“Wel , maybe I’l rest for a little while,” she says. We both stand up: I take her foilware container to the recycling bin for her and she carries my water bottle to the sterilizer for me. “Come say good-bye before you leave, though, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
My mother goes into her room and I slip into mine. I have a few minutes before I’m due to meet everyone. Do I have time to read a little more of Ky’s story? I decide that I do. I pul the crumpled napkin from my pocket.
I want to know more about Ky before I see him tonight. I feel as if the two of us are our true selves when we hike in the trees on the hil s. When we’re with everyone else on Saturday nights, though, it becomes difficult. We go through a forest that is complicated and ful of tangles and there are no stone cairns to guide us except the ones we build ourselves.
Sitting on my bed to read, I glance again at the spot in my closet where I kept the compact. I feel a sharp pain of loss and turn back to Ky’s story.
But as I read and the tears slip down my cheeks, I realize that I do not know anything about loss.
In the middle of the crease Ky drew a vil age, little houses, little people. But al the people lie prone, on their backs. No one stands straight, except the two Kys. The young one’s hands are no longer empty; they carry something. One hand holds the word Mother, slumping over the edge of his hand, shaped a little like a body. The top of the t tips up, like an arm flung askew.
The other hand holds the word Father, and that word lies stil too. And the young Ky’s shoulders are bent with the weight of these two little words, and his face is stil tipped to the sky, where I see now the rain has turned into something dark, something deadly and solid. Ammunition, I think. I’ve seen it in the showing.
The older Ky has turned his face away from the vil age in the middle, from the other boy. His hands are no longer open. They are clenched.
Behind him, people in Official uniforms watch him. His lips curve in a smile that never touches his eyes; he wears plainclothes, a line indicating the crisp crease where he’s ironed them neat. at first when the rain fell from the sky so wide and deep it smelled like sage, my favorite smell I went up on the plateau to watch it come to see the gifts it always brought but this rain changed from blue to black and left nothing.
There’s a drought of Officials at the game center, even though the center itself brims with people playing, winning, losing. I see three Officials, watching the largest of the game tables. They look earnest and on edge in their white uniforms, their faces showing more stress than usual. This is strange. Usual y, we have twelve or more lower-level Officials in the center, keeping the peace, keeping score. Where are the rest of them tonight?
Somewhere, things aren’t going quite right.
But here, as far as I’m concerned, at least one thing has. Ky’s with us. I look at him once as we weave our way through the masses of people, fol owing Xander, hoping that Ky understands from that look that I have read his story, that I care. He walks right behind me and I want to reach back and take his hand but there are too many people. The one thing I can do for Ky is to help keep him safe, to hold onto what I want to say until there is a good place to say it. And to remember the words he wrote, the pictures he made, even though I wish that part of the story had never happened to him.
His parents died. He saw it happen. Death came from the sky, and that’s what he remembers. Every time it rains.
Xander stops and so we al do, too. To my surprise, he gestures to a game table where the games played are one-on-one. Games Xander doesn’t usual y play. He likes to take on a group, to win when the stakes are higher and more players are involved. It’s a better test of his abilitiesmore chal enging, more variables. Less personal. “You want to play?” Xander asks.
I turn to see who he means.
Ky.
“Al right,” Ky says without hesitation, nothing revealed in his voice. He keeps his eyes on Xander, waiting for the next move.
“What kind of game do you want to play? Skil or chance?” Is there a trace of chal enge in Xander’s voice? His face remains perfectly even, as does Ky’s.
“I don’t care,” Ky answers.
“How about a game of chance, then,” Xander says, which surprises me again. Xander hates games of chance. He much prefers ones that involve actual skil .
Em and Piper and I stay, watching, as Xander and Ky sit down and scan their cards into the datapod at the table. Xander sets out the playing cards, red with black markings in the center, first stacking the edges even with two sharp hits of the deck against the metal. “Want to go first?”
Xander asks Ky, and Ky nods and reaches to draw.
“What game are they playing?” someone asks next to me. Livy. She’s here for Ky, I’m sure of it, her eyes possessive as she watches his hands over the cards.
His hands are not yours to watch, I think to her, and I remember again that they aren’t mine, either. I should be watching Xander. I should be hoping for Xander to win.
“Prisoner’s dilemma,” Em says next to me. “They’re playing prisoner’s dilemma.”
“What’s that?” Livy asks.
She doesn’t know the game? I turn to her in surprise. It’s one of the simplest, most common games. Em tries to explain it to Livy in a low voice so she doesn’t disturb the players. “They each put down a card at the same time. If they both have an even card, they each get two points. If they’re both odd, then they each get one point.”
Livy interrupts Em. “What if one has even and one has odd?”
“If one is even and one is odd, the person who puts down the odd card gets three points. The person who puts down the even one gets zero.”
Livy’s eyes fix on Ky’s face. Jealously, I think that even if she sees him in the same amount of detail that I do—which I doubt—she doesn’t know anything about him. Would she stil be so interested in Ky if she knew about his status as an Aberration?
I have a thought that strikes me cold: Would I be so interested if I didn’t know that he’s an Aberration? I never paid Ky particular attention before I knew about his classification.
And before you saw his face on the microcard, I remind myself. Naturally, that piqued your interest. Besides. You weren’t supposed to be interested in anyone until you were Matched.
I feel a little sick thinking that Livy might see Ky’s true worth in a way that is somehow more pure; she’s simply interested in him. No hidden reasons. No tangles. No extra layers beneath her basic attraction to him.
But then again, I realize, I never know. She could be hiding something, as I am. We could al be hiding something.
I turn my attention back to the game and I watch Ky’s and Xander’s faces closely. Neither one of them blinks an eye, pauses before a move, shows their hand.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. Ky and Xander end the rounds with an even number of points. They’ve each won, and lost, an equal amount of hands.
“Let’s go walk around for a minute,” Xander says, reaching for me. I want to look at Ky before I twine my fingers with Xander’s, but I don’t. I have to play the game, too. Surely Ky wil understand.
But would Xander? If he knew about Ky and me, and the words we share on the Hill?
I push the thought away as I walk from the table with Xander. Livy immediately slides into his place and starts up a conversation with Ky.
Xander and I go out in the hal way alone. I wonder if he’s about to kiss me and I wonder what I’m going to do if he does, but then he whispers to me instead, his words soft and close. “Ky throws the games.”
“What?”
“He loses the games on purpose.”
“You tied. He didn’t lose.” I don’t know what Xander’s getting at.
“Not tonight. Because it wasn’t a game of skil . Those are the ones he usual y throws. I’ve been watching him for a while. He’s careful about how he does it, but I’m sure that’s what he’s doing.”
I stare back at Xander, not sure how to respond.
“It’s easy to throw a game of skil , especial y when it’s a big group. Or a game like Check, when you can put your pieces in harm’s way and make it look natural. But today, in a game of chance, one-on-one, he didn’t lose. He’s no fool. He knew that I was watching.” Xander grins. Then his face gets puzzled. “What I don’t understand is why?”
“Why what?”
“Why would he throw so many games? He knows the Officials watch us. He knows they’re looking for people who can play wel . He knows our play probably influences what vocations they assign us. It doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t he want them to know how smart he is? Because he is smart.”