Matched

CHAPTER 27

Warning. Warning. The light on the tracker flashes and words scroll across the screen. You have reached maximum speed earlier than recommended for this exercise session.

I punch the numbers so that I go even faster.

Warning. Warning. You have exceeded your optimal heart rate.

Usually, when I push too hard on the tracker I stop in time. I take things to the edge but I never jump. But if I go to the edge enough times, I'm going to get pushed over or fall right in.

Maybe it's time to jump. But I can't do it without dragging all the people I love with me.

Warning. Warning.

I'm going too fast. I'm too tired. I know it. But my fall still surprises me.

My foot slips and before I know it I'm down, down on the tracker with the belt still going and burning, burning, burning my skin. I lie there for a moment, in shock and on fire, and then I roll off as fast as I can. The tracker keeps going, but it will notice my absence in a moment. It will stop and then they will know I couldn't keep up. But if I get back on fast enough, no one has to know what happened. I glance at my skin, rubbed raw and red from the moving belt. Red.

I jump up. I tense my muscles and spring at just the right time and I hit the tracker running. Pound. Pound. Pound pound pound.

My knees and elbows stream blood and I have tears in my eyes, but I am still going. The plainclothes will hide my wounds tomorrow and no one will ever know that I fell. No one will ever know what happened until it is too late.

When I come back upstairs after running on the tracker, my father gestures me toward the port. "Just in time,'' he says. "There's a communication for you."

The sorting Officials wait on the screen. "Your sort looks excellent," the blond Official tells me. "Congratulations on passing the test. I'm sure you'll hear news regarding your work position soon."

I nod my head, sweat dripping off me and blood from my cuts running down my knees and my arms. She can only see the sweat, I think to myself. I tug my sleeves down a little to make sure they cover everything, so that no one will know that I am injured and bloody.

"Thank you. I look forward to it." I step back, sure that the portscreen communication is finished, but the Official has one last question for me.

"Are you sure that there aren't any changes you want to make before the sort is implemented?"

My last chance to take back what I've done. I almost say it. I have his number memorized; it would be so easy. Then I remember what she told me about life expectancy, and the words turn to rocks in my mouth and I can't speak around them.

"Cassia?"

"I'm sure."

I turn away from the port and almost run into my father. "Congratulations," he says. "Sorry. I hope you don't mind that I listened. They didn't say it was a private communication."

"It's fine," I say. Then I ask, "Did you ever wonder ..." I pause, unsure of how to phrase this. How to ask him if he ever doubted his Match with my mother. If he ever wanted someone else.

"Did I ever wonder what?" he asks me.

"Never mind," I say, because I think I already know the answer. Of course he didn't. They fell in love immediately and never looked back.

I go into my room and open my closet. Once it held the compact and the poem. Now it is empty except for clothes and shoes and the small, framed piece of my dress. I don't know where my silver box is and I panic. Did they accidentally take it when they took the artifacts? No, of course not. They know what the silver boxes are. They'd never mistake them for something from the past. The Match Banquet boxes are clearly for the future.

I'm hunting around through my meager belongings when my mother comes into the room. She returned late last night from her third trip out of Oria. "Are you looking for something?" she asks.

I straighten up. "I found it," I say, holding up the fragment of green under glass. I don't want to tell her that I can't find the Match Banquet box.

She takes the square from me and holds it up, the green fabric from the dress catching the light. "Did you know that there used to be windows with colored glass?" she asks. "People put them in places where they worshipped. Or in their own homes."

"Stained glass," I say. "Papa's told me about it." It does sound beautiful: light shining through color, windows as art or tribute.

"Of course he has," she says, laughing at herself. "I finally submitted that report today, and now I'm so tired I can't think well."

"Is everything all right?" I ask. I want to ask her what she meant about the trees that day, why she thought their loss was a warning to her, but I don't think I want to know. After the real-life sort I feel like I can't take any more pressure; I feel as though I already know too much. Besides, my mother seems happier now than she's seemed in weeks, and I don't want to change that.

"I think it will be," she says.

"Oh, good," I say. We're both silent for a moment, looking at my dress under glass.

"Are you going to have to travel again?"

"No, I don't think so," she says. "I think that's finished. I hope." She still looks exhausted, but I can see that submitting the report has lifted a burden.

I take the memento back from her, and as I do, I have an idea. "Can I see the piece of your dress?" The last time I looked at it was the night before my Match Banquet. I was a little nervous, and she brought me the dress fragment and told me again the story of their Match with its happy ending. But so much has changed since then.

"Of course," she says, and I follow her into her bedroom. The framed bit of fabric sits on a little shelf inside the closet she shares with my father, along with two silver boxes—hers and Papa's—that held their microcards and, later, the rings for their Contract. The rings are purely ceremonial, of course—they don't get to keep them—and they give the microcards back to the Officials at the Contract celebration. So my parents' silver boxes are empty.

I pick up her dress fragment and hold it up. My mother's gown was blue and thanks to preservation techniques, the satin is still bright and lovely in its frame.

I put it next to mine along the windowsill. Together, side by side, I imagine that they look a little like a stained-glass window. The light behind them brightens them, and I can almost imagine that I could look through the colors and see a world made beautiful and different.

My mother understands. "Yes," she says. "I imagine the windows looked something like that."

I want to tell her everything but I can't. Not now. I am too fragile. I am trapped in glass and I want to break out and breathe deep but I'm too afraid that it will hurt.

My mother puts her arm around me. "Can you tell me what's wrong?" she asks gently. "Is it something to do with your Match?"

I reach for my dress fragment and take it down from the window so my mother's sits up there alone. I don't trust myself to speak, so I shake my head. How can I explain to my perfectly Matched mother everything that has happened? Everything I've risked? How can I explain to her that I'd do it again? How can I tell her that I hate the system that created her life, her love, her family? That created me?

Instead, I ask, "How did you know?"

She reaches for her frame and takes it down, too. "At first, I could see that you were falling deeper and deeper in love, but I didn't worry about it because I thought your Match was perfect for you. Xander is wonderful. And you might be able to stay in Oria, nearby, since both of your families live here. As a mother, I couldn't imagine a better scenario."

She pauses, looking at me. "And then I was so busy with work. It took until today for me to realize that I was wrong. You weren't thinking of Xander."

Don't say it, I beg her with my eyes. Don't say that you know I'm in love with someone else. Please.

"Cassia," she tells me, and the love in her eyes for me is pure and true and that's what makes her next words cut deep, because I know she has my best interests at heart. "I'm married to someone wonderful. I have two beautiful children and a job I love. It's a good life." She holds out the piece of blue satin. "Do you know what would happen if I broke this glass?"

I nod. "The cloth would disintegrate. It would be ruined."

"Yes," she says, and then it's almost as if she's speaking to herself. "It would be ruined. Everything would be ruined."

Then she puts her hand on my arm. "Do you remember what I said the day they cut the trees down?"

Of course I do. "About how it was a warning for you?"

"Yes." She flushes. "That wasn't true. I was so worried that I wasn't acting rationally. Of course it wasn't a warning for me. It wasn't a warning for anyone. The trees simply needed to come down."

I hear in her voice how badly she wants to believe that what she says is true, how she almost does believe it. Wanting to hear more, but not wanting to push too hard, I ask, "What was so important about the report? What makes it different from other reports you've done?"

My mother sighs. She doesn't answer me directly; instead, she says, "I don't know how the workers at the medical center stand it when they're working on people or delivering babies. It's too hard to have other lives in your hands."

My unspoken question hovers in the air: What do you mean? She pauses. She seems to be deciding whether or not to answer me, and I hold perfectly still until she speaks again. Absentmindedly she picks up her dress fragment and begins polishing the glass.

"Someone out in Grandia, and then in another Province, reported that there were strange crops popping up. The one in Grandia was in the Arboretum, in an experimental field that had been fallow for a long time. The other field was in the Farmlands of the second Province. The Government asked me and two others to travel to the fields and submit reports about the crops. They wanted to know two things: Were the crops viable as foodstuffs? And were the growers planning a rebellion?"

I draw in my breath. It's forbidden to grow food unless the Government has specifically requested it. They control the food; they control us. Some people know how to grow food, some know how to harvest it, some know how to process it; others know how to cook it. But none of us know how to do all of it. We could never survive on our own.

"The three of us agreed that the crops were definitely usable as foodstuffs. The grower at the Arboretum had an entire field of Queen Anne's lace." My mother's face changes suddenly, lights up. "Oh, Cassia, it was so beautiful. I've only seen a sprig here and there. This was a whole field, waving in the wind."

"Wild carrot," I say, remembering.

"Wild carrot," she agrees, her voice sad. "The second grower had a crop I'd never seen before, of white flowers even more beautiful than the first. Sego lilies, they called them. One of the others with me knew what they were. You can eat the bulb. Both growers denied knowing you could use the plants for food; they both asserted that their interest was in the flower. They insisted the plants were new to them and that they cultivated them as research, for the blossoms."

Her voice, which has been soft and sad since she mentioned the field of Queen Anne's lace, grows stronger. "The three of us argued the whole way back after the second trip. One expert was convinced the growers were telling the truth. The other thought they were lying. They submitted conflicting reports. Everyone waited for mine. I asked for one last trip to be sure. After all, these growers will be Relocated or Reclassified based on our reports. Mine would tip the balance one way or the other."

She stops polishing the glass and looks down at the piece of blue cloth as though there is something written there for her to see. And I realize that for her, there is. That blue cloth represents the night she was Matched to my father. She reads her life, the life she loves, in that square of blue satin.

"I knew all along," she whispers. "I knew when I saw the fear in their eyes when we first arrived. They knew what they were doing. And something the Queen Anne's lace grower said on my second visit convinced me even more of the truth. He acted as though he'd never seen the plant outside of a portscreen before until he raised the crop, but he grew up in a town near mine, and I knew I'd seen the flower there growing wild.

"But I still hesitated. And then when I came home again and saw all of you, I realized I had to report the truth. I had to fulfill my duty to the Society and guarantee our happiness. And keep us all safe."

That last word, safe, is as soft and hushed as the swish of silk.

"I understand," I tell her, and I do. And the hold she has over me is much greater than the Officials, because I love her and admire her.

Back in my room I find the silver box where it fell inside one of my winter boots. I open it up and take out the microcard with all of Xander's information and the courtship guidelines. If there hadn't been a mistake, if I'd just seen his face and everything had been normal, none of this would have happened. I wouldn't have fallen in love with Ky and the choice wouldn't have been so hard to make in the sort. Everything would have been fine.

Everything can still be fine. If the sort is what I suspect, if Ky leaves for a better life, will I pick up the pieces of my life here? The biggest piece, my Match with Xander, would not be hard to shape a life around. I could love him. I do love him. And because I do, I have to tell him about Ky. I do not mind stealing from the Society. But I will not steal from Xander any longer. Even if it hurts, I have to tell him. Because either way, whichever life I build, has to be built on truth.

Thinking of telling Xander hurts almost as much as thinking of losing Ky. I roll over and hold the tablet container tight in my palm. Think of something else.

I remember the first time I saw Ky on top of that little hill, leaning back, sun on his face, and I realize that is when I fell in love with him. I didn't lie to him after all. I didn't see him differently because I saw his face on the portscreen the morning after my Match; I saw him differently because I saw him outside, unguarded for a moment, with eyes the color of the sky in the evening before it goes down into dark. I saw him seeing me.

Lying in bed, my body and soul bruised and tired, I realize that the Officials are right. Once you want something, everything changes. Now I want everything. More and more and more. I want to pick my work position. Marry who I choose. Eat pie for breakfast and run down a real street instead of on a tracker. Go fast when I want and slow when I want. Decide which poems I want to read and what words I want to write. There is so much that I want. I feel it so much that I am water, a river of want, pooled in the shape of a girl named Cassia.

Most of all I want Ky.

"We're running out of time," Ky says.

"I know." I've been counting the days, too. Even if Ky's new work position is still here in the City, the summer leisure activities are almost over. I won't see Ky nearly as much. I allow myself to daydream for a few seconds—what if his new position is one that allows him more time? He could come to all of the Saturday night activities. "Only a couple of weeks of hiking left."

"That's not what I mean," he says, moving closer. "Don't you feel it? Something's changing. Something's happening."

Of course I feel it. For me, everything is changing.

His eyes are wary, as though he still feels watched. "Something big, Cassia," he says, and then he whispers softly, "I think the Society is having trouble with their war on the borders."

"What makes you say that?"

"I have a feeling," he says. "From what you told me about your mother. From the shortage of Officials during free-rec hours. And there are changes coming at work. I can tell." He glances at me and I duck my head.

"Do you want to tell me why you were there?" he asks gently.

I swallow. I've been wondering when he would want to know. "It was a real-life sort. I had to sort the workers into two groups."

"I see," he says, and he waits to see if I will say more.

And I wish I could. But I can't get the words out. Instead, I say, "You haven't given me any more of the story. What happened after the Officials came to get you? When did that happen? I know it wasn't long ago, because ..." My voice trails off.

Ky ties a red cloth on the tree slowly, methodically, and then he looks up. After years of seeing only surface emotions from him, the new and deeper ones startle me sometimes. The expression on his face now is not one I have seen before.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"I'm afraid," he says simply. "Of what you're going to think."

"About what? What happened?" After everything he's been through, Ky's afraid of what I might think?

"It was in the spring. They came to talk with me at work, pulled me aside into a room there. They asked if I ever wondered what my life would be like if I weren't an Aberration." Ky's jaw tightens at this and I feel sorry for him. He glances up and sees it on my face and his jaw becomes even more set. He does not want my pity, so I turn my face away to listen.

"I said I never thought about that much. I said I didn't worry about things I couldn't change. Then they told me there had been a mistake. My data had been entered into the Matching pool."

"Your data?" I ask, surprised. But the Official told me it was a mistake on the microcard, Ky's picture where it shouldn't be. She told me that he hadn't been entered into the pool.

She lied. The error was much bigger than she said it was.

Ky keeps talking. "I'm not even a full citizen. They said the whole incident was completely irregular." He smiles, a bitter twist to his mouth that it hurts me to see. "Then they showed me a picture. The girl who would have been my Match if I weren't what I am." Ky swallows.

"Who was she?" I ask. My voice sounds harsh, grating. Don't say that it was me. Don't say that it was me, because then I will know that you saw me because they told you to look.

"You," he says.

And now I see. Ky's love for me, which I thought was pure and unblemished by any Officials or data or Matching pools, is not. They have touched even this.

I feel like something is dying, ruined beyond repair. If the Officials orchestrated our whole love affair, the one thing in my life I thought happened in spite of them—I can't finish the thought.

The forest around me blurs into green and without the red flags marking the way, I would not know my way down. As it is, I tear at them wildly, pulling them off the branches.

"Cassia," he says behind me. "Cassia. Why does it matter?"

I shake my head.

"Cassia," he calls after me. "You're keeping something from me, too."

A whistle sounds sharp and clear below us. We have come so far but never made it to the top.

"I thought you were eating lunch at the Arboretum," Xander says. The two of us sit together in the meal hall at Second School.

"I changed my mind," I tell him. "I wanted to eat here today." The nutrition personnel frowned at me when I asked for one of the extra meals they keep on hand, but after checking my data, they handed over the meal without further comment. They must have seen that I hardly ever do this. Or maybe there's some other flag on my data that I can't think about right now. Not after the revelation from Ky.

I realize how much food my container holds this time, now that it's a general portion and not labeled specifically for me. My portions have been getting smaller. What purpose does that serve? Am I too fat? I look down at my arms and legs, strong from all the hiking. I don't think so. And I realize again how distracted my parents must be; under normal circumstances, they would have noticed my smaller portions and had plenty to say to the nutrition personnel about them.

Things are wrong everywhere.

I push back my chair. "Will you come with me?"

Xander glances at his watch. "Where? Class starts soon."

"I know," I say. "We're not going far. Please."

"All right," Xander says, looking at me with a puzzled expression on his face.

I lead him down the hall to the classroom area and push open the door at the end. There, in a small area like a courtyard, is the Applicable Sciences botany pond. Xander and I are alone.

I have to tell him. This is Xander. He deserves to know about Ky, and he deserves to hear it from me. Not from an Official in a greenspace, today or some other day.

Drawing a deep breath, I look down at the pond. It isn't blue like the pool where we swim. This water is brownish-green under its silvery surface, messy with life.

"Xander," I say, my voice as quiet as if we were hidden in trees on the Hill. "I have something to tell you."

"I'm listening," he says, waiting, looking at me. Always steady. Always Xander.

It's better to say this quickly, before I find myself unable to say it at all. "I think I'm falling in love with someone else." I speak so softly, I almost can't hear my own voice. But Xander understands.

Almost before I've finished, he's shaking his head and saying, "No," putting up his hand to stop me before I say more. But it isn't either of those gestures or that word that makes me fall silent. It's the hurt in his eyes. And what they are saying isn't No. It's: Why?

"No," Xander says again, turning away from me.

I can't bear that, so I move in front of him, try to see him, too. He won't look at me for a long moment. I don't know what to say. I don't dare to touch him. All I can do is stand there, hoping he will look back.

When he does, the pain is still there.

And something else too. Something that doesn't look like surprise. It looks like recognition. Did some part of him know this was happening? Is that why he challenged Ky to the games?

"I'm sorry," I say, rushing. "You're my friend. I love you too." It is the first time I've said those words to him, and it comes out all wrong. The sound of it, hurried and strained, makes the words seem like less than they are.

"You love me too?" Xander says, his voice cold. "What game are you playing?"

"I'm not playing a game," I whisper. "I do love you. But it's different."

Xander says nothing. An hysterical giggle rises up in me; it's exactly like the last time we had an argument and he refused to speak to me. Years ago, when I decided that I didn't like playing the games as much as I once had. Xander was mad. "But no one else plays like you," he said. And then, when I wouldn't give in, he wouldn't talk to me. I still wouldn't play.

It took two weeks before our peace was brokered, that day he saw me jump into the pool from the diving board after Grandfather jumped first. I surfaced, frightened and exhilarated, and Xander swam over to congratulate me. In the rush of the moment all was forgotten.

What would Grandfather think of this jump I'm taking? Would this be one time he would tell me to hang on to the edge with all my might? Would he say to cling to the side of the board until my fingers became bloody and scraped? Or would he say that it was all right to let go?

"Xander. The Officials played a game with me. The morning after the Match Banquet, I put the microcard in the port. Your face came up on the screen and it disappeared." I swallow. "And then someone else's face appeared instead. It was Ky's."

"Ky Markham?" Xander asks, disbelieving.

"Yes."

"But Ky's not your Match," Xander says. "He can't be, because—"

"Because why?" I ask. Does Xander know about Ky's status after all? How?

"Because I am," Xander says.

For a long moment, neither of us speak. Xander doesn't look away and I don't think that I can stand this. If I had a green tablet in my mouth now, I'd bite, taste the bitterness before the calm. I think back to that day in the meal hall when he told me Ky could be trusted. Xander believed that. And he believed he could trust me.

What does he think of us both now?

Xander leans closer. Blue eyes holding mine, hand hovering next to mine. I close my eyes, both to shut out the pain in his gaze and to stop myself from turning my hand up, weaving my fingers through his, leaning forward, meeting his lips. I open my eyes and look at Xander again.

"I came up on the screen, too, Cassia," he says quietly. "But he was the one you chose to see." And then, quick as a player making his last move, he turns away and pushes through the doors. He leaves me behind.

Not at first! I want to tell him. And I still see you!

One by one, the people I can talk to have gone. Grandfather. My mother. And now, Xander.

You are strong enough to go without it, Grandfather told me about the green tablet.

But, Grandfather. Am I strong enough to go without you? Without Xander?

The sun shines down on me where I have chosen to stand. No trees, no shade, no height from which I can look down on what I've done. And even if there were, I cannot see for the tears.