XX

That afternoon, I went back to the apartment while everyone else spent time with their families. Looking out the window, I saw Oona and her family—her strange, illegal, two-sided family—walking down the street with snacks and drinks from Antigone’s.

I closed the blinds and put in my headphones.

I spent a lot of time thinking. Listening to music used to seem like all I could do at one time, rendering me unable to do anything but listen to the ethereal synth hums and deep drum pulses. But now it carried me away on thoughts, drifting, the Endless River.

If Mom and Irene were related, where did they come from? Was Irene an Abnegation transfer? Or was Mom a Candor transfer? Or did both of them transfer from somewhere else, like me and Caleb? If Mom transferred at all, why did she choose Abnegation? Did she love its peace, its routine, its goodness—all the things I missed, when I let myself think about it?

She had told me that she sometimes wondered if she made a mistake. Now a transfer myself, I understood this on a completely new level. She had to have transferred. I had no grandparents, aunts, or uncles in Abnegation. For that matter—perhaps my father was a transfer, too. Perhaps it was hereditary to bounce between factions, generation to generation, unsettled, uncertain, unsatisfied.

I buried my face in my pillow. The only question now was where Mom and Irene first came from. I tried to rule some of the options out. The unfamiliarity with which Mom held herself in the Institute suggested she was not from Candor. She never cared too much for the Amity, but that could go either way. I couldn’t imagine Mom ever coming from Erudite—but I could imagine Irene.

Ace had once said that she didn’t expect an Abnegation to like picking locks or trespassing. Two traits that I had apparently inherited.

Could my mother be Dauntless?

I doubted Irene would tell me. I wasn’t even sure if she’d admit to being Mom’s sister. It was like nobody wanted to tell me anything, afraid that it would get me into trouble.

Joke’s on them. Not telling me something was the surest way that I go out and find the trouble myself.

All the families were to leave by six. When I went down to dinner, I found the dining hall louder than this morning, but with lower spirits. Discussing our family visits was too painful, and none of us wanted to be seen crying and homesick in front of the whole initiate class, so our midterm grades were all anyone could talk about that night.

Though the midterm grades had no impact on our standing in Candor, they were calculated exactly like the finals. These grades would tell us how we were doing now and how much we needed to improve before the finals. Each exam would be averaged into one cumulative percentage. In order to pass Candor initiation, one had to get an average of 85% on the finals.

“Hey, at least it’s not Dauntless initiation,” said Lars at the table. “Here, in theory, everyone could pass initiation.”

“How’s it work in Dauntless?” Sherlock asked. Despite being Candor-born, he had taken to sitting with us transfers, next to Oona.

“Bunch of fighting. Military training. It’s hardcore, a couple people die every year. And then only the top initiates become full members,” Lars replied. “The rest are offered the choice to be put on probation or to leave the faction.”

“Define ‘probation’,” I said.

Lars’ face bunched up in a frown. “It’s no better than leaving,” he said. “Street patrol for five years, disciplining the factionless. Once you’re done, you can go through initiation again, and if you fail, back to the streets. You can repeat the cycle as many times as you want, but the longer you go, the harder it is to break out. You get too old. Or you get addicted to drugs.”

I thought of Miriam. Of the angel girls. So that’s the sort of person who killed them—an angry, disillusioned half-Dauntless, trapped in a desperate downward spiral.

“That’s...terrifying,” said Oona, her eyes wide.

Lars shrugged. “Terror doesn’t do much for them, I guess. What about Amity? Is it just sitting around, singing and picking fruit for six weeks?”

Oona laughed. “Something like that,” she said. “My mom always said that it was the best time of her life—and only a prologue to the best life anyone could ever have. But more than that, it’s about forging relationships, becoming a more content version of yourself, and leaving behind any worries or burdens of your past life. So everyone’s initiation is a little different. Some people need more of the singing and fruit picking; other people need time to sit and talk through their feelings. It’s six weeks of personalized therapy.”

The way she described it, she almost sounded wistful. It wasn’t hard to imagine why. What I’d give for the chance to drop all my worries at a door and never look back. Sometimes, with how little I respected peace and harmony, I wondered if I really had an aptitude for Amity at all—but other times I looked at myself and was horrified by how stressed I was. If anyone needed six weeks of therapy, it was me.

“I’m guessing nobody fails out of that,” Ravi muttered.

“You’d actually be surprised,” said Oona. “Exploration of the self is a lot of work, a lot of time and reflection. At the end, they take simulations of things that they have admitted to be burdens or anxieties, and they have to overcome them peacefully. Every once in a while, someone finds it hard enough to leave.”

No kidding. I had been working on that self-exploration thing almost nonstop for three weeks and all I had gotten out of it was total confusion and a crush on Ace.

“I think what Ravi’s saying is that it’s his turn to talk,” said Lars, grinning. He punched Ravi’s arm. But Ravi didn’t seem in much of a mood to make the usual light of it.

“Erudite is almost like Candor’s,” said Ravi tersely. “Bunch of classes and tests. At the end, you take an IQ test, and you submit some sort of thesis. But it doesn’t matter how good your thesis or test scores are if your IQ isn’t high enough.”

“What’s high to them?” asked Oona.

Ravi stabbed his sirloin steak. “High enough that I already knew I’d never pass.”

He was definitely angry about what happened with Priya. I wanted to apologize. But I wasn’t even sure if he was mad at me or mad at her. To be safe, I could only assume both.

“Hey, don’t feel bad,” said Sherlock. “I get it. I…actually wanted to transfer to Dauntless, but look, I’m blind as a bat. Sometimes fate just says no.”

Ravi shrugged. “I guess so.”

“Why Dauntless?” said Lars. “Is something about ‘only the top initiates pass’ not scary enough?”

Sherlock shifted, pushing his glasses up his nose. Though he’d always tell the truth, I had learned about him, it was never easy.

“I didn’t think I’d make it this far in Candor initiation either,” he admitted. “When Candor kids are—just kids, all we hear about from our parents is the Full Unveiling. It’s this big deal. Sometimes we hear about the exams, but we’re told they’re not that important. Most of us don’t even know that they can determine whether you pass or fail until the first day of initiation, you saw how some of the others reacted.”

“Ha, I remember. Aletheia just about crapped her pants,” Lars snickered. That got a laugh out of Ravi, finally.

“Basically my reaction too,” Sherlock nodded. “See, I found out early. I was a terrible student in Mid-Levels, so my parents pulled me aside and said, ‘If you don’t get good grades, you’ll never be able to pass the pre-law exams. And then you’ll have to go to Abnegation...or even Amity.’ They made me cry.” He hesitated, then looked apologetically at Oona and me. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Oona smiled. “In Amity, I’ve heard parents tell their kids to behave or they’ll be sent to Candor.”

Ravi snorted. “Jeez.”

By then, everyone was looking at me. “What?” I said.

“Abnegation’s initiation,” Oona prompted. “Amity’s, I can get why that could scare children. What’s so bad about Abnegation’s?”

“Six weeks of community service, every day of the week, minimum of eight hours a day,” I said.

“Isn’t that all that Abnegation does anyway?” asked Sherlock.

I shook my head. “Initiation works a little differently. After initiation, you can choose what kind of jobs you want to serve—like if you’re a good office worker, you can work in the Hub; if you’re good with kids, you can apply to the faction nursery. But during initiation, you’re only told the day’s job when you wake up, and they’re completely random. Whatever needs to be done that day. So you have to be pretty versatile.”

“How do you fail?” asked Oona.

“What?”

“Do you just not do the jobs well enough, or…?”

“Nobody fails initiation,” I said. I almost sounded surprised to myself, like I hadn’t realized that until now. Maybe I hadn’t. “We find a place for everyone.”

“That’s gotta be why people choose it,” said Lars.

That stung a little. But I shrugged. “Guess so.”

Ravi looked back down at his plate. Then, so did I.

After dinner, I tracked him down going to his room. “Ravi, I need to say something,” I told him, pulling him into the common area.

“We both do,” he said quietly. I’d never known him to be quiet.

“I’m—sorry. For what I said to your sister today.” I wasn’t sure if I was sorry.

“What?” he said, bewildered. “No. No, I should be apologizing to you. Priya deserved a punch in the nose.”

“But she has a point,” I said. “I know that now.”

“Just because she’s right doesn’t mean she wasn’t being an asshole about it,” said Ravi. “You know what Judge Bandele says. Debate shouldn’t mean we’re enemies.”

I nodded. I wished it was true beyond the boundaries of Candor, too.

“It doesn’t matter anyway.” He shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. “It’s not like she’s my sister anymore.”

“What? Of course she is—”

“That might be the last time I see her ever. And I spent the last of it arguing.”

I thought of Caleb. “I know the feeling,” I said. “Do you feel bad?”

“Very,” said Ravi. “But—at the same time—I almost feel relieved. I’m a new person now. I can make my own way.”

He must have sensed something was wrong, because then he asked, “What about you?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “My brother, Caleb...” I trailed off, but Ravi knew already.

“I saw. Erudite had a lot of transfers this year.”

“I never saw it coming,” I said. “Before we chose, he told me to think for myself. I thought he was telling me that I’d never belong anywhere. I yelled at him—I’d never really yelled at someone before. But it was actually about himself.”

My heart ached. I missed Caleb so much. My mom. Even my dad. I sat down, and Ravi next to me. He hugged me.

“Sometimes I want to go back,” I murmured. “I just want things to not be uncertain anymore.”

I hated feeling alone. I hated not being able to trust anyone with everything. And I hated this dread, this sense of doom lurking around the corner. I knew that I hadn’t done well on my midterms. I wouldn’t do well on the finals. When the Full Unveiling came, I didn’t even know what I would do there.

But it wasn’t like I had any other options. I would’ve been that half-brave Dauntless who never passed initiation; I would’ve been the depressed psycho who couldn’t complete Amity enlightenment; I would’ve been just as much of a confused and torn mess in Erudite as I was here. They were all right. Abnegation was the only place where people like me could feel secure. Perhaps “Divergent” was just a code word for “doomed to fail anywhere”.

As if reading my thoughts, Ravi said, “I know.”

+ + +

Sunday morning, Judge Morris sent out a notification that all of us were to meet in Judge Bandele’s courtroom for 8:30 a.m. homeroom, before our first class of the day. We didn’t need to be told why.

Everyone was there. Even the people who hadn’t shown up for class in weeks. Nervous mumbling rippled throughout the gallery as we watched Morris conversing casually with Bandele, even after the clock ticked past 8:30. Finally, two minutes into their conversation, someone did the most Candor thing I have ever seen. Oona walked to the front, stood between Morris and Bandele, and cleared her throat.

“Both of you are stalling to see if any of us are rude enough to interrupt and ask to put up our scores,” she said. “I’m interrupting. Please put up our scores.”

Both men looked at her, their eyes wide. Then Morris sighed, dug out his wallet, and gave Bandele a ten-credit bill.

“Very well, Miss Posner,” said Morris.

“And he said it would never be a transfer,” Bandele smiled at Oona. She beamed right back, then sat down.

Morris stepped up to the judge’s seat and clicked a button, lighting up the screen on the wall. “As you know,” he said, “these midterms have no bearing on your standing in Candor, but they are a good indicator of how you will do on your finals if you were to take them today. You will receive your individual exam scores after homeroom so you know where to improve.”

He clicked a button and the screen filled with names. The first column was all transfers.

Posner, Oona (Am)—84
Mainwaring, Alyss (E)—80
Espada, Altagracia (D)—79
Barton, Felice (D)—74
Brown, Zachary (D)—69
Johns, Leanne (E)—67
Prior, Phoebe (Ab)—67

Seventh. Or sixth, since I was tied with Leanne. Twenty points under a passing grade, but nobody had gotten a passing grade. My eyes moved down to the last transfers.

Cunningham, Ford (E)—63
Lithden, Theodore (D)—61
Lyle, Lars (D)—60
Fitzgerald, Jedidiah (Am)—55
Balakrishnan, Ravi (E)—49

I looked at Ravi. He was turned to the nearby Dauntless and was laughing about Zac getting a 69, whatever that meant. But I knew he had seen his score. He was rubbing his thumbnail with his index finger.

The Candor-borns’ scores surprised me.

Cole, Brighton—72
Manning, Eurydice—67
De Luca, Sherlock—64
Freedman, Titus—61
Donovan, Taylor—56
Albright, Aletheia—55
O’Reilly, Clyde—50
Santiago, Katarina—38

“What?!” Aletheia shrieked. “That’s not possible!”

“I’m afraid it is possible, Miss Albright,” said Judge Morris, “considering you helped establish a record low in Candor-born initiate attendance. I’m very disappointed in all of the Candor-born, in fact.”

Aletheia’s mouth was a perfect O. I tried to hide a smile.

“While on the subject,” said Morris, “I would like to single out Miss Posner for flawless attendance, a near-passing midterm score, and making me lose a bet just a minute ago. None of us thought that an Amity transfer would excel above our own Candor-born. Congratulations, Miss Posner.”

He motioned for her to stand and we applauded. She was blushing like a peach, but her grin lit up the whole room. When she sat down again, I hugged her.

“Your Honor, with all due respect,” she spoke up, “it’s not a passing score. None of us deserve congratulations.”

Morris raised an eyebrow, then stepped down from the judge’s seat. “You are correct. But we’ve learned not to expect any of our initiates to pass the midterms,” he said. “Should we? Absolutely. Each one of you was capable of getting an 85 or above.

“But every year, we have a similar distribution of grades. Every year, we have the same problem. Every year, our initiates come in with the delusion that they’re smart enough to do this easily. They think their old study habits, their old schedules, their old routines are good enough to pass. Their seniors will remind them, ‘Take initiation seriously. Study hard.’ But they think they’re too smart to worry. Too smart to go to office hours. Too smart to have tutoring. Too smart to sacrifice their free time. It’s not just the Candor-born. It’s not just the Erudite transfers. It’s all of you.

“So this is where I shall step back from degrading the Candor-born and address the whole class—”

He walked up to the railing, separating him and Bandele from us. He scanned the room, meeting each of our eyes, one by one.

“Get your shit together,” he said. “Or every single one of you will fail Candor initiation.”