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I spent that afternoon in the library with my laptop. I had a few assignments due Sunday, but I had no intention of doing them yet.

In a new document I had two sections:

Reasons why I think Ace
MIGHT know Irene .

• Ace was factionless. She is currently taking basic civics, a class that all faction-born students have to take, so Lars’ rumors must be true.

  • Therefore, her ability to pass the literacy tests and be eligible for the aptitude test is incredibly unusual.

• Irene told the other Candor proctor that she had been administering aptitude tests for a long time.

  • Therefore, it is likely that Irene was also head of the aptitude test integrity board two or three years ago, when Ace took her test.

• Mom said that Irene’s position allows her to see all of the aptitude results, as she checks the tests for tampering or unusual behavior.

  • Therefore, Irene would have undoubtedly become involved in a case of a factionless kid passing the literacy test.

• When I initially asked Ace about Irene, Ace didn’t even ask who Irene was before telling me her “no shop talk” policy. She didn’t even ask why I wanted to know. Afterwards, she just got defensive and kept asserting that she didn’t know Irene.

  • I don’t even know what to make of this. I think I did say “Candor test proctor” and Ace’s policy extended to all Candor, so she didn’t even need to know who Irene was, just that she was Candor.

• Ace could have had any job in Dauntless. What about “guard for the Candor” is at all attractive?

  • Even if she was trying to get away from people who bullied her during initiation, she could have worked for any other faction. She could have even guarded the fence; that’s a solitary position. She openly shows distaste for Candor at every opportunity.

  • Therefore, she has to be here for something. Or someone.

  • If it’s true, I guess we’re not that different.

• “No, you’re not.”

  • Coincidence? Maybe. I don’t know.

Reasons why I think Ace
MIGHT NOT know Irene.

• There may be multiple Candor associates working on the test integrity board. Or perhaps Irene was administering tests for a while but was more recently selected to be head of the board.

  • Therefore, I can’t say specifically that Irene administered Ace’s test or viewed her results.

• All of this evidence is circumstantial. There’s no real proof.

  • I can’t see anything except this explanation, but someone less biased might be able to create an entirely different story out of the evidence. And it might be closer to the truth.

• I do not know if Ace was lying.

  • I don’t know anything about Ace at all.

The last bullet point was most perplexing to me. Out of all the strange people I had met here in Candor, I had fixated on a Dauntless. A factionless. And yet I’d learned almost nothing about her at all. Everyone here was such an open book about who they were and what they wanted us to learn, but Ace managed to stand out by saying nothing at all.

On a certain level, it was reassuring—Judge Bandele, during Argumentative Technique, had said that one of the telling characteristics of a good Candor was the inability to let a mystery rest, and both Ace and Irene validated me there. At the very least, if I couldn’t succeed in Candor in other areas, nothing could dampen my irritating need to know the answer to everything. But it was still irritating above all else.

I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes. What was the point anymore? Was there really no other way to find Irene and talk to her than through Ace? The laptops that we had came equipped with a staff directory of the Institute. I searched Irene’s name there but found nothing. Of course, because she didn’t work here.

I avoided surfing the internet for her. Candor computers came with an annoying feature that didn’t let you delete your browser history. And I couldn’t stop thinking about “What you saw would get both of us killed”.

I looked around, at the aisles and aisles of hardcover books and data disks that spanned as far as my eye could see. The Candor Library of Law contained every court transcript, brief, and ruling ever created. Irene would undoubtedly be somewhere in here. But I had no idea how to access any of the information. At the initiate level, all of our case files were hand-picked and distributed by the professors. There were librarians around, of course, but what would I say? “Hi, I’m looking for information about a Candor woman. Do you guys have a phone book? No, I only know her first name. Well, ideally, I’d like to know if she has office hours where I could speak to her, but I’d settle for more or less stalking her. I’m also wondering how much information you have on the simulation serum from the aptitude tests?”

No. This was a mystery I had to solve on my own.

After finishing my other assignments, I left the library and returned to the apartment complex. It took me almost no time to find who I was looking for. On my floor, there were sixteen girls divided in groups of four, mostly initiates, but some 1Ls in other blocks. The boys’ floor was underneath ours and had a similar layout. Four blocks of four boys. Like the girls’, the boys’ doors had neat, professional little signs with their names on them.

I found the right one very quickly. One of the signs used to say “Ravi Balakrishnan”, but a mischievous hand had written “Ballsack, he/him/his” on a sticky note and covered up the last name. A reference to the disastrous first Arguments class, where Aletheia had gotten Ravi’s surname and pronouns wrong. I sighed and knocked.

“It’s open!” a voice hollered.

I pushed it open, but then was met with a scene even more alarming than the smoking party in my living room. Two of Ravi’s roommates, Brighton and Sherlock, were absent, since they were Candor-born and probably still out with Aletheia. His other roommate, Lars from Dauntless, was sitting with him on the couch, and they were both holding video game controllers. Zac and Altagracia, two of the other Dauntless transfers, were also crowded on the couch. Oona was on the floor with a grey cat in her lap. And the whole room was trashed. Snack food and cellophane wrappers were everywhere.

“Hey, Pheebs,” said Ravi, not looking away from the TV. He and Lars were playing a very, very violent video game. Blood splattered across the screen. I cringed.

“What happened in here?” I asked.

“The Dauntless kids introduced him to terrible video games,” said Oona. “Also, Brighton has a cat.”

“They’re not terrible,” said Altagracia. “It’s just a first-person shooter.”

“Where you kill people,” Oona scowled.

“Yo, Loony, your Amity’s showing,” said Ravi.

I stepped over a pile of laundry in the doorway. “Great, great. Do you guys not get housekeeping?”

“Oh, no, she just came yesterday,” said Lars.

“You’ve gotta be joking.”

On the screen, more blood appeared. Ravi said a very interesting swear word and gave the controller to Altagracia.

“Come on in, have a sit,” he told me, scooting over on the couch.

I frowned. “I’d rather not,” I said. I did pause to lean down and pet the cat, then stood up again. “Ravi, I need to talk to you. In private.”

“Oh my god,” said Zac. “Ravi got Phoebe pregnant.”

“What?!” I flinched.

“Can a trans guy really get a girl pregnant?” Lars asked.

Altagracia hit him on the back of the head, causing his character on the screen to explode. “You’re literally so stupid,” she said.

“I’m serious,” said Lars.

“That’s why you’re so stupid,” said Altagracia.

“Cut it out, guys,” said Ravi, rolling his eyes. He climbed over the couch and stood straight, stretching his arms above his head. “C’mon, I’ll take you to my room.”

“Oooh, it’s gonna get steamy,” said Zac.

“Zac, you’re stupid too,” said Altagracia.

My face was red hot by the time Ravi led me to his bedroom and closed the door behind us. I knew that Dauntless were unnecessarily suggestive about everything, but I had never before been the subject of that kind of teasing.

I tried to change the mental subject by looking around Ravi’s room. It was as messy as the living room, but there was something new I hadn’t seen anywhere before—a large flag with pastel pink, blue, and white stripes. Candor weren’t much for colorful wall decor, so it must have been Ravi’s.

“That’s the trans flag,” said Ravi. “Got it yesterday, same time as I got my binder.”

I looked at him. “Huh?”

He pointed down. Under a wrinkled, unbuttoned white shirt, he was wearing a black tank top. I hadn’t paid it much notice until now.

“Chest binder,” he explained. “Safer than those bandages that made me pass out.”

Right. Wednesday Investigations. Ravi used to talk with big breaths, like he had finished running really fast. I thought it was just his thing, like how some people stuttered or said “um”. But last Wednesday, during Investigations, he got dizzy and tripped down the stairs. He was rushed to the infirmary, where they found bandages wrapped tightly around his chest.

It was called “binding”, he’d told me later—a homemade solution to something called gender dysphoria. It was like waking up in someone else’s body and being told you couldn’t go back. Logically, one would try to make the other person’s body feel as similar to the old one as possible to feel sane again, so that’s what Ravi did with the bandages.

He was a quick healer, though, and was right back to class the next morning. Last night he had gone back for a checkup, so he must have gotten the binder and flag at the same time.

“You said I could ask you any questions I wanted,” I said. “Can I ask some now?”

“Is this the private thing?”

“No, this is a side conversation, because I’m really confused.”

“Okay, shoot.” He lounged out on his unmade bed and I sat down in his desk chair.

“Why is Candor so accepting of transgenders? I don’t get it, why they’d accept it but Erudite doesn’t.”

Ravi nodded. “No, good question. When I lived in Erudite, I was taught that I couldn’t put my personal feelings over the data. I was born with a female body and have double X chromosomes; therefore, I am female.”

“Okay.”

“Of course, you also have intersex people, who might have a chromosomal abnormality like XXY or single X, or where their chromosomes don’t match their body, and sometimes they’re allowed to change their gender. But they’re outliers. They shouldn’t dictate the rule of the norm.”

Made sense. That was how I was raised to think, too.

“Candor sees it differently,” Ravi continued. “Their question is this: is there really such thing as a ‘truly female brain’ or a ‘truly male brain’? To Candor, thoughts and feelings aren’t just synaptic chemical responses, they’re a real part of who you are. The self isn’t just the body. The self is a mind governing a body. So why define the mind by the body? My mind says I’m male. If I pretend that I’m not, is it untruthful?”

I thought about that for a while. “The mind can be wrong,” I pointed out.

Ravi shrugged. “Maybe. If it’s wrong, then I just change to what’s right. But I can’t find the right change unless I have the freedom to change in the first place.”

“I guess.”

“I think that’s why Candor makes so much sense to me. It’s not so much ‘truth is absolute, and we have all the answers to it’, like people think we think. That’s actually more like Erudite. But here, it’s more—I dunno—truth isn’t always what it looks like on the outside. So…go find it for yourself.”

I looked at my hands. Go find it for yourself.

“That’s actually the other thing I wanted to ask you,” I said. “I need advice.”

Ravi raised his eyebrows. “Words never said to me.”

“First for everything.” I hesitated, then said, “Let’s say, hypothetically, that I know that someone’s breaking a law to hide a secret. If I did something less-than-legal to uncover it again, would I be right?”

“You’re asking if two wrongs make a right?” said Ravi.

I cringed. “Well, once you put it like that—”

“Yeah,” he said. “Ends justify the means, if the end is truth. Hah, I can see why you asked me and not Oona.”

Relief washed over me. Of course Ravi would understand. Now came the real sinker question.

“Great,” I said. “Now—how would you feel about helping me do the less-than-legal thing, and not asking any questions?”

The light that dawned on Ravi’s face could have powered the whole city.

+ + +

On Monday, during lunch, while sitting right in front of Ace, Ravi leaned back in his chair and flipped an entire tureen of soup. He flailed, then screamed, then crashed to the ground in a glorious display of chicken noodle.

Just as I predicted, Ace rushed to help him up, then bundled him away to get a change of clothes. Our whole table laughed at him. Factionless servers swarmed in to clean up the mess.

And twenty minutes later, I returned to my room and found Ravi alone and in a fresh pair of clothes, waiting outside the door. We stepped inside. I made sure the apartment was empty. He reached into his pocket and proudly pulled out Ace’s little black journal.

“No questions asked,” he said.

“Thank you,” I told him.

“But you do owe me one. I want to know how to pick locks.”

I frowned. “What? I don’t know how to do that.”

“Lie. When you opened your paperclip box this morning in Reasoning, couple of the ends were in rake shapes.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Nice catch.”

“So... you’ll teach me?”

“Why not. Sure.”

“Cool beans. Oh, there’s Investigations homework, just got posted last night.”

“Is it another video of Morris talking about one of his cases again?”

“Wow, how’d you guess? Just kidding. It’s that every time. Get with the program, Fifi.”

He punched me on the shoulder, and I punched him back, grinning. A slight ache pulsed in my chest when I looked at him—he really did remind me of Caleb, if Caleb was a transgender Indian boy who knew what fun was. I missed Caleb so much sometimes. Ravi helped me deal with it.

Saluting, he turned and left. I sat down on the couch and held Ace’s book in my hands.

The battered front cover read Weekly Planner, 21XX. A small pen fit into a pocket on the spine. When I opened to the front page, it read Return to Ace of Dauntless, Block 248, Dauntless Compound. Huh. Guess Ace really was her full name—

Someone knocked on the door. Must’ve been Ravi again. Maybe he had something else to say about the Investigations homework. I stood and opened the door.

And found myself face to face with Ace of Dauntless.

“Oh, uh, heeeey,” I squeaked. I hid the book behind my back, but I was pretty sure she’d already seen it. I forced a weak grin.

Her arms were folded. She looked very unamused. “Phoebe Prior.”

“That’s my name—ACK!”

The yelp came when Ace grabbed my arm. Without breaking eye contact, she plucked the book out of my hand, yanked me inside the room, and slammed the door behind us.

“Start talking,” she snarled.

When she released my arm, I rubbed it. There were definitely going to be bruises. “Oh, that? Ha, uh, Ravi found it when you helped him, and he gave it to me to give back to you—”

“You’re really going to lie?”

I threw my hands in the air. “Okay! Fine! I was trying to find why you’re not telling me about Irene!”

Ace rubbed her forehead, muttering a swear word. “Why can’t you let that go already?”

“I don’t know!” I yelled. “Because I feel like I’m losing my mind!” A tear slipped from my eye. Growling in frustration, I collapsed onto the couch and buried my face in my hands. “I thought Irene could help me with the—the problem I’m having, but maybe I’m just crazy!”

I couldn’t help it. I started to cry. This was the end of the line, I knew it. I would get myself and Ravi kicked out of Candor for this stunt. What was the point of even trying to find Irene anymore when I didn’t have a faction? I was stupid, I was so stupid, thinking I could get away with something like this...

“Oh my god,” Ace grumbled. “Stop crying. I’ll take you to Irene.”

I shot to my feet. “Really?!”

She flinched back at how fast my mood improved but composed herself and looked anywhere but me. “Yes, really,” she said. “She’s in the office until six, I’ll take you after Investigations. But you have to swear not to tell anyone.”

“I swear it,” I grinned.

“Not even that skinny Indian kid.”

“Oh, Ravi doesn’t know anything,” I said. “He just likes to make mischief.”

Ace grimaced. “Noted.”

“Thank you,” I said to Ace. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I just—I need to know. Why did you lie about knowing Irene before?”

That was when Ace looked around, as if double-checking that no one else was in the apartment. “Because you’re not that hard to read,” she finally said. “You’re the kind of person that if we told the whole story to you, there’s a chance you’d get yourself killed.”