Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace it.

Psyche you out?" I repeat. "I'm your FRIEND. I wouldn't do that." He doesn't say anything. I can tell he doesn't believe me-not quite.

I think I speak for everyone," he says, "when I say you have earned the title of Dauntless".

We can’t survive alone, but even if we could, we wouldn't want to.

He pushes his hair, soaked from the snow, out of his eyes. "So what are we going to do, break a window? Look for a back door?" "I'm just going to walk in," I say. "I'm her son." "You also betrayed her and left the city when she forbade anyone from doing that," he says, "and she sent people after you to stop you. People with guns." "You can stay here if you want," I say. "Where the serum goes, I go," he says. "But if you get shot at, I'm going to grab it and run." "I don't expect anything more." He is a strange sort of person.

I imagine the wave of water colliding with the rock and spilling over the tile floor, collecting around my shoes. Doing a little at once can fix something, eventually, but I feel like when you believe that something is truly a problem, you throw everything you have at it, because you just can’t help yourself.

"I'll be your family now," he says.