XXIII

I needed to study. I also desperately needed a nap. I did neither.

I tried to nap after dinner, but I was so excited for eight o’clock that it was pretty hard. I tossed and turned for an hour, then got up.

I knew my red hair made me pretty recognizable, so I stifled my pride and tied it up inside a black handkerchief. My selection of “clothes I could move in” was pretty limited. Candor encouraged light exercise, since most of its members spent their days at desks, but it still wasn’t popular. I owned a few flexible white turtlenecks and black leggings, plus some never-worn gym shoes. White shoes, very Candor. I decided it was good enough.

I was wrong. I got to the roof, where the door was unlocked and Ace was waiting. She immediately swore.

“What about ‘I’m sneaking you into Dauntless’ do you not understand?” she snapped. “Get rid of that white shit in five minutes or I’m leaving without you.”

“I don’t have an abundance of combat boots in my closet,” I said mildly.

Ace cursed again. “Wait here.”

She left me on the roof. A few minutes later, she returned holding a strange can.

“Take off your shoes.”

I obeyed. She took them, put them on the ground, and shook the can. Then she knelt and sprayed the shoes with black until they were completely covered.

“Let ‘em dry for a few minutes,” she said.

“What about my shirt?” I asked.

In response, she did something I would never expect. Right in front of me, in the open air, she took off her leather jacket and pulled off her black t-shirt.

My jaw dropped. For one, I’d never seen anyone just undress like that. In Upper Levels gym class, the Abnegation typically changed in modesty stalls. The suddenness of the action, paired with the suggestion, shocked me into silence.

For two—Ace had a very nice body. Her back and arms, though striped with more scars and tattoos than I could count, were thick with muscles. I gulped. She probably could snap me in half like a toothpick. When she turned to face me, holding out the black shirt, I couldn’t help but look down. She wore only a black sports bra, not necessarily designed to be attractive, but which left little to the imagination. A strange tattoo rested under her neck, a single, empty ring.

I must have hesitated in taking the shirt because Ace threw it at me. “Change,” she said tersely, turning away to give me privacy. Then, as she put on her jacket again, she added, “Doesn’t Abnegation say it’s rude to stare?”

My face, already warm, burned hotter.

As if the whole universe was trying to make me flustered, even Ace’s shirt made me feel butterflies. It smelled like her. It was warm from her body heat. It was much too large, hanging almost to my knees. She tied the excess up in a knot, exposing an inch of my midriff, and when she helped me roll up the sleeves, her hand brushed the scar that peeked out of the collar. I shivered.

When my newly-black shoes were dry, I put them on. “Follow me,” Ace ordered. “Consider this your warm-up.”

“Consider what my warm-up?”

In response, Ace turned and pulled herself up onto the ledge. I did the same with much more difficulty, and when I was finally standing, the sight made me gasp.

I looked out at all of Candor, alight by the red of the setting sun. The glass buildings reflected the light to color the streets with gold. We were up so high and the wind was so strong that I clutched Ace’s arm, suddenly aware of the deep chasm a few inches from my feet. But the view was so beautiful that the fear was worth it.

“Watch,” said Ace. The ledge had enough room for her to take one step back, and then she leapt to the next building.

It was easily a six foot gap, but she cleared it as if it was just a small step. She landed on the flat roof, one story below me, and turned with a grin.

“It’s easy,” she called. “C’mon!”

My stomach clenched. “Ace, I don’t know…”

She folded her arms. “You wanna train like a Dauntless? You gotta be Dauntless.”

She was right. My brain ran through everything I could remember about physics and physical education. It was basically a standing long jump. I was terrible at those. And Ace was a foot taller than me, so she had longer legs. But I had an extra step or two backwards. And I had room to travel down. And Ace might catch me if I didn’t make it—

I leapt.

Breathless, I flew. And then I hit the floor of the roof, the impact stinging my feet through my shoes. I stumbled and Ace caught me.

“See? Was it that bad?” she smirked.

“No,” I laughed breathily.

“Good.” She pointed west. In the distance near the ground, about ten buildings away, was a small black line. Train tracks. “We’re going there. So we got a few more to cross.”

Not for the first time—and certainly not for the last—I wondered if I was insane.

+ + +

We crossed the skyline this way, the Dauntless way. Thankfully, Ace seemed familiar with it. She knew which gaps were small enough to jump and found convenient wood planks to put over the gaps that were larger. When we reached the last glass building in the Candor neighborhood, we scaled down the fire escape and climbed through the window of an abandoned office building.

Finally we reached the right street, and Ace taught me how to climb up the metal supports of the train tracks. My hands were blistered by the time we made it to the platform. Ace knelt, pressing her hands to the floor of the platform before standing again.

“There’s one on the way,” she said. “It’ll slow when it sees us, but it won’t stop, so you gotta be fast.”

“Okay,” I said, breathless.

A familiar sound cut through the air: the train horn. Ace jogged to the end of the platform, her back to me. I wondered briefly if I should go to the other end, but I might need to run a little to find the right time. I stood in the middle. It was good that I spent so much time watching the Dauntless come and go from school.

The light appeared around the corner, the train gliding towards us on steel rails. The horn blared again. As it drew closer, I saw that it was only a few boxcars, the doors open for any waiting Dauntless.

Like a cat, Ace sprang from the platform into one car, then leaned out. Panic surged briefly in my chest. Should I grab her hand? One of the railings? I stepped forward and started jogging. I ran with the car for a few steps, then threw myself sideways. One of my hands snapped on a handle next to the doorway, my shoulder slammed into the car door, and then a tight grip clamped around my other hand.

Ace pulled me inside and I tumbled on top of her. When I pushed myself up, our noses were inches apart.

“S-sorry,” I stammered, scrambling off.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” she repeated. Her face was red up to the piercings in her ears.

The train picked up speed. I adjusted the handkerchief that hid my hair, the wind picking stray curls out. I had never been on anything faster than a bus before. The rush, the adrenaline, it made me tremble.

Shakily, I stood and leaned against the wall of the train, watching the city smear by. The sunset flickered through the space between buildings. In one open stretch, I caught a glimpse of grey. Rows and rows of squarish houses. The place that used to be my home.

I instantly felt shame. I hadn’t thought as much about home as I felt like I should. I’d just pushed it into a corner of my mind, shoved it haphazardly inside a small box and never opened it. Mom and Dad would be done with dinner right about now. They would be sitting in the living room, my father reading for work, my mother mending a garment. And Caleb and I would sit on the floor and tell stories, stories of our day, and then Dad would lead us through a few Bible chapters. I remembered the last passage that we had ever read together as a family, the day before the aptitude test. James 2. On the sin of partiality. “For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.” I wondered if any of us knew that it would be the last passage. I wondered if any of us felt convicted by the words of James.

Mom would have been the only one, maybe.

“That’s home?” said Ace, leaning on the other side of the open door.

I nodded. “Was.”

“Looks different like this.”

I nodded again. Ace slumped down on the floor and stretched her long legs. After a while, I did the same.

“Where was home for you?” I asked.

Ace closed her eyes. The wind ruffled her hair like a crow’s feathers.

“Everywhere,” she said. “Moved around a lot.”

“Did you sleep on the streets?”

She opened her good eye. “Not all factionless sleep on the streets, Phoebe.”

Whoops. “Sorry.”

She closed her eye and let out a soft, “heh”. “I did, though,” she said. “Only for two, three years, just before my aptitude test.”

“Only?” I echoed. It seemed like forever. “What was before that?”

“Some house.” No elaboration.

“Why did you leave?”

She shrugged. “Houses ain’t always homes.”

“Didn’t anyone help you?”

“Other factionless. Some of ‘em got me a job.”

“But not the Abnegation?”

“Abnegation doesn’t help people like me.”

“Well, we try to help everyone,” I said, but she shook her head.

“You say that, but picture this: an Asian kid, six feet tall, with a shaved head and a scar like this, comes up to you? Stiffs run. Call the Dauntless.”

She wasn’t wrong. On service trips, we were taught to stay away from people who gave us a bad feeling. If I saw Ace on the streets down there, I’d run.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Not your fault.”

We watched the city for a while. The sun went down. The sky turned dusky and purple.

“You call them that a lot,” I observed. “‘The Dauntless’. It’s never ‘we’.”

Ace shifted her feet, crossing one weathered combat boot over the other. “So?”

“Do you feel like—” I hesitated “—like you’re not one of them?”

But she never answered. “We’re here,” she said instead, and got to her feet.

I leaned forward. Ahead was a wide, flat rooftop below the train tracks. I was confused for a moment, wondering if the train would slow down and let us off at stairs somewhere, but I remembered the Dauntless at school, flying from the moving train onto the lawn with ease. The train would not let us off at stairs.

Ace put her hand on my shoulder. “You think you can do it?”

“Um—sure,” I lied.

“It’s a five-story fall onto pavement if you miss,” she said. “I can carry you, if you want.”

“No, I can do it myself,” I said.

She raised her one whole eyebrow. “Okay. You’ve got seven seconds to change your mind.”

Nine seconds later, Ace leapt from the train holding me like a child in her arms. She landed on her feet and knees, sending gravel spraying. Then she set me down.

“That wasn’t bad at all!” I said brightly.

“You’re heavier than you look, you know,” Ace grumbled. “Next time, you’re jumping.”

“Thank you,” I beamed at her. She just flushed and grumbled some more.

She led me across the roof to a ledge at the other end, then climbed up with me. I looked down. The building we were on formed one side of a square with three other buildings. In the center of the square was a round hole in the concrete. I couldn’t see what was at the bottom.

“This, I won’t help you with,” said Ace.

“We’re jumping into that?” I asked, eyes widening.

She smirked.

“There’s no ladder alternative, is there?”

“Not if you want to train with me.”

Damn it. Ace just smirked again, saluted with two fingers, and stepped backwards off the edge.

“See ya,” she said in the split second before gravity took her.

I gasped. Ace fell, her arms spread and toes pointed, through free air. Then she vanished through the dark hole, that menacing black eye. I waited to hear a splash—maybe water?—but I heard nothing.

This was a scare tactic. I would land safely at the bottom. That knowledge was the only thing that kept me from stepping back to the solid roof. My teeth chattered. I couldn’t back down now—I’d come all this way, I’d parkoured over three blocks of buildings and jumped on a moving train. And I’d be disappointing Ace. She’d never let me live it down.

I didn’t think. Just bent my knees and jumped.

The air howled in my ears as the ground surged toward me, my heart pounding so fast it hurt, every muscle in my body tensing as the falling sensation seemed to pull me right out of my body. The black eye grew, expanded into a gaping mouth. Swallowed me. I dropped into pitch darkness.

I hit something. Hard. It gave way beneath me, cradling my body before launching me up a little. As I bounced, limp and helpless, I wheezed, desperate for breath. Everything stung.

A net. There was a net at the bottom of the hole. It stopped shaking, and I could only stare at the patch of violet sky above me. A laugh bubbled from my throat, half relieved and half hysterical.

I had to stand on solid ground again. I rolled across the net, and saw hands stretching out to me at the edge. Ace was there, grinning. I was too shaky and happy to stand.

“Ace, I just jumped off a roof,” I giggled, leaning into her arms.

Her face was so close to mine. I smiled at it like I’d smiled at the sky. Her face was so pretty. The unscarred skin was so soft and pale. Her eyes were addictive, only brown but as curious, as beckoning as deep amber. When she smiled back, it made me laugh in joy again.

“You sure did,” said Ace, helping me to my feet. She set her hand on my back and said, “Welcome to Dauntless.”