into a snarl. His cheek is rippled with scars, like his hands. He leans close to my face. His breath smells like cigarettes. Not real, I remind myself. Not real.
“You’re lying,” he says. “You’re lying!”
“I am not.”
“I can see it in your eyes.”
I pull myself up straighter. “You can’t.”
“If you know him,” he says in a low voice, “you could save me. You could save me!”
I narrow my eyes. “Well,” I say. I set my jaw. “I don’t.”
CHAPTER THREE
I WAKE TO sweaty palms and a pang of guilt in my chest. I am lying in the chair in the mirrored room. When I tilt my head back, I see Tori behind me. She pinches her lips together and removes electrodes from our heads. I wait for her to say something about the test—that it’s over, or that I did well, although how could I do poorly on a test like this?—but she says nothing, just pulls the wires from my forehead.
I sit forward and wipe my palms off on my slacks. I had to have done something wrong, even if it only happened in my mind. Is that strange look on Tori’s face because she doesn’t know how to tell me what a terrible person I am? I wish she would just come out with it.
“That,” she says, “was perplexing. Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
Perplexing?
I bring my knees to my chest and bury my face in them. I wish I felt like crying, because the tears might bring me a sense of release, but I don’t. How can you fail a test you aren’t allowed to prepare for?
As the moments pass, I get more nervous. I have to wipe off my hands every few seconds as the sweat collects—or maybe I just do it because it helps me feel calmer. What if they tell me that I’m not cut out for any faction? I would have to live on the streets, with the factionless. I can’t do that. To live factionless is not just to live in poverty and discomfort; it is to live divorced from society, separated from the most important thing in life: community.
My mother told me once that we can’t survive alone, but even if we could, we wouldn’t want to. Without a faction, we have no purpose and no reason to live.
I shake my head. I can’t think like this. I have to stay calm.
Finally the door opens, and Tori walks back in. I grip the arms of the chair.
“Sorry to worry you,” Tori says. She stands by my feet with her hands in her pockets. She looks tense and pale.
“Beatrice, your results were inconclusive,” she says. “Typically, each stage of the simulation eliminates one or more of the factions, but in your case, only two have been ruled out.”
I stare at her. “Two?” I ask. My throat is so tight it’s hard to talk.
“If you had shown an automatic distaste for the knife and selected the cheese, the simulation would have led you to a different scenario that confirmed your aptitude for Amity. That didn’t happen, which is why Amity is out.” Tori scratches the back of her neck. “Normally, the simulation progresses in a linear fashion, isolating one faction by ruling out the rest. The choices you made didn’t even allow Candor, the next possibility, to be ruled out, so I had to alter the simulation to put you on the bus. And there your insistence upon dishonesty ruled out Candor.” She half smiles. “Don’t worry about that. Only the Candor tell the truth in that one.”
One of the knots in my chest loosens. Maybe I’m not an awful person.
“I suppose that’s not entirely true. People who tell the truth are the Candor…and the Abnegation,” she says. “Which gives us a problem.”
My mouth falls open.
“On the one hand, you threw yourself on the dog rather than let it attack the little girl, which is an Abnegation-oriented response…but on the other, when the man told you that the truth would save him, you still refused to tell it. Not an Abnegation-oriented response.” She sighs. “Not running from the dog suggests Dauntless, but so does taking the knife, which you didn’t do.”
She clears her throat and continues. “Your intelligent response to the dog indicates strong alignment with the Erudite. I have no idea what to make of your indecision in stage one, but—”
“Wait,” I interrupt her. “So you have no idea what my aptitude is?”
“Yes and no. My conclusion,” she explains, “is that you display