Then I dive toward the chair and pull it from under the knob so my father can enter.
When he does, he eyes the chair in my hands with suspicion.
“What was that doing over here?” he says. “Are you trying to keep me out?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s the second time you’ve lied to me today,” Marcus says. “I didn’t raise my son to be a liar.”
“I—” I can’t think of a single thing to say, so I just close my mouth and carry the chair back to my desk where it belongs, right behind the perfect stack of schoolbooks.
“What were you doing in here that you didn’t want me to see?”
I clutch the back of the chair, hard, and stare at my books.
“Nothing,” I say quietly.
“That’s three lies,” he says, and his voice is low but hard as flint. He starts toward me, and I back up instinctively. But instead of reaching for me, he bends down and pulls the trunk from beneath the bed, then tries the lid. It doesn’t budge.
Fear slides into my gut like a blade. I pinch the hem of my shirt, but I can’t feel my fingertips.
“Your mother claimed this was for blankets,” he says. “Said you got cold at night. But what I’ve always wondered is, if it still has blankets in it, why do you keep it locked?”
He holds out his hand, palm up, and raises his eyebrows at me. I know what he wants—the key. And I have to give it to him, because he can see when I’m lying; he can see everything about me. I reach into my pocket, then drop the key in his hand. Now I can’t feel my palms, and the breathing is starting, the shallow breathing that always comes when I know he’s about to explode.
I close my eyes as he opens the trunk.
“What is this?” His hand moves through the treasured objects carelessly, scattering them to the left and right. He takes them out one by one and thrusts them toward me. “What do you need with this, or this . . . !”
I flinch, over and over again, and don’t have an answer. I don’t need them. I don’t need any of them.
“This is rank with self-indulgence!” he shouts, and he shoves the trunk off the edge of the bed so its contents scatter all over the floor. “It poisons this house with selfishness!”
I can’t feel my face, either.
His hands collide with my chest. I stumble back and hit the dresser. Then he draws his hand back by his face to hit me, and I say, my throat tight with fear, “The Choosing Ceremony, Dad!”
He pauses with his hand raised, and I cower, shrinking back against the dresser, my eyes too blurry to see out of. He usually tries not to bruise my face, especially for days like tomorrow, when so many people will be staring at me, watching me choose.
He lowers his hand, and for a second I think the violence is over, the anger stalled. But then he says, “Fine. Stay here.”
I sag against the dresser. I know better than to think he’ll leave and mull things over and come back apologizing. He never does that.
He will return with a belt, and the stripes he carves into my back will be easily hidden by a shirt and an obedient Abnegation expression.
I turn around, a shudder claiming my body. I clutch the edge of the dresser and wait.
That night I sleep on my stomach, pain biting each thought, with my broken possessions on the floor around me. After he hit me until I had to stuff my fist into my mouth to muffle a scream, he stomped on each object until it was broken or dented beyond recognition, then threw the trunk into the wall so the lid broke from the hinges.
The thought surfaces: If you choose Abnegation, you will never get away from him.
I push my face into my pillow.
But I’m not strong enough to resist this Abnegation-inertia, this fear that drives me down the path my father has set for me.
The next morning I take a cold shower, not to conserve resources as the Abnegation instruct, but because it numbs my back. I dress slowly in my loose, plain Abnegation clothes, and stand in front of the hallway mirror to cut my hair.
“Let me,” my father says from the end of the hallway. “It’s your Choosing Day, after all.”
I set the clippers down on the ledge created by the sliding panel and try to straighten up. He stands behind me, and I avert my eyes as the clippers start to buzz. There’s only one guard for the blade, only one length of hair acceptable for an Abnegation male. I wince as his fingers stabilize my head, and hope he doesn’t see it, doesn’t see how even his slightest touch terrifies me.
“You know what to expect,” he says. He covers the top of my ear with one hand as he drags the clippers over the side of my head. Today he’s trying to protect my ear from getting nicked by clippers, and yesterday he took a belt to me. The thought feels like poison working through me. It’s almost funny. I almost want to laugh.
“You’ll stand in your place; when your name is called, you’ll go forward to get your knife. Then you’ll cut yourself and drop the blood into the right bowl.” Our eyes meet in the mirror, and he presses his mouth into a near-smile. He touches my shoulder, and I realize that we are about the same height now, about the same size, though I still feel so much smaller.
Then he adds gently, “The knife will only hurt for a moment. Then your choice will be made, and it will all be over.”
I wonder if he even remembers what happened yesterday, or if he’s already shoved it into a separate compartment in his mind, keeping his monster half separate from his father half. But I don’t have those compartments, and I can see all his identities layered over one another, monster and father and man and council leader and widower.
And suddenly my heart is pounding so hard, my face is so hot, I can barely stand it.
“Don’t worry about me handling the pain,” I say. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”
For a second his eyes are like daggers in the mirror, and my strong anger is gone, replaced by familiar fear. But all he does is switch off the clippers and set them on the ledge and walk down the stairs, leaving me to sweep up the trimmed hair, to brush it from my shoulders and neck, to put the clippers away in their drawer in the bathroom.
Then I go back into my room and stare at the broken objects on the floor. Carefully, I gather them into a pile and put them in the wastebasket next to my desk, piece by piece.
Wincing, I come to my feet. My legs are shaking.
In that moment, staring at the bare life I’ve made for myself here, at the destroyed remnants of what little I had, I think, I have to get out.