Page 102 of The Sixth Fraction

He gestures for me to leave, and I do, pulling away from the wall and half stumbling down the path, away from him. Uriah catches up to me and points to an alcove in the wall right next to a cart where a woman is selling loaves of bread. They’re stacked high, crusty and sweet-smelling, and I wonder if I could get away with stealing one.

Sometimes I don’t recognize myself.

“Thanks for that,” I say to Uriah.

“Eric sucks,” Uriah says. “That’s why I helped you, but if you don’t tell me what you’re really doing here, I’m going to have to escort you out of the building.” He looks me over. “I’m assuming you’re not Abnegation anymore.”

I shake my head. “Didn’t take.”

He laughs a little. “It didn’t take? It’s what you chose, isn’t it?”

“You’re the one who asked me if I ever thought about transferring,” I say. “Well, it’s pretty much all I could think about. But I made the wrong decision.”

He folds his arms and sighs.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “That sounds terrible. But I still can’t let you—I mean, what are you doing here?”

“I’m here to”—Lie faster, I think; the thought sounds a lot like Boots—“see Four.”

Uriah raises his eyebrows. “See Four? Why?”

I don’t want to expose Four’s secrets. It seems like a poor way to repay him, after all the ways he’s helped me. But the only plausible explanation I can think of involves Abnegation.

Luckily, Uriah thinks of it, too. “Oh. You know each other from Abnegation.”

I nod.

“I just saw him go to the tattoo shop a half hour ago,” Uriah says. “He’s probably still there. Come on.”

I’ve never thought much about tattoos. Unlike the other aspects of Dauntless identity that my father railed against—piercings included—he was quiet about tattoos. I now realize it must have been because my mother has them herself.

When I walk into the tattoo shop, I stop and stare. The walls are covered in art, from floor to ceiling. Thick, strong patterns done all in black. Fine, delicate drawings of flowers. Realistic depictions of animals I’ve only seen in books. Colorful abstractions. I could stand here for hours and still not see them all.

There are two chairs in the space, reclined like the seat I was in for the aptitude test. One of them is empty, and the other is occupied, but not by Four. An older woman is in the chair, one leg bare, and a big, intimidating man covered in ink is drawing on her thigh with his tattoo needle. Neither of them gives me a second glance.

A curtain in the back of the room divides the space. It’s black, and almost opaque, but I can see movement behind it. Uriah is busy talking to the woman in the chair—someone he knows, I assume—so no one is paying attention to me. Curiosity is like a hook behind my breastbone, dragging me closer. I pull back the curtain an inch, and look through the gap.

Past the curtain is a little room, no larger than a closet. A woman with long black hair sits on a stool inside it, a tattoo needle in hand. Beside her is a boy sitting backward on a chair, his arms on the backrest and his head turned to the side. His chest and arms are bare, and I’m so distracted by the suddenness of all that skin that it takes me a moment to realize I’m looking at Four.

I should look away. A lifetime of lectures about modesty have taught me to. But I don’t want to.

I want to watch the dull yellow light of the fixture above him play across the planes of his shoulders. I want to stare at the swell of muscle in his arms. I want to follow the black lines of that tattoo I’ve seen only hints of over the back of his neck.

God. He’s beautiful.

My face heats, but it’s not with embarrassment. It’s just that looking at him struck a match inside me, and now I’m burning.

He lifts his head, his lips parted like he’s about to say something to the woman who’s currently leaning in close to his back to examine her work. And his eyes—always so alert—lock on mine.

In this light they look dark as coals. I should be embarrassed now. He caught me staring at him. But I just hold his gaze instead. As I told Colin before, exceptionally good-looking is a fact where Four is concerned, not an opinion. And I’m not going to be embarrassed by acknowledging a fact.

The woman next to him looks up, and I recognize her. Tori. She scowls at me, sets her tattoo needle down, and marches over to the curtain.

“What about a privacy curtain do you not understand?” she demands. She yanks it back to stare at me, and I can tell the moment she recognizes me. “Oh. I know you.”

“Tori,” Four says from behind her. Only it’s hard for me to think of him as “Four” when he’s this . . . exposed. His name, his real name, keeps surfacing in my mind. “She’s fine.”

Tori narrows her eyes at me but moves away. I glance back at Uriah, who makes a shooing gesture with his hands, and step past the curtain. It falls back into place behind me.