"Have anyone to visit you?" I ask.

Nathan turns his head toward me, his cornrow filled ponytail about to whack me in the face.
"Actually, I do, he is only coming for five seconds, though."

I look at him. Really?

"I knew you wouldn't believe me," Nathan says.

"I know you're wrong," I say, with a straight face.

I see Matt and his parents. His parents hug Nathan and then he says, "Those are it!"

I look at him.

"Told you so!" He says.

I stare into his eyes, with an Avi Kaplan super frown slowly forming into my face.  Nathan starts to laugh his head off; soon after that, I have a straight face again.

"Are those your parents?" I ask calmly.

Nathan lets out a slight chuckle.

"Matt and I are not brothers!" Nathan says, laughing.

"Those are Matt's parents," I say in shock.

"Yes." Nathan says, "finally got something right, for once."

"I'm not stupid," I mutter while staring at Nathan, "Where are your parents?"

"My actual parents died a few years ago." Nathan says.

"How?" I ask.

"I never knew. My family always kept it a secret. Whenever I tried to find out, my family would always hide obstacles in the strangest places."

"But your parents died," I say with bewilderment.

"Sure," he says in a state of acquiescence, "You're right."

"But how?" I ask.

"Maybe their mysterious ghosts or something."

I shrug. Nathan is such a weirdo, it's not even funny. I feel like punching him in the face. We walk out of the visiting room silently and sluggishly walk to the train, with me pondering about Nathan's parents.

"What about your parents?" Nathan asks.

"The norm," I lie.

That's the biggest lie I've ever told, since I arrived in Dauntless. I can only remember rubber paste of the belt striking against my back, ripping my bra, and turning the world to crimson. Marcus was an idiot. The one striking the belt was he. It was he. It was he. I'm mentally and physically scarred from the abuse, and my only light was Tobias. I remember him calmly walking into my room and teaching me how to take care of my own wounds. He felt guilty as hell leaving me in Abnegation. I just forced him out of the faction. I try to forget the events, but the trivial and minutiae details never exit my head.

I stare at my wrist, looking at all the bruises and cuts from the current state of Dauntless initiation.

What if I just died?

I stare at the predominant crease in my hand, until I get bored of just listening to my own thoughts. I can see all the worn down buildings around me, with all the power cords just sticking out everywhere. Some of the wooden cell phone towers are knocked down, but nobody will tidy them. Power cords are sticking out. I see another wooden tower crash into a power cord. The sparks are flying out of the wooden tower, and soon enough it's a large, uncontrollable fire. What if someone just got electrocuted on the spot? Or course mindless Dauntless wouldn't care.

"Erudite Kat, shut up," I think to myself, but my brain doesn't cooperate with me.

The speed of which we are walking, gradually increases, thanks to Nathan's monster size feet. His dark skin is glowing in the sun, and it only makes it more attractive when it is a day he has no clothing on, like today. I look up at his long dark African hair in cornrows, placed in a ponytail.
Dauntless is an unusual faction: boys with long hair, girls with short hair, and unusually attractive hot guys. We eventually arrive at the train stop.

I try to keep my Erudite Kat to myself, but my mouth opened before I could control it. "Why did we come here?"

Nathan shrugs, then turns to look at me with his dark brown pits staring into my eyes. "To get away from the other initiates, but other than that, I have no clue. I just followed you."

"Liar." I mumble without thinking, my Candor Kat totally taking control of me.

"Not true," he replies.

"Yes,"

"No,"

"Yes,"

"It's almost as bad of a fib as me saying you are brutally honest," Nathan says.

I laugh, with a genuine laugh this time, instead of my usual fake, cheeky smile.

"It's nice to see your normal laugh this time," Nathan gently teases, but it also reminds me of how observant he is.

The train starts to race past us. Nathan and I run toward the train and I jump on first.

"Nice move, Kat," he says before jumping on the train himself.

I sit in the corner of the train car. I stare at my wrists one more time, getting a clear view of my tattoo. What if I just die?

"What's wrong?" Nathan asks.

"Nothing," I reply.

"Are you for certain?" He asks.

"Yep."

"I can tell you are showing signs of clinical depression, anorexia, bulimia, may I continue?"

"Nope. I'm for sure alright."

"Would this help?" Nathan asks, then he places his warm arm across my shoulder.

"It protects me from the harsh conditions of the city's weather right now," I say with my teeth chattering.

I seriously want to die right now, I'm not kidding.

"Kat, come on," Nathan says calmly, trying to make me open up. He squeezes my shoulder. I wince.

........

"Catherine Eaton!" I hear from downstairs.

I run downstairs. "Yes, father?"

He grabs me by my shoulders, squeezes me as tight as he possibly could, cracking a few bones in the process. Marcus takes my body and tosses it into the smallest closet to the known world. Normal people would say it's a cabinet. This all happens when Tobias is doing his homework next door. I don't ever remember telling him about it.

......

The pain is still with me today.

"Seriously, Kat, you are starting to show signs of surviving child abuse. But you're a stiff and that's not possible," Nathan says.

"I wasn't abused!" I yell, another huge lie.

The Candor Kat begs me to say yes and to tell him everything, but my Abnegation and Dauntless Kat are like suck it, Marcus.

I am strong. I am independent. I am beautiful.

No, I'm not any of those things. Just my corpulent body stands in front of me.

"Why'd you wince?" Nathan asks, "You're such a twig, but I've never seen this before."

Well, I might be thinner than I think I am, but definitely not by much.

"Just from the fights," I lie.

I lean my head on his shoulder and we stay like this for a good thirty or forty minutes. Then, we jump right back into Dauntless, together at the same time.

"Where the hell were you?" Uriah asks, getting all protective.

"Please don't tell me that man is a father," I mutter to Nathan.

"I wish," Nathan says while laughing, "he would feed them Dauntless cake instead of having mothers feed them breast milk as a baby!"

"Stop mocking me," Uriah says, "I need your help guys."

We follow Uriah in acquiescence to another room.

"My brother is missing," he mutters softly, "I need you all to look for a Nathaniel Pedrad in the system."

Nathan flinches a bit then nods, his fingers running through his cornrow-filled ponytail, his facial expression looking like he's about to whack Uriah in the face.

"In all the systems of all the factions. Apparently, I don't have access." Uriah continued.

"And we will?" Nathan asks.

"Probably." Uriah looks at me. "You could pass for Susan Black."

"Wait what?" I ask.

This is how we will spend our night. Great. Nathan and I make a b-line for the train, our long hair flying in the wind. When we slam onto the train, our hair does the same.

"Nathan, did you ever meet Nathaniel?" I ask.

"I knew him pretty well," he says.

"What was he like? How long has he been missing?"

"Calm down, Kat," Nathan says chucking, sitting in the corner of the train car, "I can't exactly describe Nathaniel I knew him so well. He's been missing in action for approximately two and a half years."

"TWO AND A HALF YEARS?!" I ask, "Oh my God Uriah must be so scared."

"Yep. And scarred by the lack of Nathaniel. He was the only mature Pedrad in that house."

We arrive at Abnegation. The computers are a bit more ancient than the ones at Erudite and Dauntless, and it's easy to hack into. So we turn the computer's power on and hack into the system. I search, "Nathaniel Pedrad," and nothing comes up.

"No dice," I mutter, wondering what Uriah will say.

Nathan says, "I'm too lazy to log onto the system of the other factions!"

I nod, halfway agreeing with him. "Tomorrow?"

"Sure," he replies, then he winks at me.

We get back onto the train and calmly ride back to Dauntless. I make B-line for the girls' dormitory and avoid anyone in my perennial line of vision. I go straight to sleep.

A/N: thanks for 1K! And the new cover! (Whoever made it) I don't know why Kat is depressed, and Nathan has cornrows! I changed it since that's how I pictured him to look like and it just turned out that way! I promise to make the next chapter a little happier!