Matched (35 page)

He looks up. “I know.” Maybe for Xander it has always been bigger than us; since he’s seen more, known more, for years. As Ky has.

“How many times?” I whisper to Xander.

He shakes his head, confused.

“How many times have the rest of us taken the tablet, and we can’t remember?” I ask.

“Once, that I know of,” Xander says. “They don’t use it much on citizens. I was sure they’d make us take it after the Markhams’ son died, but they didn’t. But, one day, I’m pretty sure everyone in the Borough took it.”

“Did I?”

“I’m not positive,” he says. “I didn’t actually see you do it. I don’t know.”

“What happened?” I ask.

Xander shakes his head.
“I’m not going to say,”
he whispers.

I don’t press him further. I haven’t told him everything—about the kiss on the Hill, the poem—and I cannot ask him to do what I have not. This is a difficult balance, telling the truth: how much to share, how much to keep, which truths will wound but not ruin, which will cut too deep to heal.

So I gesture to the envelope instead. “What did you put in here? Besides the tablets?”

He shrugs. “Not much. I was mostly trying to hide the tablets. A couple of newrose blooms, like the ones we planted. They won’t last long. I printed a copy of one of the Hundred Paintings from the port, that picture you did a report on a long time ago. That won’t last long either.” He’s right; the paper from the ports always deteriorates quickly. Xander looks at me, sad. “You’ll have to use all of it in the next couple of months.”

“Thank you,” I tell him. “I didn’t get anything for you—everything happened so fast this morning—” I fall silent again. Because I used what time I did have for Ky. I chose him, again, over Xander.

“It’s all right,” he says. “But maybe—you could—”

He looks into my eyes, deep, and I know what he wants. A kiss. Even though he knows about Ky. Xander and I are still connected; this is still good-bye. I know already that that kiss would be sweet. It would be what he would hold on to, as I hold on to Ky’s.

But that’s something I don’t think I can give. “Xander—”

“It’s all right,” he says, and then he stands up. I do, too, and he reaches for me, pulls me close. Xander’s arms are as warm and safe and good around me as they have always been.

We both hold on, tight.

Then he lets go and walks down the path, without another word. He doesn’t look back. But I watch him go. I watch him all the way home.

 

The journey to our new home is fairly straightforward: ride the air train to the City Center, change to a long-distance air train for the Farmlands of Keya Province. Most of our belongings fit into one small case each; the few things that don’t will be sent later.

As the four of us walk to the air-train stop, neighbors and friends come out to say good-bye and wish us well. They know we’re being Relocated but they don’t know why; it isn’t considered polite to ask. As we come to the end of the street we see that a new sign has been hammered into place: Garden Borough. Without the trees and without the name, Mapletree Borough is gone. It’s as though it never existed. The Markhams are gone. We are gone. Everyone else will live on here in Garden Borough. They’ve already added extra newroses to all the flower beds.

The quickness with which Ky disappeared, with which the Markhams disappeared, with which we will disappear, makes me cold. It is as if we never happened. And I suddenly remember a time back when I was small, when I used to look for the air train home to Stony Borough and we had paths made of low flat stones that led to our doors.

This happened before
. This Borough keeps changing names. What other bad things lie beneath the surface of our Borough? What have we buried underneath our rocks and trees and flowers and houses? That time Xander won’t talk about, when we all took the red tablet—what happened? When other people left, where did they really go?

They could not write their names, but I can write mine, and I will again, somewhere where it will last for a long, long time. I will find Ky, and then I will find that place.

Once we are on the long-distance air train, my mother and Bram both fall asleep, exhausted from the emotion and exertion of the journey.

I find it strange, with everything else that happened, that it was my mother’s obedience which spelled the need for our Relocation. She knew too much and she admitted it in that report. She couldn’t do otherwise.

The ride is long and there are other travelers. No soldiers like Ky. They keep them on their own trains. But there are tired families who look much like ours, a group of Singles who laugh and talk excitedly about their jobs, and, in the last car, a few rows of young women about my age going on a work detail for a few months. I watch these girls with interest; they are girls who did not get work positions and therefore will float around wherever they are needed for a time. Some of them seem sad and faded, disappointed. Others have faces turned to the windows with interest in their eyes. I catch myself glancing over at them more than I should. We’re supposed to keep to ourselves. And I need to concentrate on finding Ky. I have equipment now: blue tablets, the artifact called a compass, knowledge of the Sisyphus River, memories of a grandfather who did not go gentle.

My father notices me watching the girls. While my mother and Bram sleep he says softly, “I don’t remember what happened yesterday. But I know the Markhams left the Borough and I think that has hurt you.”

I try to change the subject. I glance over at my sleeping mother. “Why didn’t they use a red tablet on her? Then we wouldn’t have had to leave.”

“A red tablet?” my father asks, surprised. “Those are only for extreme circumstances. This isn’t one of them.” Then, to my surprise, he says more. He speaks to me like an adult; more than that, like an equal. “I’m a sorter by nature, Cassia,” he says. “All the information adds up to something being wrong. The way they took the artifacts. Your mother’s trips to the other Arboretums. The gap in my memory from yesterday. Something is wrong. They are losing a war and I can’t tell who it’s against—people on the inside or people on the outside. But there are signs of cracking.”

I nod. Ky told me almost the same thing.

But my father goes on. “And I’ve noticed other things, too. I think you’re in love with Ky Markham. I think you want to find him, wherever he’s gone.” He swallows.

I glance over at my mother. Her eyes are open now. She looks at me with love and understanding, and I realize: She knows what my father did. She knows what I want. She knows and even though she would not destroy a tissue sample or love someone who was not her Match, she still loves
us,
even though we have done those things.

My father has always broken the rules for those he loves, just as my mother has always kept them for the same reason. Perhaps that is yet another reason why they make a perfect Match. I can trust in my parents’ love. And it strikes me that that is a big thing to trust, a big thing to have had, no matter what else happens.

“We can’t give you the life you want,” my father says, his eyes wet. He looks at my mother and she nods at him to continue. “We wish we could. But we can help you have a chance to decide which life you want.”

I close my eyes and ask the angels and Ky and Grandfather for strength. Then I open them and look straight at my father. “How?”

M
y hands are in the soil; my body is tired, but I will not let this work take away my thoughts. Because that is what the Officials here want: workers who work but do not think.

So I fight. I fight the only way I know how, with thinking of Ky, even though the pain of missing him is so strong I can hardly stand it. I put the seeds into the ground and cover them with soil. Will they grow toward the sun? Will something go wrong so that they never push, never turn into anything, just stay here rotting in the ground? I think of him, I think of him, I think of him.

I think of my family. Of Bram. Of my parents. I have learned something about love through all of this—about the love I have for Ky and the love I have for Xander and the love my parents and Bram and I have for one another. When we reached our new home, my parents requested that I be sent on a three months’ work detail because I showed signs of rebellion. The Officials in our new village checked my data; it correlated with my parents’ statement. My father mentioned a particular work detail he had in mind: hard farming, planting an experimental winter crop in a Western Province through which the river of Sisyphus runs. He and Xander and my mother keep me updated on anything they learn about where Ky might be. I am closer to him here; I feel it.

I think of Xander. We could have been happy, I know that, and it is perhaps the hardest thing to know. I could have held his hand, warm and strong, and we could have had what my parents have, and it would have been beautiful. It would have been beautiful.

We wear no chains. We have nowhere to go. They wear us down with work; they don’t beat us or hurt us. They simply want to make us tired.

And I am tired.

When I think I might give up after all, I remember the last part of the story that Ky gave me, the part I finally read before we left our home for the last time:

Cassia,
he wrote at the top of the page, in letters that were tall and clear and unafraid, that curled and moved and turned my name into something beautiful, something more than a word. A declaration, a piece of a song, a bit of art, framed by his hands.

There was only one Ky drawn on the napkin. Smiling. A smile in which I could see both who he had been and who he became. His hands were empty again, and open, and reaching a little. Toward me.

I had to burn that part of his story, too, but I held the heat of that
I love you
close, like red, like a new beginning.

Without knowing the pieces of Ky’s story and the words of my poems I might give up. But I think of my words and of the cache of tablets and compass hidden away and my family and Xander who send me messages on the work camp portscreen that tell me they are still looking; they are still helping me.

Sometimes, when I look down at the pale seeds I scatter in the black dirt, it reminds me of the night of my Banquet when I imagined that I could fly. The darkness behind doesn’t worry me; neither do the stars ahead. I think of how perhaps the best way to fly would be with hands full of earth so you always remember where you came from, how hard walking could sometimes be.

And I look at my hands, too, which move in the shape of my own inventions, my own words. It is hard to do, and I am not good at it yet. I write them in the soil where I plant and then step on them, dig holes in them, drop seeds in them to see if they will grow. I steal a piece of black burned wood from one of the cropfires and write on a napkin. Later, at another cropfire; my hand brushes over the flames with the napkin, and the words die. Ash and nothing.

My words never last long. I have to destroy them before anyone sees them.

But. I remember them all. For some reason, the act of writing them down makes me remember. Each word I write brings me closer to finding the right ones. And when I see Ky again, which I know will happen, I will whisper the words I have written in his ear, against his lips. And they will change from ash and nothing into flesh and blood.

My deep gratitude and appreciation to:

Scott, my husband, who makes writing not only possible but probable;

My three boys, who make everything exciting—I love you, and you, and you;

My parents, Robert and Arlene Braithwaite; my brother, Nic; and my sisters, Elaine and Hope, who read every word, every time (and in Elaine’s case, over and over again);

My reader friends and writer friends, who give essential feedback and encouragement;

Alec Shane, who went the extra mile even though he is a fourth-degree black belt, not a distance runner;

Jodi Reamer, who is brilliant and down-to-earth (and fun!), the advocate of every writer’s dreams;

Julie Strauss-Gabel, a woman of unparalleled graciousness and genius, who makes every page better;

And the wonderful team at Penguin who all believed and who exercised their myriad talents on the behalf of this story, including, but not limited to, Theresa Evangelista, Lauri Hornik, Rosanne Lauer, Linda McCarthy, Shanta Newlin, Irene Vandervoort, Don Weisberg, and Lisa Yoskowitz.