divergent-excerpt

“You like it” she says.
“Yeah.” I nod. “I look like . . . a different person.”
She laughs. “That a good thing or a bad thing”
I look at myself head-on again. For the first time, the
idea of leaving my Abnegation identity behind doesn’t
make me nervous; it gives me hope.
“A good thing.” I shake my head. “Sorry, I’ve just never
been allowed to stare at my reflection for this long.”
“Really” Christina shakes her head. “Abnegation is a
strange faction, I have to tell you.”
“Let’s go watch Al get tattooed,” I say. Despite the fact
that I have left my old faction behind, I don’t want to criticize
it yet.
At home, my mother and I picked up nearly identical
stacks of clothing every six months or so. It’s easy to allocate
resources when everyone gets the same thing, but
everything is more varied at the Dauntless compound.
Every Dauntless gets a certain amount of points to spend
per month, and the dress costs one of them.
Christina and I race down the narrow path to the tattoo
place. When we get there, Al sits in the chair already,
and a small, narrow man with more ink than bare skin is
drawing a spider on his arm.
Will and Christina flip through books of pictures,
elbowing each other when they find a good one. When
they sit next to each other I notice how opposite they are,
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