Matched (34 page)

“So what
is
the final predicted outcome?” I ask.

“Does it matter?” she smiles. “It’s what will happen. It’s what you’ll do. But I’ll tell you if you’d like.”

I realize that I don’t need to hear it; I don’t need to hear anything she has to say or any predictions she thinks she can make. They do not know that Xander hid the artifact, that Ky can write, that Grandfather gave me poetry.

What else doesn’t she know?

“You say you planned this all along,” I say suddenly, on instinct, acting as though I want to be certain. “You’re telling me you put Ky into the Matching pool
yourselves
.”

“Yes,” she answers. “We did.”

This time, I look right at her when she speaks and that’s when I see it. The faintest twitch of muscle in her jaw, a slight shift of her eyes, the smallest ring of performance in the tone of her voice. She doesn’t often have to lie; she’s never been an Aberration, so this doesn’t come easily to her, she hasn’t had as much practice. She can’t keep her face perfectly still the way Ky does when he’s playing a game and he knows what he has to do, whether it’s better to win or lose.

And although she’s been told how to play, she doesn’t know exactly which cards she’s holding.

I look at her again. She doesn’t know, and she isn’t listening to her own words. If the almost-impossible happened before—my being Matched to two boys I already knew—then it can happen again.

I can find him.

I stand up to leave. I think I smell rain in the air, even though there isn’t a cloud in the sky, and I remember. I still have a piece of Ky’s story left.

X
ander sits on the steps of my house.

It’s a familiar place for him to be in the summer, and his position looks familiar, too. Legs outstretched, elbows resting on the step behind him. The shadow he casts in the summer sun is smaller than he is, a darker, compacted version of Xander next to the real one.

He watches me as I walk up the path, and when I get close, I see the pain still there in his eyes, a shadow behind the blue.

I almost wish the red tablet had wiped away more than the past twelve hours for Xander. That he didn’t remember what I told him, how much it ached. Almost. But not quite. Even though telling the truth has caused us both hurt, I don’t see how I could have given Xander anything different. It was all I had to give and he deserved to have it.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Xander says. “I heard about your family.”

“I was in the City,” I tell him.

“Come sit by me,” Xander says. I hesitate—does he mean this? Does he want me to sit by him, or is he helping me put on a show for whoever might be watching? Xander keeps looking up at me, waiting. “Please.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says, and then I know that he is. He’s in pain. I am, too. It strikes me that perhaps this is part of what we are fighting to choose. Which pain we feel.

Not much time has passed since the Match Banquet, but we are different now, stripped of our fancy clothes, our artifacts, our belief in the Match System. I stand there, thinking about this. How much has changed. How little we knew.

“You always have to make me speak first, don’t you?” Xander asks, a hint of a smile on his face. “You always win our arguments in the end.”

“Xander,” I say, and I sit down and slide right next to him. His arm goes around me, and I put my head on his shoulder and he bends his head to rest on mine. I sigh, so deep it is almost a shudder, at the relief I feel. At how good this is, to be held like this. None of it is for the Society, watching, always. It is all real, for me. I will miss him so much.

Neither of us says anything for a moment, as we look out at our street together one last time. I might come back, but I won’t live here again. Once you’ve been Relocated, you don’t return except to visit. Clean breaks are best. And I will make the cleanest break of all, when I go to find Ky. That is the kind of Infraction that no one can overlook.

“I heard you leave tomorrow,” Xander says, and I nod, my head moving against his cheek. “I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?” I ask. I look ahead, feeling his shoulder move under the shirt of his plainclothes as he shifts position slightly, but I don’t move away. What will he tell me? That he can’t believe I betrayed him? That he wishes he’d been Matched with anyone but me? Those are the things I deserve to hear, but I don’t think he will say them. Not Xander.

“I remember what happened this morning,” Xander whispers to me. “I know what really happened to Ky.”

“How?” I sit upright, look at him.

“The red tablets don’t work on me,” he whispers, soft into my ear, so no one else can hear. He looks down the street, back toward the Markhams’ house. “They didn’t work on Ky, either.”

“
What
?” How is it that these two boys who are so different are connected in such unexpected, deep ways? Maybe we all are, I think, and we don’t know how to see it anymore. “Tell me.”

Xander still gazes at the little house with the yellow shutters where Ky lived hours ago. Where Ky watched and learned how to survive. Xander taught him some of that, without knowing it. And perhaps Xander has been learning from Ky, too.

“I dared him to take it once, a long time ago,” Xander says quietly. “It was when he first got here. I acted friendly to him, but inside I was jealous. I saw how you looked at him.”

“Really?” I don’t remember this at all, but suddenly I hope Xander’s right. I hope part of me fell in love with Ky before anyone else told me to.

“It’s not a memory I’m proud of,” Xander tells me. “I asked him to come swimming with me one day and then on the way I told him I knew about his artifact. I knew about it because once, one Borough over, I was coming back from taking something to a friend and I caught Ky using it, trying to find his way home. He was so careful. I think it was the one time he got it out, ever, but he had bad timing. I saw him.”

This image almost breaks my heart; it’s another side of Ky I haven’t seen before—lost. Taking risks. As well as I know him, as much as I love him, there are still parts of him I don’t know. It’s that way with everyone, even Xander, who I never could have pictured being so cruel.

“I dared him to find and steal two red tablets. I thought it would be impossible. I said that if he didn’t bring them to swimming the next day to prove he could, I’d tell everyone about the compass—the artifact—and get Patrick in trouble.”

“What did he do?”

“You know Ky. He wouldn’t risk his uncle.” Then Xander starts to laugh. Shocked, I ball my fists up in anger. Does he think this is
funny
? What, in this story, could there possibly be to laugh at?

“So Ky got the tablets. And guess who he stole them from?” Xander says, still laughing. “Just guess.”

“I don’t know. Tell me.”

“My parents.” Xander stops laughing. “Of course, it wasn’t funny at the time. That night my parents were upset because their red tablets were missing. I knew right away what had happened, but of course I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell them about the dare.” Xander looks down and I notice that he has a large brown paper envelope in his hand. It makes me think of Ky’s story. I’m hearing another part of it now. “It was a big mess. Officials came and everything. I don’t know if you remember that.”

I shake my head. I don’t.

“They checked to make sure we hadn’t taken the tablets, and they could tell somehow that we hadn’t, and my parents were pretty convincing, saying they didn’t know what happened. They were completely panicked. Finally, the Officials decided that my parents must have lost the tablets when
they
were swimming earlier in the week and that they’d been negligent not to notice it sooner. They’d never caused any trouble before, so they got off without an Infraction. Just a citation.”

“Ky did
that
? Took the tablets from your
parents
?”

“He did.” Xander takes a deep breath. “I went to his house the next day ready to tear him apart. He stood on the front steps waiting for me. When I got there he held out the two red tablets, right for everyone to see.

“Of course, I was so scared I grabbed them out of his hand and asked him what he was trying to do. That’s when he told me that you don’t play with other people’s lives.” Xander seems ashamed, remembering. “And then he told me that we could start over if I wanted. All we had to do was take the red tablets, one for each of us. He promised me we wouldn’t get hurt.”

“That’s cruel of him, too,” I say in shock, but to my surprise Xander disagrees with me.

“He knew the tablets didn’t work on him; I don’t know how, but he did. He thought they
would
work on me. He thought I wouldn’t remember how horrible I’d been and that I’d be able to start clean.”

“How many other people do you think are walking around out there, pretending that their tablets worked when they didn’t?” I ask, wondering.

“As many as want to stay out of trouble,” Xander says. He glances at me. “Apparently they don’t work on you, either.”

“It’s not exactly like that,” I say, but I don’t want to tell him the whole story. He already carries enough of my secrets.

Xander studies me for a moment, but then when I don’t say more, he speaks again. “While we’re talking about tablets,” he says, “I have a gift for you. A farewell gift.” He hands me the envelope and whispers, “Don’t open it now. I put some things in there to remind you of the Borough, but the real gift is a bunch of blue tablets. In case you have to go on another long journey or something.”

He knows I’m going to try to find Ky. And he’s helping me. In spite of everything, Xander hasn’t betrayed me. And I realize, too, that I never wondered, as I ran down the street after Ky, if it was Xander who had set those events in motion. I knew he hadn’t. He kept faith with me. It’s the prisoner’s dilemma. This dangerous game that I must play with Ky, and again with Xander. But what I know, and the Official doesn’t, is that all of us will do our best to keep each other safe. “Oh, Xander. How did you get these?”

“They keep extra supplies in the pharmacy at the medical center,” Xander says. “These were slated for disposal. They’re about to expire, but I think they’ll still work for a few months past expiration.”

“The Officials will still miss them.”

He shrugs. “They will. I’ll be careful, and you should be, too. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring you real food.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing all of this for me,” I say to Xander.

He swallows hard. “Not just for you. For all of us.”

It all makes sense now. If we could change things, in time, maybe . . . maybe we could
all
choose.

“Thank you, Xander,” I say. I think about how I might have a chance to find Ky, thanks to Ky’s compass and Xander’s tablets, and I realize that, in so many ways, Xander is the one who made it possible for me to love Ky.

“Ky thought you might be able to help me learn how to use the artifact,” I tell him. “Now I know why. Did you recognize it that day, when I gave it to you?”

“I thought I did. But it had been a long time and I kept my promise. I didn’t open it.”

“But you know how to use it.”

“I figured out the basic principles of what it was after I’d seen it. I used to ask him questions about it once in a while.”

“It might help me find him.”

“Even if I could show you, why would I?” And Xander can’t cover it anymore; bitterness and anger mingle with the pain. “So you can go off and be happy with him? Where does that leave me?
What
does that leave me?”

“Don’t say that,” I tell him. “You gave me the blue tablets so I could find him, right? If I’m gone, and we can change things, maybe you can choose someone, too.”

“I did,” he says, looking at me.

I don’t know what to say.

“So I have to wish for the end of the world as I know it?” Xander asks, another hint of his old laugh in his voice.

“Not the end of the world. For the beginning of a better one,” I say, and I am frightened, too. Is this what we really want to wish for? “One where we can get Ky back.”

“Ky,” Xander says, and there’s sadness in his voice. “Sometimes it seems like everything I’ve done has been to help you be ready for someone else.”

I don’t know what to say, how to tell him that he is wrong, how
I
was wrong moments ago when I thought the same thing. Because yes, Xander has helped Ky and me time and time again. But how can I explain to Xander that
he
is a reason for wanting a new world, too? That he is important? That I love him?

“I can teach you,” Xander says, finally. “I’ll send you some instructions in a message over the port.”

“But anyone can read those.”

“I’ll make it so it looks like a love letter. We
are
still Matched, after all. And we’re good at pretending.” Then he whispers, “Cassia . . . If we
could
choose, would you ever have chosen me?”

I’m surprised he has to ask. And then I realize that he doesn’t know that at one point I
did
choose him. When I first saw his face on the screen and then Ky’s over it, I wanted safe and known and expected. I wanted good and kind and handsome. I wanted Xander.

“Of course,” I say.

We both look at each other and start to laugh. Then we can’t stop. We’re laughing so hard that tears roll down our faces and Xander pulls away from me, leaning over and gasping for air. “We could still end up together,” he says. “After all this.”

“We could,” I agree.

“Then why do any of it?”

I’m serious now. All this time it’s taken me to understand what Grandfather meant. Why he didn’t want to have the sample stored; why he didn’t want a chance to live forever on someone else’s terms. “Because it’s about making our own choices,” I tell him. “That’s the point. Isn’t it? This is bigger than us now.”