Matched (21 page)

Like everyone else, Ky stares out the window as we glide toward the Arboretum. Did he see Xander’s kiss? Did he care? He does not meet my eyes.

 

“We’re pairing off for this next round of hiking,” the Officer says once we reach the bottom of the Hill. “You are each partnered with another hiker according to ability assessed by analyzing the data I collected from your earlier hikes. That means Ky is paired with Cassia; Livy is paired with Tay ...”

Livy’s face falls and I try to keep mine expressionless.

The Officer finishes reading his list. “You have a different goal on the Hill,” he says. “You won’t ever see the top here. The Society has asked us to use our hiking time to mark obstacles on the Hill.” He gestures to the bags piled next to him. They hold strips of red cloth. “Every pair takes a bag. Tie the markers on branches near fallen trees, in front of particularly bad thickets, etc. Later, a survey crew will come through. They’re going to clear and pave a path on the Hill.”

They’re going to pave the Hill. At least Grandfather doesn’t have to see it.

“What if we run out of cloths?” Lon whines. “They haven’t cleared the Hill in years. There’ll be obstacles everywhere! We might as well mark every tree we see.”

“If you run out of cloths, use rocks to make cairns,” the Officer says. He turns to Ky. “Do you know how to make a cairn?”

There’s the briefest of hesitations before Ky answers. “Yes.”

“Show them.”

Ky gathers a few rocks from the ground around us and stacks them, largest first, in a small pile. His hands are quick and sure, the way they are when he’s teaching me to write. The tower looks precarious but does not fall.

“See? It’s simple,” the Officer says. “I’ll blow my whistle later and that means you need to start making your way back. You blow your whistles if you get lost.” He gives us each a standard-issue metal whistle. “It shouldn’t be hard. Just head back down the mountain the way you came.”

The Officer’s thinly veiled disgust for us used to amuse me. Today, I understand it. I feel disgust when I think of how we climb our little hills when the Officials say the word. How we hand over our most precious items at their bidding. How we never, ever fight.

 

We are barely out of view of the others when Ky turns to me and I turn to him and for a moment I think he is going to touch me. I sense, more than see, his hand move slightly and then drop back down. I feel a disappointment deeper than the disappointment I felt this morning when I opened my closet and did not see the compact resting there.

“Are you all right?” he asks. “Last night, when they searched the houses—I didn’t know until after I came home.”

“I’m fine.”

“My artifact ...”

Is that all he cares about? I whisper fiercely,
“It’s in your flower bed. Buried under the newroses. Dig it up and then you’ll have it back.”

“I don’t care about the artifact,” he says, and although he still does not touch me, I am warmed at the fire in his eyes. “I couldn’t sleep all night, worrying that I’d gotten you in trouble. I care about
you.
”

Those words are quiet here under the trees but they sing loudly in my heart, louder than all the Hundred Songs caroled all at once. And his eyes are shadowed underneath, from thinking about me. I want to reach up and touch that skin under his eyes, the one place I’ve seen any vulnerability in him, make him feel better. And then I could run my fingers there, across his cheekbones, down to his lips, to the place where his jaw meets his neck, where his neck meets his shoulder line.
I like the places where one part meets another
, I think,
eyes to cheek, wrist to hands.
Somewhat shocked at my own thoughts, I take a step back.

“How did you—”

“Someone helped me.”

“Xander,” he says.

How does he know? “Xander,” I agree.

Neither of us speaks for a moment; I stand back, seeing him whole. Then he turns and begins to walk through the trees again. It is slow going; the underbrush grows so tangled here that it’s more of a climb than a hike. Trees that fell have not been cleared away and lie like giant bones across the forest floor.

“Yesterday ...” I begin. I have to ask, as inconsequential as the question now seems. “Were you teaching Livy how to write?”

Ky stops again and looks at me. His eyes seem almost green under the canopy of the trees. “Of course not,” he says. “She wanted to know what we were doing. She saw us writing. We weren’t careful enough.”

I feel stupid and relieved. “Oh.”

“I told her I’d been showing you how to draw the trees.” He picks up a stick next to me and starts moving it around to make a pattern that does look remarkably like leaves. Then he places the stick down as the trunk of the tree. I keep looking at his hands after he has finished, not sure what else to do.

“No one draws once they’re out of First School.”

“I know,” he says. “But at least it’s not expressly forbidden.”

I reach into the bag I carry for a piece of red cloth and tie it on a fallen tree near Ky. I keep my eyes down, looking now at my fingers as they twist the fabric into a knot. “I’m sorry. About the way I acted yesterday.” When I straighten up, Ky has already moved on.

“Don’t be,” Ky says, pulling a tangle of climbing green vines away from a shrub so that we can pass through. He throws the vines at me and I catch them in surprise. “It’s good to see you jealous once in a while.” He smiles, sun in the woods.

I try not to smile in return. “Who said I was jealous?”

“No one,” he says. “I could tell. I’ve been watching people for a long time.”

“Why did you let me hold onto it, anyway?” I ask him. “The case with the arrow. It’s beautiful. But I wasn’t sure—”

“No one but my parents know that I have it,” he says. “When Em gave me the compact to give back to you, I noticed how much alike they were. I wanted you to see it.”

His voice sounds lonely all of a sudden, and I can almost hear another sentence, the one that instinct still keeps him from saying:
I wanted you to see me.
Because isn’t this what it’s all about, the golden case with the arrow, the bits of story offered here and there? Ky wants someone to see him.

He wants
me
to see him.

My hands ache to reach for him. But I can’t bring myself to betray Xander in that way after everything he has done. After he saved us both—Ky and me—just last night.

But there is something I can continue to give Ky that is purely mine, that doesn’t belong to Xander. The poem.

I only mean to tell him a few more lines, but once I start telling him it’s hard to hold back, and I say the whole thing. The words go together. Some things are created to be together.

“The words aren’t peaceful,” Ky says.

“I know.”

“Then why do they make me feel calm?” Ky asks in wonder. “I don’t understand.”

In silence, we push our way through more undergrowth, the poem heavy in our minds.

Finally, I know what it is I want to say. “I think it’s because when we hear it we know we’re not the only ones who ever felt this way.”

“Tell it to me again,” Ky asks softly. His breath catches; his voice is husky.

All the rest of the time, until we hear the Officer’s whistle, we move up the Hill repeating the poem back to each other like a song. A song that just the two of us know.

 

Before we leave the forest, Ky finishes teaching me to write my name in the soft dirt underneath one of the fallen trees. We crouch down, red cloths in hand, acting as though we are tying them on in case anyone comes by and sees us. It takes me a little while to learn
s
but I like the way it looks—like something leaning into the wind. The clean line and dot of
i
is easy to master, and I already know how to write
a.

I write each letter in my name and connect them together, Ky’s hand near mine to guide me. We don’t quite touch, but I feel the warmth of his hand, the length of his body crouched behind me as I write.
Cassia
.

“My name,” I say, leaning back and looking at the letters. They are wavery, less sure than the letters Ky writes. Someone passing by might not even recognize mine as letters at all. Still,
I
can tell what they say. “What next?”

“Now,” Ky says, “we go back to the beginning. You know
a
. Tomorrow we’ll do
b.
Once you know them all, you can write your own poems.”

“But who would read them?” I ask, laughing.

“I would,” he says. He gives me another folded napkin. There, between greasy thumbprints and traces of food, is more of Ky for me to see.

I put the napkin in my pocket and I think of Ky writing out his story with his red hands, seared from the heat of the job he does. I think of him risking everything each time he slips one napkin into his pocket. All these years he’s been so careful, but now he’s willing to take a chance. Because he’s found someone who wants to know. Someone he wants to tell.

“Thank you,” I say. “For teaching me how to write.”

“Thank
you
,” he answers. There is a light in his eyes and I am the one who put it there. “For saving my artifact and for the poem.”

There’s more to say, but we’re learning how to speak. Together we step out of the trees. Not touching. Not yet.

I
walk home from the air-train stop with Em after school and sorting. Once the others who came with us have gone ahead or fallen behind, Em puts her hand on my arm. “I’m so sorry,” she says quietly.

“Em, don’t worry about it anymore. I’m not angry.” I look her in the eye so that she knows I mean it but her eyes are still sad. So many times in my life I’ve felt as though looking at Em is like seeing another variation of myself, but I don’t feel that way now. Too much has changed recently. Still, Em is my best girlfriend. Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that. “You don’t have to keep apologizing,” I tell her. “I’m happy I lent it to you. At least we both got to enjoy it before they took it away.”

“I still don’t understand,” Em says softly. “They have plenty of displays in the Museum. It doesn’t make any sense.”

I’ve never heard anything so close to insubordination come out of Em’s mouth before, and I grin at her. Maybe we aren’t becoming so different after all.

“What are we doing tonight?” I ask, changing the subject.

Em seems relieved about the shift in topic. “I talked to Xander today and he wants to go to the game center tonight. What do you think?”

What I really think is that I’d like to go back to the top of the first little hill. The thought of being in that center with its stuffiness and crowds when we could be sitting and talking under a clean night sky seems like more than I can take. But I can do it. I can do whatever I need to in order to keep things normal. I have Ky’s words to read. And perhaps, if I’m lucky, I’ll see Ky himself later. I hope he comes with us.

Em interrupts my thoughts by saying, “Look. Your mother’s waiting for you.”

Em’s right. My mother sits on the steps of the house with her face turned in our direction. When she sees me looking at her, she stands up, waves, and starts walking toward us. I wave back and Em and I pick up the pace a little.

“She’s back,” I say out loud, and it isn’t until I hear the surprise in my voice that I recognize that part of me worried that she would stay away forever.

“Was she gone?” Em asks, and I realize that my mother’s absence is likely one of those things that we aren’t supposed to mention outside of our family. Not that the Officials said that explicitly; it’s simply the kind of thing we’ve learned to keep to ourselves.

“Back early from work,” I clarify. It’s not even a lie.

Em says good-bye and goes into her house. Her maple tree isn’t going to make it, I think, noticing that even in the middle of summer the tree only has about ten green, tired leaves. Then I look toward my house, where the tree grows full and the flowers are beautiful and my mother comes to meet me.

This reminds me of times when I was very small in First School and my mother’s work hours ended before I got home. She and Bram sometimes walked up the street to meet my train. They never made it far because Bram stopped to look at everything along the way. “That kind of attention to detail might be a sign that he’s meant to be a sorter,” my father used to say, until Bram got older and it became apparent that he lost his ability to pay attention to detail along with his baby teeth.

When I reach my mother she hugs me right there on the sidewalk. “Oh, Cassia,” she says. Her face looks pale and tired. “I’m so sorry. I missed your first official outing with Xander.”

“You missed something else last night, too,” I say, my face against her shoulder. She is taller than I am and I don’t think I will ever catch up. I’m slight and short, like my father’s family. Like Grandfather. I smell my mother’s familiar smell of flowers and clean fabric, and I breathe in deeply. I’m so glad she’s back.

“I know.” My mother never speaks against the government. The most defiant she’s ever been was when the Officials searched my father. I don’t expect her to rant and rave about the unfairness of the Officials taking the artifacts, and she doesn’t. It occurs to me that if she did, she’d be ranting and raving against her own husband. He is, after all, an Official, too.

Though he isn’t the one who held out his hand and asked us to drop our prized possessions into it, he did that to other people.

When my father came home last night, he gave Bram and me each a long hug and then went straight to his room without saying anything. Maybe because he couldn’t stand to see the pain in our faces and remember that he had caused that same pain in others.

“I’m sorry, Cassia,” my mother says now as we walk home. “I know how much that compact meant to you.”