“I’ll ask him if he’s up for it,” I say. “But I would be willing. When?”
“This morning okay?” he says. “I can come get you in an hour or so. You can’t get into the labs without me anyway.”
I nod. I feel excited, suddenly, to learn more about my genes, which feels like the same thing as reading my mother’s journal: I will get pieces of her back.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
TOBIAS
IT’S STRANGE TO see people you don’t know well in the morning, with sleepy eyes and pillow creases in their cheeks; to know that Christina is cheerful in the morning, and Peter wakes up with his hair perfectly flat, but Cara communicates only through a series of grunts, inching her way, limb by limb, toward coffee.
The first thing I do is shower and change into the clothes they provided for us, which aren’t much different from the clothes I am accustomed to, but all the colors are mixed together like they don’t mean anything to the people here, and they probably don’t. I wear a black shirt and blue jeans and try to convince myself that it feels normal, that I feel normal, that I am adapting.
My father’s trial is today. I haven’t decided if I’m going to watch it or not.
When I return, Tris is already fully dressed, perched on the edge of one of the cots, like she’s ready to leap to her feet at any moment. Just like Evelyn.
I grab a muffin from the tray of breakfast food that someone brought us, and sit across from her. “Good morning. You were up early.”
“Yeah,” she says, scooting her foot forward so it’s wedged between mine. “Zoe found me at that big sculpture thing this morning—David had something to show me.” She picks up the glass screen resting on the cot beside her. It glows when she touches it, showing a document. “It’s my mother’s file. She wrote a journal—a small one, from the look of it, but still.” She shifts like she’s uncomfortable. “I haven’t looked at it much yet.”
“So,” I say, “why aren’t you reading it?”
“I don’t know.” She puts it down, and the screen turns off automatically. “I think I’m afraid of it.”
Abnegation children rarely know their parents in any significant way, because Abnegation parents never reveal themselves the way other parents do when their children grow to a particular age. They keep themselves wrapped in gray cloth armor and selfless acts, convinced that to share is to be self-indulgent. This is not just a piece of Tris’s mother, recovered; it’s one of the first and last honest glimpses Tris will ever get of who Natalie Prior was.
I understand, then, why she holds it like it’s a magical object, something that could disappear in a moment. And why she wants to leave it undiscovered for a while, which is the same way I feel about my father’s trial. It could tell her something she doesn’t want to know.
I follow her eyes across the room to where Caleb sits, chewing on a bite of cereal—morosely, like a pouting child.
“Are you going to show it to him?” I say.
She doesn’t respond.
“Usually I don’t advocate giving him anything,” I say. “But in this case . . . this doesn’t really just belong to you.”
“I know that,” she says, a little tersely. “Of course I’ll show it to him. But I think I want to be alone with it first.”
I can’t argue with that. Most of my life has been spent keeping information close, turning it over and over in my mind. The impulse to share anything is a new one, the impulse to hide as natural as breathing.
She sighs, then breaks a piece off the muffin in my hand. I flick her fingers as she pulls away. “Hey. There are plenty more just five feet to your right.”
“Then you shouldn’t be so worried about losing some of yours,” she says, grinning.
“Fair enough.”
She pulls me toward her by the front of my shirt and kisses me. I slip my hand under her chin and hold her still as I kiss her back.
Then I notice that she’s stealing another pinch of muffin, and I pull away, glaring at her.
“Seriously,” I say. “I’ll get you one from that table. It’ll only take me a second.”
She grins. “So, there’s something I wanted to ask you. Would you be up for undergoing a little genetic test this morning?”
The phrase “a little genetic test” strikes me as an oxymoron.
“Why?” I say. Asking to see my genes feels a little like asking me to strip down.
“Well, this guy I met—Matthew is his name—works in one of the labs here, and he says they would be interested in looking at our genetic material for research,” she says. “And he asked about you, specifically, because you’re sort of an anomaly.”
“Anomaly?”
“Apparently you display some Divergent characteristics and you don’t display others,” she says. “I don’t know. He’s just curious about it. You don’t have to do it.”
The air around my head feels warmer and heavier. To alleviate the discomfort I touch the back of my neck, scratching at my hairline.
Sometime in the next hour or so, Marcus and Evelyn will be on the screens. Suddenly I know that I can’t watch.
So even though I don’t really want to let a stranger examine the puzzle pieces that make up my existence, I say, “Sure. I’ll do it.”
“Great,” she says, and she eats another pinch of my muffin. A piece of hair falls into her eyes, and I am brushing it back before she even notices it. She covers my hand with her own, which is warm and strong, and the corners of her mouth curl into a smile.
The door opens, admitting a young man with slanted, angular eyes and black hair. I recognize him immediately as George Wu, Tori’s younger brother. “Georgie” was the name she called him.
He smiles a giddy smile, and I feel the urge to back away, to put more space between me and his impending grief.
“I just got back,” he says, breathless. “They told me my sister set out with you guys, and—”
Tris and I exchange a troubled look. All around us, the others are noticing George by the door and going quiet, the same kind of quiet you hear at an Abnegation funeral. Even Peter, who I would expect to crave other people’s pain, looks bewildered, shifting his hands from his waist to his pockets and back again.
“And . . .” George begins again. “Why are you all looking at me like that?”
Cara steps forward, about to bear the bad news, but I can’t imagine Cara sharing it well, so I get up, talking over her.