taken me home after dinner one night, struck me, and then hugged me as she cried, saying she couldn't bear to see me turn out like the rest of them. I was not only shocked and ashamed for hurting her, I felt all the worse for not having noticed it myself.
Her eyes met mine, momentarily widening in shock and confusion before she looked quickly down at her plate, instinctively curling her shoulders protectively around her collarbones. I looked away, angry and embarrassed that she had caught me watching her, but also guilty for making her uncomfortable. I knew what it was like to be stared at and whispered about: the furtive glances and hushed voices had followed me my entire life. When I was young, it had been jibes and taunts. A few years later, however, and I wished it was still sneering that I had to endure. Their morbidly curious interest in the strange, solemn boy had left me angry, at a loss for how to cope except with irritation and unease. And although they claimed that they had been children and didn't any better, I know that people never change, especially those who crave attention and validation in insatiable, ever-increasing supply.
"Easy, Row. Why are you glaring at the girl like you want to shoot her in the fields?" Wade's tray clatters down next to me and is generously heaped. With a start, I realized I had been staring at her again, seconds after I told myself I wouldn't. This time, it had been a perceivably hostile sideways glance out of the corner of my eye. No wonder she had looked so unnerved.
"I mean, she isn't much, thin wisp of a thing, but I'm sure she still has feelings," His mischievous grin faded when he saw my expression, then was quickly replaced with a cautiously nonchalant concern.
"I'm going to the Cave with Laurel tonight, you should join us. She said she'd bring Raven."
Raven: beautiful and strong, with feathery, jet-black hair and moon-pale skin; with broad shoulders and thick thighs, receiving envious and lustful glances alike with the same knowing smirk. She was beautiful. And cunning. And cruel. The thought of her made my insides turn to ice. I pushed my plate away, mumbling something unintelligible even to myself.
He immediately pushed it back in front of me with a low, repeated apology. But I knew it was my fault. Wade had endured as much as I had during our childhood, yet was able to forgive and forget and fall into the easy, careless love that should be Amity life. Girls were constantly chasing him, and he them, without a second's hesitation. And here I was, unable to bring myself to face even one.
Before I could catch myself, I glanced at her again. She was looking at some unseeable thing somewhere over her companions' heads while they babbled, unaware, around her. I looked away, vowing to myself that I would never again look at her. I wouldn't pay her any mind at all. Until one of them loudly asked her name. I involuntarily leaned closer, eyes trained upon the plate in front of me.
I didn't hear her reply over the din, until it was repeated. Tested and tried and rolled over tongues. And found to have a weight and shine all it's own.
I silently sounded it out for myself. The easy waves reverberated through my mind and down my nape. It reminded me of the Cave. I smiled.
Risa.