V

The bus we took to the Choosing Ceremony was filled with people in grey shirts and coats, our Sunday best. Normally, fine clothes were forbidden in Abnegation, but we all owned a couple nicer dresses or starched shirts for events like these, as a show of respect to our hosts. They were still all grey and painfully unadorned. When I leaned my face against the window, a pale ring of sunlight burned into the clouds like the end of a lit cigarette. I never wanted to smoke one myself—they were closely tied to vanity—but a mixed crowd of Candor and Dauntless smoked them in front of the building when we got off the bus.

I had to tilt my head back to see the top of the Hub, and even then, part of it faded into the clouds. It was the tallest building in the city. From my bedroom window back home, I could see the red lights on the twin prongs, blinking eternally, a warning to aircrafts that didn’t fly anymore.

I followed my parents up to the Hub, bunching my fingers around the stiff hems of my sleeves. Caleb walked in front of me, seeming calm. But maybe I’d be calm too, if I knew what I was going to do. Instead I was more concerned with whether or not my legs were going to give out on me as I walked up the front steps, a very real possibility.

We stopped in a corner of the crowded lobby. Dad pulled Caleb aside, and Mom was left with me.

“Beatrice,” she said. Her soft voice was almost lost in the chatter of a hundred other families. She and I were the same height, small, and she cupped my cheek to draw me close.

“Mom,” I said.

I might have looked like her without my freckles. She ran her thumb over them, as if counting, before meeting my eyes again. Then she hugged me.

“Whatever you choose,” she whispered in my ear, “I want you to be happy.”

“I’m already happy,” I said. It was true. If I had one wish, it would be to never leave this pocket of time in my mother’s arms. To never leave the scent of lye soap and home-baked bread and the thing that smelled just of her.

Mom pulled away. Her calloused hands slid down to my shoulders. “Every day,” she said, “I think of what might have happened if I chose differently, one way over another. Sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake. But then—I look at you. And I realize that if I hadn’t trusted my gut, I wouldn’t have you.”

She blinked rapidly. Tears beaded on her eyelashes. She had to know what I wanted to do, or she wouldn’t have said it. I had to look away because my eyes were stinging, but it was too late. It was already happening. “Mom,” I choked, and buried my face into her shoulder.

She held me as I cried.

When we parted, she kissed my forehead and said, “I love you, Sunshine.” My father and brother were waiting, their eyes dry. “See you soon,” said Dad to Caleb. Without a trace of a doubt. I wiped my eyes on a fold of my headscarf and hurried towards them. I tried not to look back at Mom, because I knew if I did, I would just break down again.

Numb, I followed my family and faction up the stairs—selflessly leaving the crowded elevators for others—and then into the room where I would decide the rest of my life. I had lost my parents in the wash of grey. It didn’t matter anyway; sixteen-year-olds would sit separate from their parents anyway.

The room was arranged in concentric circles around a central stage at the bottom. Sixteen-year-olds, those eligible to choose, sat in the lowest several circles, a blend of colors as heterogeneous as the school hallways. We were not called members yet; our decisions would make us initiates, and if we completed each faction’s initiation, we would become members.

Above the first circles, in the majority remainder of the seats, sat five pie slices of observers. Not everyone in each faction came to the Choosing Ceremony, mostly just families. But enough of them came that they seemed to fill the room to the ceiling. Helplessly, I tagged along in Caleb’s wake as he strode down to the inner circles.

The responsibility to conduct the ceremony rotated from faction to faction each year, and this year was Abnegation’s. Marcus Eaton would give the opening address and read the names in reverse alphabetical order. Caleb would choose before me.

On the central stage were five metal bowls so large they could hold my entire body, if I curled up. Each one contained a substance to represent each faction: grey stones for Abnegation, water for Erudite, earth for Amity, hot coals for Dauntless, and glass for Candor. When Marcus called my name, I would walk to the stage. I would not speak. He would offer me a knife. I would cut into my hand and sprinkle my blood into the bowl of the faction I chose.

My blood on the stones. Sizzling on the coals. Soaking the dirt. Staining the glass.

We were arranged in alphabetical order, according to the last names we might leave behind. I sat between Caleb and Oona Posner, a tall Amity girl with the longest brown hair I had ever seen. When we sat, Caleb grabbed my hand, squeezing my palm so tightly it hurt, but I didn’t let go. The last time we held hands was at my father’s best friend’s funeral, as my father cried. I wasn’t sure if he would reach out to me after our fight, but we needed each other’s strength now, just as we did then.

The room slowly came to order. I should have been observing the other factions; I should have been taking in as much information as I could; I might have even been able to find my parents somewhere in the slice of grey. But I could only stare at the lanterns across the room. I tried to lose myself in the blue glow.

As the room fell to silence, Marcus stepped up to the podium in front of Abnegation. He was a stocky man in his forties with ashen skin that bore the creases of someone much older. Still, his keen eyes flickered around the room, as if memorizing every face as he saw it, and even when he cleared his throat into the microphone, his soft voice seemed to command respect from every person in the room.

“Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to the Choosing Ceremony. Welcome to the day we honor the democratic philosophy of our ancestors, the philosophy that every man has the right to choose his own way in the world.”

Or, it occurred to me, one of five predetermined ways. I squeezed Caleb’s fingers as hard as he was squeezing mine.

“Our dependents are now sixteen. They stand on the precipice of adulthood, and it is now up to them to decide what kind of people they will be.” Marcus was solemn, his words slow, as if weighing each one. I wondered if he was thinking of his daughter Abigail, who would have chosen just two years ago. “Decades ago, our ancestors realized that it is not political ideology, religious belief, race, or nationalism that is to blame for a warring world. Rather, they determined that it was the fault of human personality—of humankind’s inclination toward evil, in whatever form that is. They divided into factions that sought to eradicate those qualities they believed responsible for the world’s disarray.”

My eyes shifted to the bowls in front of Marcus. What did I believe? I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.

“Those who blamed aggression formed Amity.”

I couldn’t disagree. I had not been able to apologize to Caleb after yesterday’s fight, and the sickness in my gut made me want to stop the whole ceremony just to make amends.

“Those who blamed ignorance became the Erudite.”

I had often wondered what it was like to live one’s life in a constant quest for self-enlightenment-a guilty pleasure, admittedly. But after Jeanine’s report, ruling out Erudite had been the only part of my choice that was easy.

“Those who blamed duplicity created Candor.”

I bit the side of my cheek when I thought of Irene—hiding the truth of my aptitude scores from me. It was her fault that I was so torn. If she had just told the truth…

“Those who blamed selfishness made Abnegation.”

But what if it really was just me being selfish? Thinking that I was too good to stay? Thinking that I might be that special snowflake who changed factions?

“And those who blamed cowardice were the Dauntless.”

Was I just scared? Scared of never being good enough for my own family, like I always had been?

My legs had gone numb, like all the life had drained out of them. The life was leaking out from under my scalp, too, percolating through the hot folds of my scarf.

“Working together, these five factions have lived in peace for many years, each contributing to a different sector of society. Abnegation has fulfilled our need for selfless leaders in government; Candor has provided us with trustworthy and sound leaders in law; Erudite has supplied us with intelligent teachers and researchers; Amity has given us understanding counselors and caretakers; and Dauntless strengthens us with protection from threats both within and without. But the reach of each faction is not limited to its role. We give one another far more than can be described. In our factions, we find meaning. We find purpose. We find life.”

There was an inscription on the cover of every modern civics textbook, an old saying from the days before the factions: The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. More than family, our factions were where we belonged.

Marcus added, “Apart from them, we could not thrive.”

It was uncanny, the hush that could sweep through a thousand people. We had been silent before, but now it was as if one could close their eyes and believe they were alone. The hush was heavy with our worst fear, greater even than the fear of death: to be factionless.

After the pause, Marcus cleared his throat again and continued. “Therefore, this day marks a happy occasion—the day on which we receive our new initiates, who will work with us toward a better society and a better world.”

A round of applause. It was muffled. Maybe my scarf was too tight. I let go of Caleb’s hand to press my palms into my legs, because if there was enough pressure, I didn’t shake. Marcus read the first names, but I couldn’t tell one syllable from the other. Perhaps he’d call my name, I wouldn’t hear, and I wouldn’t have to choose.

One by one, each sixteen-year-old stepped out of line and walked to the middle of the room. The first boy to choose decided on Amity, the same faction from whence he came. He had to squeeze his eyes shut as he made the cut, but soon his blood trickled onto soil, and beaming he strode proudly to the slice of yellow.

The room was like a clock, moving and shifting and churning, a new name and a new person choosing, a new knife and a new choice. I recognized all of them by face, but the names were mostly new.

“Sajida Touma,” Marcus said.

Sajida Touma, of Candor, was the first person to stumble on her way to the bowls. I knew her. We never spoke, but she wore a hijab similar to my Abnegation scarf, and we often found ourselves fixing them in the bathrooms together. She was normally composed as any Candor, but today, she slipped. She threw her arms out and regained her balance before hitting the floor. Her olive face flooded with red. When she reached the center, she looked to the Candor bowl, and then to the Abnegation bowl—the glass reflecting blue light, the dark stones absorbing it.

Marcus offered Sajida the knife. She breathed deeply—I watched her chest rise—and, as she exhaled, gripped the blade. Then, with a rapid jerk, she dragged it across her palm and squeezed her fist over a bowl. Her blood dripped onto grey stones, and she became the first of us to switch factions. The first faction transfer.

A mutter rose from the Candor section and I stared at the floor. They would see Sajida as a traitor from now on. Despite our constitution’s emphasis on choosing one’s own path, loyalty couldn’t help but be valued by all. Her Candor family would have the option of visiting her in her new faction, three weeks later on Visiting Day, but they wouldn’t, because she left them. Her absence would haunt their hallways and she would be a space they couldn’t fill. And then time would pass and the hole would close, like when an organ was removed and the body’s fluids flowed into the space it left. Humans could never tolerate emptiness for long.

“Caleb Prior,” said Marcus.

Caleb reached for my hand to squeeze it one last time, and as he walked away, cast a long look at me over his shoulder. I couldn’t tell what was in the look—whether it was bitterness over the last words we’d said to each other, a silent apology that I might never get to hear, or something else. His feet moved deliberately to the center of the room, and his hands accepted the knife with purpose. He pressed into the knife with surgical confidence. He stood with blood pooling in his palm. His lip snagged on his teeth. He breathed out. And then in.

And then he held his hand over the Erudite bowl, tinting the water a deeper shade of red.

The mutters lifted into outraged cries. It was like the floor had given out from under me; I could barely think straight. My brother. My selfless brother. My brother, a faction transfer. My brother, born for Abnegation, Erudite?

And it made so much sense that I felt stupid. The stack of books on Caleb’s desk, the battered composition notebook always tucked under his arm, his shaking hands sliding along his legs after the aptitude test. When he told me to think of myself, he wasn’t saying that I didn’t belong in Abnegation. He was warning me that he might not, either.

The crowd of Erudite was full of smug smiles and side nudges. The Abnegation, normally so placid, rippled with tense murmurs and glared across the room. The animosity was so tangible you could have cut it with one of the knives.

“Excuse me,” said Marcus, but he was too soft for the crowd to hear him. He put his mouth up to the microphone and bellowed, “Excuse me, QUIET, PLEASE!”

Slowly, the murmurs died down. A temporary truce.

And then all of the hostile eyes turned to me.

Marcus had said my name. A shudder pushed me up, like a cosmic hand dragging the puppet string of my spine. Halfway to the bowls, I was sure I would choose Abnegation. I had to. To tell the Erudite that they couldn’t have all of us. I could do it. I could see it. I would grow into a woman draped in grey, marry a quiet man in grey, bear children in grey. I would serve during the week, volunteer on weekends, find the peace of routine, spend nights quiet in front of the fireplace, with the certainty that I would be safe, that I would never have to speak of the last, conflicted twenty-four hours of my life ever again.

I set my eyes on Caleb, sitting among a wash of blue. He met my eyes and nodded. We’d never been the kind of twins who knew what the other was thinking, but this time I knew. My left knee buckled, and I caught myself. If Caleb wasn’t fit for Abnegation, how could I be? But the nod asked: what choice did I have anymore? He left us. I was all that remained. For the last time, in a grand and irreversible finale, I had no choice but to sacrifice my own needs. Sacrifice what I felt was right to make my younger brother proud of me.

I would have to be the child that stayed. If not for Caleb, I had to do this for my parents. I had to. And it made my blood boil.

Marcus offered me the knife. I met his eyes—they were an aqua blue, a strange color—and took it. I turned to the bowls. Dauntless fire and Abnegation stones to my left. Amity soil and Candor glass to my right. Erudite water behind my back.

I had chewed such a hole in the inside of my cheek that I might only have to open my mouth and enough blood would flow to taint a bowl. I breathed hard. It wasn’t enough oxygen. Someone had wrapped their hands around my neck and twisted my headscarf to strangle me, I was gasping and crying but the room just stared; I kicked and screamed and I knew that all they saw was a girl standing still and silent in the middle of five waiting bowls.

I wanted to rip off all my clothes and feel the wind rushing through my hair; I wanted to sit beneath a tree and sing myself to sleep; I wanted to lie under the stars and count each and every one until I knew them all by heart. I wanted to return to my mother’s arms. I wanted anything but this, anything but the flickering memory of a blank screen in Irene’s glasses.

And I wanted answers. An answer to why. An answer to know if I was really, truly alone now.

I bit my cheek harder and dragged the blade down. I didn’t feel. I didn’t care. Then, with a gasp I couldn’t contain, I stepped forward and opened my fist, and my blood trickled into the glass tiles.

I would know the truth.