Insurgent (Divergent #2)(51)

Teasing between siblings should feel familiar, but it doesn't for us. Abnegation discouraged anything that might make someone feel uncomfortable, and teasing was included.

I can feel how cautious we are with each other, now that we're discovering a different way to relate in light of our new factions and our parents' deaths. Every time I look at him, I realize that he's the only family I have left and I feel desperate, desperate to keep him around, desperate to narrow the gap between us.

"Is Susan another Erudite defector?" says Lynn, stabbing a string bean with her fork. Uriah and Tobias are still in the lunch line, waiting behind two dozen Candor who are too busy bickering to get their food.

"No, she was our neighbor when we were kids. She's Abnegation," I say.

"And you're involved with her?" she asks Caleb. "Don't you think that's kind of a stupid move? I mean, when all this is over, you'll be in different factions, living in completely different places … ."

"Lynn," Marlene says, touching her shoulder, "shut up, will you?"

Across the room, something blue catches my attention. Cara just walked in. I put down my sandwich, my appetite gone, and look up at her with my head lowered. She walks to the far corner of the cafeteria, where a few tables of Erudite refugees sit. Most of them have abandoned their blue clothes in favor of black-and-white ones, but they still wear their glasses. I try to focus on Caleb instead-but Caleb is watching the Erudite, too.

"I can't go back to Erudite any more than they can," says Caleb. "When this is over, I won't have a faction."

For the first time I notice how sad he looks when he talks about the Erudite. I didn't realize how difficult the decision to leave them must have been for him.

"You could go sit with them," I say, nodding toward the Erudite refugees.

"I don't know them." He shrugs. "I was only there for a month, remember?"

Uriah drops his tray on the table, scowling. "I overheard someone talking about Eric's interrogation in the lunch line. Apparently he knew almost nothing about Jeanine's plan."





 

 
"What?" Lynn slaps her fork on the table. "How is that even possible?"

Uriah shrugs, and sits.

"I'm not surprised," Caleb says.

Everyone stares at him.

"What?" He flushes. "It would be stupid to confide your entire plan to one person. It's infinitely smarter to give little pieces of it to each person working with you. That way, if someone betrays you, the loss isn't too great."

"Oh," says Uriah.

Lynn picks up her fork and starts eating again.

"I heard the Candor made ice cream," says Marlene, twisting her head around to see the lunch line. "You know, as a kind of 'it sucks we got attacked, but at least there are desserts' thing."

"I feel better already," says Lynn dryly.

"It probably won't be as good as Dauntless cake," says Marlene mournfully. She sighs, and a strand of mousy brown hair falls in her eyes.

"We had good cake," I tell Caleb.

"We had fizzy drinks," he says.

"Ah, but did you have a ledge overlooking an underground river?" says Marlene, waggling her eyebrows. "Or a room where you faced all your nightmares at once?"

"No," says Caleb, "and to be honest, I'm kind of okay with that."

"Si-ssy," sings Marlene.

"All your nightmares?" says Caleb, his eyes lighting up. "How does that work? I mean, are the nightmares produced by the computer or by your brain?"

"Oh God." Lynn drops her head into her hands. "Here we go."

Marlene launches into a description of the simulations, and I let her voice, and Caleb's voice, wash over me as I finish my sandwich. Then, despite the clatter of forks and the roar of hundreds of conversations all around me, I rest my head on the table and fall asleep.





"QUIET DOWN, EVERYONE!"

Jack Kang lifts his hands, and the crowd goes silent. That is a talent.

I stand among the crowd of Dauntless who got here late, when there were no seats left. A flash of light catches my eye-lightning. It's not the best time to be meeting in a room with holes in the walls instead of windows, but this is the biggest room they have.

"I know many of you are confused and shaken by what happened yesterday," Jack says. "I have heard many reports from a variety of perspectives, and have gotten a sense for what is straightforward and what requires more investigation."

I tuck my wet hair behind my ears. I woke up ten minutes before the meeting was supposed to start and ran to the showers. Though I'm still exhausted, I feel more alert now. 

"What seems to me to require more investigation," Jack says, "is the Divergent."