“You did not.”
“Well, do it again, then.”
I push open the door just as Tobias, who is sitting on the floor with one leg stretched out, hurls a butter knife at the opposite wall. It sticks, handle out, from a large hunk of cheese they positioned on top of the dresser. Caleb, standing beside him, stares in disbelief, first at the cheese and then at me.
“Tell me he’s some kind of Dauntless prodigy,” says Caleb. “Can you do this too?”
He looks better than he did earlier — his eyes aren’t red anymore and some of the old spark of curiosity is in them, like he is interested in the world again. His brown hair is tousled, his shirt buttons in the wrong buttonholes. He is handsome in a careless way, my brother, like he has no idea what he looks like most of the time.
“With my right hand, maybe,” I say. “But yes,
Tobias’s eyes catch mine on the word “Four.” Caleb doesn’t know that Tobias wears his excellence all the time in his own nickname.
“Caleb came by to discuss something,” Tobias says, leaning his head against the wall as he looks at me. “And knife-throwing just came up somehow.”
“As it so often does,” I say, a small smile inching its way across my face.
He looks so relaxed, his head back, his arm slung over his knee. We stare at each other for a few more seconds than is socially acceptable. Caleb clears his throat.
“Anyway, I should be getting back to my room,” Caleb says, looking from Tobias to me and back again. “I’m reading this book about the water-filtration systems. The kid who gave it to me looked at me like I was crazy for wanting to read it. I think it’s supposed to be a repair manual, but it’s fascinating.” He pauses. “Sorry. You probably think I’m crazy too.”
“Not at all,” Tobias says with mock sincerity. “Maybe
“I can loan it to you,” Caleb says.
“Maybe later,” I say. When Caleb closes the door behind him, I give Tobias a dirty look.
“Thanks for that,” I say. “Now he’s going to talk my ear off about water filtration and how it works. Though I guess I might prefer that to what he wants to talk to me about.”
“Oh? And what’s that?” Tobias quirks his eyebrows. “Aquaponics?”
“Aqua-what?”
“It’s one of the ways they grow food here. You don’t want to know.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” I say. “What did he come to talk to you about?”
“You,” he says. “I think it was the big-brother talk. ‘Don’t mess around with my sister’ and all that.”
He gets up.
“What did you tell him?”
He comes toward me.
“I told him how we got together — that’s how knife-throwing came up,” he says, “and I told him I wasn’t messing around.”
I feel warm everywhere. He wraps his hands around my hips and presses me gently against the door. His lips find mine.
I don’t remember why I came here in the first place.
And I don’t care.
I wrap my uninjured arm around him, pulling him against me. My fingers find the hem of his T-shirt, and slide beneath it, spreading wide over the small of his back. He feels so strong.
He kisses me again, more insistent this time, his hands squeezing my waist. His breaths, my breaths, his body, my body, we are so close there is no difference.
He pulls back, just a few centimeters. I almost don’t let him get that far.
“This isn’t what you came here for,” he says.
“No.”
“What did you come for, then?”
“Who cares?”
I push my fingers through his hair, and draw his mouth to mine again. He doesn’t resist, but after a few seconds, he mumbles, “Tris,” against my cheek.
“Okay, okay.” I close my eyes. I did come here for something important: to tell him the conversation I overheard.
We sit side by side on Tobias’s bed, and I start from the beginning. I tell him how I followed Marcus and Johanna into the orchard. I tell him Johanna’s question about the timing of the simulation attack, and Marcus’s response, and the argument that followed. As I do, I watch his expression. He does not look shocked or curious. Instead, his mouth works its way into the bitter pucker that accompanies any mention of Marcus.
“Well, what do you think?” I say once I finish.
“I think,” he says carefully, “that it’s Marcus trying to feel more important than he is.”
That was not the response I was expecting.
“So … what? You think he’s just talking nonsense?”
“I think there probably is some information the Abnegation knew that Jeanine wanted to know, but I think he’s exaggerating its importance. Trying to build up his own ego by making Johanna think he’s got something she wants and he won’t give it to her.”
“I don’t …” I frown. “I don’t think you’re right. He didn’t sound like he was lying.”
“You don’t know him like I do. He is an excellent liar.”
He is right — I don’t know Marcus, and certainly not as well as he does. But my instinct was to believe Marcus, and I usually trust my instincts.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say, “but shouldn’t we find out what’s going on? Just to be sure?”
“I think it’s more important that we deal with the situation at hand,” says Tobias. “Go back to the city. Find out what’s going on there. Find a way to take Erudite down. Then maybe we can find out what Marcus was talking about, after this is all resolved. Okay?”
I nod. It sounds like a good plan — a smart plan. But I don’t believe him — I don’t believe it’s more important to move forward than to find out the truth. When I found out that I was Divergent … when I found out that Erudite would attack Abnegation … those revelations changed everything. The truth has a way of changing a person’s plans.
But it is difficult to persuade Tobias to do something he doesn’t want to do, and even more difficult to justify my feelings with no evidence except my intuition.
So I agree. But I do not change my mind.
Chapter 4
“BIOTECHNOLOGY HAS BEEN around for a long time, but it wasn’t always very effective,” Caleb says. He starts on the crust of his toast — he ate the middle first, just like he used to when we were little.
He sits across from me in the cafeteria, at the table closest to the windows. Carved into the wood along the table’s edge are the letters “D” and “T” linked together by a heart, so small I almost didn’t see them. I run my fingers over the carving as Caleb speaks.
“But Erudite scientists developed this highly effective mineral solution a while back. It was better for the plants than dirt,” he says. “It’s an earlier version of that salve they put on your shoulder — it accelerates the growth of new cells.”
His eyes are wild with new information. Not all the Erudite are power hungry and devoid of conscience, like their leader, Jeanine Matthews. Some of them are like Caleb: fascinated by everything, dissatisfied until they find out how it works.
I rest my chin on my hand and smile a little at him. He seems upbeat this morning. I am glad he has found something to distract him from his grief.
