“Cassia!” Bram cal s from the steps.
Bram. He’s going to lose something today, too. I think of Grandfather’s watch and anger rises in me. Do they have to take everything?
Xander breaks away from our embrace. He has to hurry to hide the artifact before they get to his house. “Good-bye,” he says with a smile.
“Good-bye,” I cal back.
“Cassia!” Bram cal s again, fear in his voice. I glance back down the street, but I don’t see any Officials yet. They must stil be in one of the houses between mine and Em’s.
“Hi, Bram,” I say, attempting to sound casual. It’s better for us al if he doesn’t suspect what Xander and I have done. “Where’s—”
“They’re taking the artifacts,” Bram says, voice shaking. “They cal ed Papa in to help with the col ection.”
Of course. I should have realized. They need someone like him to help determine if the artifacts are real or false. Another fear strikes me. Was he supposed to take our artifacts? Did he pretend mine was lost? Did he lie for Bram or me? How many stupid mistakes is he wil ing to make for those he loves?
“Oh no,” I say, trying to act as though al of this is new to me. Hopeful y Bram won’t find out that Em told me earlier. “Did he take ours with him?”
“No,” Bram says. “They won’t let anyone col ect from their own families.”
“Did he know this was going to happen?”
“No. When the cal came over the port he was shocked. But he had to report right away. He told me to listen to the Officials and not to worry.”
I want to put my arm around Bram and comfort him because he is about to lose something, something important. So I do. I hold onto my brother and for the first time in years he hugs me back, tight, the way he did when he was a little boy and I was the big sister he admired more than anyone else in the world. I wish I could have saved his watch, but it was the wrong color, silver instead of gold. And the Officials know about it. There was nothing I could do, I tel myself, trying to believe it.
We hold on for a few seconds and then I pul away and look Bram in the eyes. “Go get it,” I say to him. “Go look at it for the last few minutes you have and remember it. Remember it.”
Bram doesn’t pretend to hide the tears in his eyes now.
“Bram,” I say, and I hug him again. “Bram. Something bad could have happened to the watch even without this. You could have lost it. You could have broken it. But this way you can look at it one last time. It’s never real y lost to you as long as you remember it.”
“Can’t I try to hide it?” Bram asks. He blinks and a tear escapes. He brushes it away angrily. “Wil you help me?”
“No, Bram,” I say gently. “I wish we could, but it’s too dangerous.” What I risk has a limit. I won’t risk Bram.
When the Officials arrive at our house and come in the door they find Bram and me sitting on the divan side by side. Bram holds silver; I hold gold; we both look up. But then Bram’s gaze flickers back to the polished silver surface in his hands and I glance down at the gold one in mine.
My face looks back at me, distorted by the curve of the compact’s surface, the way it was at the Match Banquet. Then, the question I asked myself was: Do I look pretty?
Now the question I ask is: Do I look strong?
As I look at my eyes and the set of my jaw, it seems to me that the answer is yes.
A short, balding Official speaks first. “The Government has decided that artifacts promote inequality among members of Society,” he says. “We request that everyone turn in their artifacts for catalog and display at the Museum in each City.”
“Our records indicate that there are two legal artifacts in this residence,” a tal Official adds. Does he stress the word legal, or is it my imagination? “One silver watch, one gold compact.”
I don’t say anything and neither does Bram.
“Are these the artifacts?” the bald Official asks, looking at the items we hold. He seems weary. This must be a terrible job. I imagine my father taking artifacts from people—old people like Grandfather, children like Bram—and I feel sick.
I nod. “Do you want them now?”
“You may retain them for a few more minutes. We are required to do a quick search of the house.”
Bram and I both sit quietly while they go through our house. It doesn’t take long.
“Nothing valuable here,” one of them says quietly to another in the hal way.
My heart is on fire and I have to keep my mouth shut tight so that I don’t try to burn these Officials with the flames. That’s what you think, I say to myself. You think there’s nothing here because we’re not putting up a fight. But there are words in our heads that no one else knows. And my grandfather died on his terms, not yours. We have things of value but you can never find them because you don’t even know how to look.
They walk back into the room and I stand up. Bram does, too. The Officials wave detection instruments around us to make sure we haven’t concealed anything on our persons. Of course, they find nothing.
The female Official comes forward and I see a pale band of skin on her finger, where a ring must have been. She lost something today, too. I hold out the compact, thinking about how my artifact has traveled from a time before the Society, from one family member to another, to me. And now I have to let it go.
The Official takes my compact; she takes the watch from Bram. “You can come see them in the Museum. Any time you like.”
“It’s not the same,” he says, and then he straightens his shoulders. And oh, I see Grandfather, I do. My heart swel s with the thought that perhaps he isn’t completely gone after al . “You can take it,” Bram says, “but it wil always be mine.”
Bram goes to his room. The heaviness in his step and the way he closes the door tel s me that he wants to be alone.
I feel like punching something but I shove my hands into my pockets instead. There I find the brown paper envelope: a crumpled shel that once contained something valuable and beautiful. It’s only an envelope, not an artifact; it didn’t even register on the Officials’ detection instruments. I pul it out and tear it in half, angrily. I want to rip it up and shred it to pieces. The jagged line along the envelope pleases me. It feels good to destroy. I get ready to make another wound. I look down for another place to tear.
My breath catches in my throat when I see what I almost ruined.
Another part of Ky’s story. There’s something else the Officials have missed.
Drowning, drinking the words at the top say, the letters strong and beautiful, like he is. I think of his hand writing them, his skin brushing the napkin. I bite my lip and look at the picture below. napkin. I bite my lip and look at the picture below.
Two Kys again, the younger one, and the one now, both of them with hands stil cupped. The background in the first one is a spare, bare landscape, the bones of rocks rising behind Ky. In the second picture, he’s here in the Borough. I see a maple tree behind him. Rain fal s in both pictures, but in the first one his mouth is open, his head tipped back, he drinks from the sky. In the second one his head is down, his eyes panicked, the rain thick around him, streaming off him like a waterfal . There is too much rain here. He could drown.
When it rains, I remember are the words written at the bottom.
I look out the window where the burning evening sun sets in a clear sky. There is no trace of clouds, but I promise myself that when it rains I wil remember too. This paper, these pictures and words. This piece of him.
The air train into the City the next morning is almost silent. No one wants to talk about what happened in the Borough last night. Those who gave up their artifacts are hushed with the loss; those who never had any to begin with are quiet out of respect. Or, perhaps, out of satisfaction, because now everything has been equalized.
Before he gets off at his stop for swimming, Xander leans over to kiss my cheek and says softly, “Under the newroses in front of Ky’s house.”
He steps off the air train and disappears with the other students while I ride on toward the Arboretum. Questions crowd my mind: How did Xander hide the artifact in the Markhams’ flower bed unseen? Does he know it belongs to Ky or is it coincidence that he picked the Markhams’ house as the hiding place?
Does he know what I’m starting to feel for Ky?
Whatever Xander knows or guesses, one thing is certain: He couldn’t have picked a better hiding place. We’re al charged with keeping our yards neat and clean. If Ky digs in his own yard, no one wil suspect anything. I just have to tel him where to look.