grunts. Zeke yawns into his coffee, but he points out his family to me: his little brother, Uriah, sits at one of the other tables with Lynn, Shauna’s little sister. His mother, Hana—the tamest Dauntless I’ve ever seen, her faction indicated only by the color of her clothing—is still in the breakfast line.
“Do you miss living at home?” I say.
The Dauntless have a proclivity for baked goods, I’ve noticed. There are always at least two different kinds of cake at dinner, and a mountain of muffins rests on a table near the end of the breakfast line. When I got there, all the good flavors were gone, so I was left with bran.
“Not really,” he says. “I mean, they’re right there. Dauntless-born initiates aren’t really supposed to talk to family until Visiting Day, but I know if I really needed something, they’d be there.”
I nod. Beside him, Shauna’s eyes close, and she falls asleep with her chin resting on her hand.
“What about you?” he says. “Do you miss home?”
I am about to answer no, but right at that moment Shauna’s chin slips off her hand and she smashes her chocolate muffin with her face. Zeke laughs so hard he cries, and I can’t help but grin as I finish my juice.
Later that morning I meet Shauna in the training room. She has her short hair pulled back from her face, and her Dauntless boots, normally untied and flapping when she walks, laced up tight. She’s punching at nothing, pausing between each hit to adjust her position, and for a moment I watch her, not sure how to start. I only just learned to throw a punch myself; I’m hardly qualified to teach her anything.
But as I watch her, I start to notice things. How she stands with her knees locked, how she doesn’t hold up a hand to protect her jaw, how she punches from her elbow instead of throwing her body weight behind each hit. She stops, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. When she notices me, she jumps like she just touched a live wire.
“Rule number one for not being creepy,” she says. “Announce your presence in a room if another person doesn’t see you come in.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I was coming up with some pointers for you.”
“Oh.” She chews on the inside of her cheek. “What are they?”
I tell her what I noticed, and then we face off in the fighting arena. We begin slowly, pulling back on each hit so we don’t hurt each other. I have to keep tapping her elbow with my fist to remind her to keep her hand up by her face, but a half hour later, she’s at least moving better than she was before.
“This girl you have to fight tomorrow,” I say. “I’d get her right here, in the jaw.” I touch the underside of my jaw. “A good uppercut should do it. Let’s practice those.”
She squares off, and I notice with satisfaction that her knees are bent, and there’s a bounce in her stance that wasn’t there before. We shuffle around each other for a few seconds, and then she punches up. As she does, her left hand drops from her face. I block the first punch, then start to attack the hole she left in her guard. At the last second, I stop my fist in the air and raise my eyebrows at her.
“You know, maybe I would learn my lesson if you actually hit me,” she says, straightening. Her skin is flushed from exertion, and sweat shines along her hairline. Her eyes are bright and critical. It occurs to me, for the first time, that she’s pretty. Not in the way I usually think of—she’s not soft, delicate—but in a way that’s strong, capable.
I say, “I would really rather not.”
“What you think is some kind of lingering Abnegation chivalry is really kind of insulting,” she says. “I can take care of myself. I can take a little pain.”
“It’s not that,” I say. “It’s not because you’re a girl. I just . . . I’m not really into violence for no reason.”
“Some kind of Stiff thing, huh?” she says.
“Not really. Stiffs aren’t into violence, period. Put a Stiff in Dauntless and they just let themselves get punched a lot,” I say, letting myself smile a little. I’m not used to using Dauntless slang, but it feels good to claim it as my own, to let myself relax into their rhythms of speech. “It just doesn’t