I reach for my dress fragment and take it down from the window so my mother’s sits up there alone. I don’t trust myself to speak, so I shake my head. How can I explain to my perfectly Matched mother everything that has happened? Everything I’ve risked? How can I explain to her that I’d do it again? How can I tel her that I hate the system that created her life, her love, her family? That created me?
Instead, I ask, “How did you know?”
She reaches for her frame and takes it down, too. “At first, I could see that you were fal ing deeper and deeper in love, but I didn’t worry about it because I thought your Match was perfect for you. Xander is wonderful. And you might be able to stay in Oria, nearby, since both of your families live here. As a mother, I couldn’t imagine a better scenario.”
She pauses, looking at me. “And then I was so busy with work. It took until today for me to realize that I was wrong. You weren’t thinking of Xander.”
Don’t say it, I beg her with my eyes. Don’t say that you know I’m in love with someone else. Please.
“Cassia,” she tel s me, and the love in her eyes for me is pure and true and that’s what makes her next words cut deep, because I know she has my best interests at heart. “I’m married to someone wonderful. I have two beautiful children and a job I love. It’s a good life.” She holds out the piece of blue satin. “Do you know what would happen if I broke this glass?”
I nod. “The cloth would disintegrate. It would be ruined.”
“Yes,” she says, and then it’s almost as if she’s speaking to herself. “It would be ruined. Everything would be ruined.”
Then she puts her hand on my arm. “Do you remember what I said the day they cut the trees down?”
Of course I do. “About how it was a warning for you?”
“Yes.” She flushes. “That wasn’t true. I was so worried that I wasn’t acting rational y. Of course it wasn’t a warning for me. It wasn’t a warning for anyone. The trees simply needed to come down.”
I hear in her voice how badly she wants to believe that what she says is true, how she almost does believe it. Wanting to hear more, but not wanting to push too hard, I ask, “What was so important about the report? What makes it different from other reports you’ve done?”
My mother sighs. She doesn’t answer me directly; instead, she says, “I don’t know how the workers at the medical center stand it when they’re working on people or delivering babies. It’s too hard to have other lives in your hands.”
My unspoken question hovers in the air: What do you mean? She pauses. She seems to be deciding whether or not to answer me, and I hold perfectly stil until she speaks again. Absentmindedly she picks up her dress fragment and begins polishing the glass.
“Someone out in Grandia, and then in another Province, reported that there were strange crops popping up. The one in Grandia was in the Arboretum, in an experimental field that had been fal ow for a long time. The other field was in the Farmlands of the second Province. The Government asked me and two others to travel to the fields and submit reports about the crops. They wanted to know two things: Were the crops viable as foodstuffs? And were the growers planning a rebel ion?”
I draw in my breath. It’s forbidden to grow food unless the Government has specifical y requested it. They control the food; they control us. Some people know how to grow food, some know how to harvest it, some know how to process it; others know how to cook it. But none of us know how to do al of it. We could never survive on our own.
“The three of us agreed that the crops were definitely usable as foodstuffs. The grower at the Arboretum had an entire field of Queen Anne’s lace.” My mother’s face changes suddenly, lights up. “Oh, Cassia, it was so beautiful. I’ve only seen a sprig here and there. This was a whole field, waving in the wind.”
“Wild carrot,” I say, remembering.
“Wild carrot,” she agrees, her voice sad. “The second grower had a crop I’d never seen before, of white flowers even more beautiful than the first.
Sego lilies, they cal ed them. One of the others with me knew what they were. You can eat the bulb. Both growers denied knowing you could use the plants for food; they both asserted that their interest was in the flower. They insisted the plants were new to them and that they cultivated them as research, for the blossoms.”
Her voice, which has been soft and sad since she mentioned the field of Queen Anne’s lace, grows stronger. “The three of us argued the whole way back after the second trip. One expert was convinced the growers were tel ing the truth. The other thought they were lying. They submitted conflicting reports. Everyone waited for mine. I asked for one last trip to be sure. After al , these growers wil be Relocated or Reclassified based on our reports. Mine would tip the balance one way or the other.”
She stops polishing the glass and looks down at the piece of blue cloth as though there is something written there for her to see. And I realize that for her, there is. That blue cloth represents the night she was Matched to my father. She reads her life, the life she loves, in that square of blue satin.
“I knew al along,” she whispers. “I knew when I saw the fear in their eyes when we first arrived. They knew what they were doing. And something the Queen Anne’s lace grower said on my second visit convinced me even more of the truth. He acted as though he’d never seen the plant outside of a portscreen before until he raised the crop, but he grew up in a town near mine, and I knew I’d seen the flower there growing wild.
“But I stil hesitated. And then when I came home again and saw al of you, I realized I had to report the truth. I had to fulfil my duty to the Society and guarantee our happiness. And keep us al safe.”
That last word, safe, is as soft and hushed as the swish of silk.
“I understand,” I tel her, and I do. And the hold she has over me is much greater than the Officials, because I love her and admire her.
Back in my room I find the silver box where it fel inside one of my winter boots. I open it up and take out the microcard with al of Xander’s information and the courtship guidelines. If there hadn’t been a mistake, if I’d just seen his face and everything had been normal, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have fal en in love with Ky and the choice wouldn’t have been so hard to make in the sort. Everything would have been fine.
Everything can stil be fine. If the sort is what I suspect, if Ky leaves for a better life, wil I pick up the pieces of my life here? The biggest piece, my Match with Xander, would not be hard to shape a life around. I could love him. I do love him. And because I do, I have to tel him about Ky. I do not mind stealing from the Society. But I wil not steal from Xander any longer. Even if it hurts, I have to tel him. Because either way, whichever life I build, has to be built on truth.
Thinking of tel ing Xander hurts almost as much as thinking of losing Ky. I rol over and hold the tablet container tight in my palm. Think of something else.
I remember the first time I saw Ky on top of that little hil , leaning back, sun on his face, and I realize that is when I fel in love with him. I didn’t lie to him after al . I didn’t see him differently because I saw his face on the portscreen the morning after my Match; I saw him differently because I saw him outside, unguarded for a moment, with eyes the color of the sky in the evening before it goes down into dark. I saw him seeing me.
Lying in bed, my body and soul bruised and tired, I realize that the Officials are right. Once you want something, everything changes. Now I want everything. More and more and more. I want to pick my work position. Marry who I choose. Eat pie for breakfast and run down a real street instead of on a tracker. Go fast when I want and slow when I want. Decide which poems I want to read and what words I want to write. There is so much that I want. I feel it so much that I am water, a river of want, pooled in the shape of a girl named Cassia.
Most of al I want Ky.
“We’re running out of time,” Ky says.
“I know.” I’ve been counting the days, too. Even if Ky’s new work position is stil here in the City, the summer leisure activities are almost over. I won’t see Ky nearly as much. I al ow myself to daydream for a few seconds—what if his new position is one that al ows him more time? He could come to al of the Saturday night activities. “Only a couple of weeks of hiking left.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he says, moving closer. “Don’t you feel it? Something’s changing. Something’s happening.”
Of course I feel it. For me, everything is changing.
His eyes are wary, as though he stil feels watched. “Something big, Cassia,” he says, and then he whispers softly, “I think the Society is having trouble with their war on the borders.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I have a feeling,” he says. “From what you told me about your mother. From the shortage of Officials during free-rec hours. And there are changes coming at work. I can tel .” He glances at me and I duck my head.
“Do you want to tel me why you were there?” he asks gently.
I swal ow. I’ve been wondering when he would want to know. “It was a real-life sort. I had to sort the workers into two groups.”
“I see,” he says, and he waits to see if I wil say more.
And I wish I could. But I can’t get the words out. Instead, I say, “You haven’t given me any more of the story. What happened after the Officials came to get you? When did that happen? I know it wasn’t long ago, because ...” My voice trails off.
Ky ties a red cloth on the tree slowly, methodical y, and then he looks up. After years of seeing only surface emotions from him, the new and deeper ones startle me sometimes. The expression on his face now is not one I have seen before.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I’m afraid,” he says simply. “Of what you’re going to think.”
“About what? What happened?” After everything he’s been through, Ky’s afraid of what I might think?
“It was in the spring. They came to talk with me at work, pul ed me aside into a room there. They asked if I ever wondered what my life would be like if I weren’t an Aberration.” Ky’s jaw tightens at this and I feel sorry for him. He glances up and sees it on my face and his jaw becomes even more set. He does not want my pity, so I turn my face away to listen.
“I said I never thought about that much. I said I didn’t worry about things I couldn’t change. Then they told me there had been a mistake. My data had been entered into the Matching pool.”