I pause before knocking on Tobias’s door, and listen to what’s going on inside.
“No, not like that,” Tobias says through laughter.
“What do you mean, ‘not like that’? I imitated you perfectly.” The second voice belongs to Caleb.
“You did not.”
“Well, do it again, then.”
I push open the door just as Tobias, who is sitting on the floor with one leg stretched out, hurls a butter knife at the opposite wall. It sticks, handle out, from a large hunk of cheese they positioned on top of the dresser. Caleb, standing beside him, stares in disbelief, first at the cheese and then at me.
“Tell me he’s some kind of Dauntless prodigy,” says Caleb. “Can you do this too?”
He looks better than he did earlier—his eyes aren’t red anymore and some of the old spark of curiosity is in them, like he is interested in the world again. His brown hair is tousled, his shirt buttons in the wrong buttonholes. He is handsome in a careless way, my brother, like he has no idea what he looks like most of the time.
“With my right hand, maybe,” I say. “But yes, Four is some kind of Dauntless prodigy. Can I ask why you’re throwing knives at cheese?”
Tobias’s eyes catch mine on the word “Four.” Caleb doesn’t know that Tobias wears his excellence all the time in his own nickname.
“Caleb came by to discuss something,” Tobias says, leaning his head against the wall as he looks at me. “And knife-throwing just came up somehow.”
“As it so often does,” I say, a small smile inching its way across my face.
He looks so relaxed, his head back, his arm slung over his knee. We stare at each other for a few more seconds than is socially acceptable. Caleb clears his throat.
“Anyway, I should be getting back to my room,” Caleb says, looking from Tobias to me and back again. “I’m reading this book about the water-filtration systems. The kid who gave it to me looked at me like I was crazy for wanting to read it. I think it’s supposed to be a repair manual, but it’s fascinating.” He pauses. “Sorry. You probably think I’m crazy too.”
“Not at all,” Tobias says with mock sincerity. “Maybe you should read that repair manual too, Tris. It sounds like something you might like.”
“I can loan it to you,” Caleb says.
“Maybe later,” I say. When Caleb closes the door behind him, I give Tobias a dirty look.
“Thanks for that,” I say. “Now he’s going to talk my ear off about water filtration and how it works. Though I guess I might prefer that to what he wants to talk to me about.”
“Oh? And what’s that?” Tobias quirks his eyebrows. “Aquaponics?”
“Aqua-what?”
“It’s one of the ways they grow food here. You don’t want to know.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” I say. “What did he come to talk to you about?”
“You,” he says. “I think it was the big-brother talk. ‘Don’t mess around with my sister’ and all that.”
He gets up.
“What did you tell him?”
He comes toward me.
“I told him how we got together—that’s how knife-throwing came up,” he says, “and I told him I wasn’t messing around.”
I feel warm everywhere. He wraps his hands around my hips and presses me gently against the door. His lips find mine.
I don’t remember why I came here in the first place.
And I don’t care.