Matched, Page 7

  His fingers tremble; whether it is from the end of his life drawing close or because of what he holds in his hand, I do not know. I want to help him, but I can tell that this is something he must do himself.

  It doesn’t take long for him to read the paper, and when he’s finished, he closes his eyes. An emotion crosses his face that I cannot read. Something deep.

  Then he opens his bright, beautiful eyes and looks straight at me while he folds the paper back up. “Cassia. This is for you. It’s even more precious than the compact.”

  “But it’s so—” I stop before I can say the word dangerous.

  There is no time. I hear my father and mother and brother speaking in the hall.

  Grandfather looks at me with love in his eyes, and holds the paper out to me. A challenge, an offering, a gift. After a moment, I reach for it. My fingers close around the paper and he lets go.

  He gives me back the compact, too; the paper fits neatly inside. As I snap the artifact shut, Grandfather leans toward me.

  “Cassia,” he whispers. “I am giving you something you won’t understand, yet. But I think you will someday. You, more than the rest. And, remember. It’s all right to wonder.”

  He holds on for a long time. It is an hour before midnight in a deep blue night when Grandfather looks at us and says the best words of all with which to end a life. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

  We all say it back to him. Each of us means it and he smiles. He leans back on his pillows and closes his eyes.

  Everything inside him has worked perfectly. He has lived a good life. It ends as it is supposed to end, at exactly the right time. I am holding his hand when he dies.

  CHAPTER 8

  None of the showings are new,” our friend Sera complains. “They’ve been the same for the past two months.” Saturday night again; the same conversation as the week before.

  “It’s better than the other two choices,” Em says. “Isn’t it?” She glances over at me, waiting for my opinion. I nod. The choices are the same as usual: game center, showing, music. It’s been less than a week since Grandfather’s death, and I feel strange. He is gone, and now I know that there are stolen words inside my compact. It feels strange to know something others don’t and to have something I shouldn’t.

  “So another vote from Cassia for the showing,” Em says, keeping track. She winds a strand of black hair around her finger, looks at Xander. “What about you?”

  I’m sure Xander wants to go back to the game center, but I don’t. Our last excursion there didn’t end so well, what with my stepping on the tablets and having to meet with an Official.

  Xander knows what I’m thinking. “It wasn’t your fault,” he says. “You weren’t the one who dropped them. It’s not as though they cited you or anything.”

  “I know. But still.”

  We don’t really discuss the music. Most youth aren’t crazy about sitting with a few other people in the hall and listening to the Hundred Songs piped in from some other place—or maybe even some other time. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of any work positions related to music. Maybe that makes sense. Maybe songs only need to be sung once, recorded, and passed along.

  “No, let’s do the showing,” Xander says. “You know, that one about the Society? With all the aerial views?”

  “I haven’t seen that one yet,” Ky Markham says behind me.

  Ky. I turn to look at him, our eyes meeting for the first time since the night I stepped on the tablets. I haven’t seen him since then. I should say I haven’t seen him in person; all week long, his face has appeared in my mind the way it appeared on the screen, surprising me with its clarity and then disappearing suddenly. Leaving me wondering what it means. Why I keep thinking of him instead of moving on.

  Perhaps it’s because of what Grandfather said, at the end. By telling me it was all right to wonder. Somehow, though, I don’t think he meant Ky. I think it might be something bigger. Something to do with the poetry.

  “That settles it, then. We’ll watch that one,” Sera says.

  “How could you miss an entire showing?” Piper’s question is a good one. We never miss showings when they’re new. This one has been around for several months, which means there should have been plenty of opportunities for Ky to see it. “Didn’t you go with us when we went?”

  “No,” Ky says. “I worked late that night, I think.” His tone is mild, but there is, and always has been, something a little deeper and more resonant about his voice. It has a slightly different timbre than most voices. It’s the kind of thing you forget until you hear it again and remember Oh yes. His voice has music.

  We all fall silent, as we always do when Ky talks about his work. We don’t know what to say to him when he mentions it. I know now that he probably wasn’t surprised with his assignment at the nutrition disposal center. He’s always known he was an Aberration. He’s been walking around with secrets for much longer than I have.

  But the Society wants him to keep his secrets. I don’t know what they would do if they found out about mine.

  Ky looks away from Piper and back to me, and it occurs to me that I’ve been wrong about his eyes. I thought they were brown but I see now that they are dark blue, brought out by the color of his plainclothes. Blue is the most common eye color in Oria Province, but there is something different about his eyes and I’m not sure what it is. More depth? I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. If he seems to have depth to me, do I seem shallow and transparent to him?

  I wish I had a microcard about Ky, I think. Maybe, since I didn’t really need one for Xander, I could ask for another one instead. The thought makes me smile.

  Ky still looks at me and I wonder for a moment if he is going to ask me what I am thinking about. But, of course, he doesn’t. He doesn’t learn by asking questions. He is an Aberration from the Outer Provinces and yet he has managed to blend in here. He learns by watching.

  So I take my cue from him. I ask no questions and I keep my secrets.

  When we sit down in the theater, Piper goes in first. Then Sera, Em, Xander, me, and last of all, Ky. The bigscreen hasn’t rolled down and the lights aren’t dimmed yet, so we have a few minutes to talk. “Are you all right?” Xander asks me quietly, his words a whisper near my ear. “It’s not the tablets, is it? Is it your Grandfather?”

  He knows me so well. “Yes,” I say, and he reaches for my hand, gives it a squeeze. It’s strange to me how our old childhood gestures come back, ones that dropped away as we stayed friends but grew older. Holding his hand still feels like friendship, like something I’ve known for years—but also different, now that it means more. Now that it means a Match.

  Xander waits, to see if I have more to say, but I don’t. I can’t tell Xander about Ky because Ky’s sitting right here next to me, I think, and I can’t tell Xander about the paper because this place is too crowded. These are the reasons I give myself for not confiding in Xander as I usually do.

  They do not feel as true as they should.

  Em says something to Xander and he turns to answer. I stare straight ahead for a moment, thinking about how strange it is that I have started keeping secrets from Xander just as we have been Matched.

  “It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been able to spend Saturday night with all of you,” Ky says. I glance over at him as the lights begin to dim, softening his face and, somehow, lessening the space between us. His next words hold a trace of bitterness—only a trace, but more than I’ve ever heard from him. “Having my vocation keeps me busy. I’m glad you all don’t seem to mind.”

  “It’s no trouble,” I say. “We’re your friends.” But even as I say it, I wonder if we are. I don’t know him the way I know the others.

  “Friends.” Ky says the word softly, and I wonder if he is thinking of the friends he must have had in the Outer Provinces.

  The theater goes dark. I know without looking that Ky isn’t turned toward me anymore and that Xander is. I look forward, st
raight into the black.

  I always enjoy these few seconds in the theater before a showing, when all is dark and I am waiting. I always feel a drop in my stomach—wondering if, when the lights of the showing come on, I might find myself completely alone. Or wondering if the lights won’t come up at all. I feel like I can’t be sure; not in that first moment. I don’t know why I like it.

  But of course the lights come on the screen and the showing begins and I am not alone. Xander sits on one side of me, Ky on the other, and in front of me the screen shows the beginnings of the Society.

  The cinematography is excellent; swooping low across the blue ocean, the green of the coast, over snow-crowned mountains, and on into the golden fields of the Farmlands, over the white dome of our very own City Hall (the audience cheers when it comes into view). Across more rolling green and gold toward another City, and another, and another. In each Province of the Society, people are likely cheering as they see their City—even if they have seen this showing before. When you see our Society like this, it’s hard not to feel proud. Which, of course, is the point.

  Ky takes a deep breath and I glance over at him. What I see surprises me. His eyes are wide and he has forgotten to keep his face still and calm. Instead, it is alight with wonder. He seems to think that he is really flying. He doesn’t even notice me watching.

  After that soaring beginning, however, the showing is basic. We go through how things used to be before the Society came into being and before everything worked according to statistics and predictions. Ky’s face settles back into its usual smooth expression; I keep sneaking glances over during different parts of the showing to see if he is reacting again. But he’s not.

  When they get to the part about the implementation of Matching, Xander turns to look at me. In the pale light from the screen, I see his smile and I smile back. Xander’s hand tightens on mine and I forget about Ky.

  Until the end.

  At the end, the showing takes us back to how things were before the Society. How things would be again if the Society fell. I don’t know what set they used for this, but it is almost laughable. They have gone over the top with the dramatic, barren redlands; the shabby little houses; the few sullen, hard, sad-looking actors walking around the dangerous, almost-empty streets. Then, as if out of nowhere, sinister black aircraft appear in the sky and the people run screaming away. The Anthem of the Society plays in the background, ornate higher notes crying across a strong bass line that pounds the feelings home.

  The scene is overdone. It’s ludicrous, especially after the quiet scene at Grandfather’s that I witnessed on Sunday. This isn’t what death looks like. One of the actors falls to the ground dramatically. Garish red bloodstains cover his clothing. I hear Xander give a little snort of laughter next to me, and I know that he feels the same way I do. Feeling bad that I’ve ignored Ky for so long, I turn to him to share the joke.

  He is crying. Without a sound.

  A tear slips down his cheek and he brushes it away so quickly I almost don’t know if it was there, but it was. It was. And now another tear, gone as quickly as the first. His eyes are so full that I wonder how he can see. But he does not look away from the screen.

  I am not used to seeing someone suffer. I turn away.

  When the movie ends, reprising the sweeping travelogue from the beginning, Ky takes a deep breath. I can tell that it aches. I don’t glance over at him again until the lights go back up in the theater. When they do, he is calm and composed and back to the Ky I know. Or the one I thought I knew.

  No one else has noticed. Ky does not know that I have seen him.

  I say nothing. I ask no questions. I turn away. This is who I am. But not who Grandfather thought you could be. The thought comes into my mind like a sideways glance, like a flash of blue next to me. Ky. Is he watching me? Waiting for me to meet his gaze?

  I wait one moment too long before I turn back. When I do, Ky is not looking at me anymore. If he ever was.

  CHAPTER 9

  Two days later, I stand with a group of other students in front of the main building of the Arboretum. An early morning mist lifts around us, shapes of people and trees appearing, it seems, out of nowhere.

  “Have you ever done this before?” the girl next to me asks. I don’t know her at all, so she must be from another Borough, a different Second School.

  “Not really,” I say, distracted by the fact that one of the figures appearing out of the mist has the shape of Ky Markham. He moves quiet and strong. Careful. When he sees me, he lifts his hand to wave. Apparently he has signed up for hiking as his summer leisure activity, too. After a second’s pause, during which I smile and wave back at Ky, I add, “No. I’ve been walking. Never hiking.”

  “No one has done this before,” says Lon, an annoying boy that I know from Second School. “It hasn’t been offered in years.”

  “My grandfather knew how,” I say.

  Lon won’t shut up. “Knew? As in past tense? Is he dead?”

  Before I can answer, an Officer in Army green clears his throat as he comes to stand in front of us. He’s older with crisp-short white hair and olive skin. His coloring and bearing remind me of Grandfather.

  “Welcome,” the Officer says in a voice as clipped and sharp as his hair. He does not sound welcoming, and I realize that the similarities to Grandfather do not go far. I have to stop looking for Grandfather. He won’t materialize from the trees, no matter how much I wish it could happen. “I’m your instructor. You will address me as Sir.”

  Lon can’t stop himself. “Do we get to go on the Hill?”

  The Officer fixes him with a gaze and Lon wilts.

  “No one,” the Officer says, “speaks without my permission. Is that understood?”

  We all nod.

  “We’re not going to waste any time. Let’s get started.”

  He points behind him to one of the thickly forested Arboretum hills. Not the Hill, not the big one, but one of the smaller foothills that are usually off-limits unless you’re an Arboretum employee. These small hills are not that high, but my mother tells me that they are still a good climb through underbrush and growth.

  “Get to the top of it,” he says, turning on his heel. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Is he serious? No tips? No training before we start?

  The Officer disappears into the undergrowth.

  Apparently he is serious. I feel a small smile lifting the corners of my mouth, and I shake my head to get rid of it. I am the first to follow the Officer into the trees. They are thick summer green and when I push my way through them, they smell like Grandfather. Perhaps he is in the trees after all. And I think, If I ever dared to open that paper, this would be the place.

  I hear other people moving through the trees around me and behind me. The forest, even this type of semicultivated forest, is a noisy place, especially with all of us tromping through it. Bushes smack, sticks crunch, and someone swears nearby. Probably Lon. I move faster. I have to fight against some of the bushes, but I make good progress.

  My sorting mind wishes I could identify the birdcalls around me and name the plants and flowers I see. My mother likely knows most of them, but I won’t ever have that kind of specialized knowledge unless working in the Arboretum becomes my vocation.

  The climb gets harder and steeper but not impossible. The little hill is still part of the Arboretum proper, so it isn’t truly wild. My shoes become dirty, the soles covered in pine needles and leaves. I stop for a moment and look for a place to scrape off some of the mud so I can move faster. But, here in the Arboretum, the fallen trees and branches are all removed immediately after they fall. I have to settle for scraping my feet, one at a time, along the bark-bumped side of a tree.

  My feet feel lighter when I start walking again and I pick up speed. I see a smooth, round rock that looks like a polished egg, like the gift Bram gave to Grandfather. I leave it there, small and brown in the grass, and I move even faster, pushing the branches out of my way and i
gnoring the scratches on my hands. Even when a pine branch snaps back and I feel the sharp slap of needles and sinewy branch on my face, I don’t stop.

  I’m going to be the first one to the top of this hill and I’m glad. There is a lightness to the trees ahead of me, and I know it is because there is sky and sun behind them instead of more forest. I’m almost there. Look at me, Grandfather, I think to myself, but of course he can’t hear me.

  Look at me.

  I veer suddenly and duck into the bushes. I fight my way through until I crouch alone in the middle of a thick patch of tangled leaves where I hope I will be well concealed. Dark brown plainclothes make good camouflage.

  My hands shake as I pull out the paper. Was this what I planned all along when I tucked the compact inside the pocket of my plainclothes this morning? Did I know somehow that I’d find the right moment here in the woods?

  I don’t know where else to read it. If I read it at home someone might find me. The same is true of the air train and school and work. It’s not quiet in this forest, crowded with vegetation and thick, muggy morning air wet against my skin. Bugs hum and birds sing. My arm brushes against a leaf and a drop of dew falls onto the paper with a sound like ripe fruit dropping to the ground.

  What did Grandfather give me?

  I hold the weight of this secret in my palm and then I open it.

  I was right; the words are old. But even though I don’t recognize the type, I recognize the format.

  Grandfather gave me poetry.

  Of course. My great-grandmother. The Hundred Poems. I know without having to check on the school ports that this poem is not one of them. She took a great risk hiding this paper, and my grandfather and grandmother took a great risk keeping it. What poems could be worth losing everything for?

  The very first line stops me in my tracks and brings tears to my eyes and I don’t know why except that this one line speaks to me as nothing else ever has.

  Do not go gentle into that good night.