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.”
“Your data?” I ask, surprised. But the Official told me it was a mistake on the microcard, Ky’s picture where it shouldn’t be. She told me that he hadn’t been entered into the pool.
She lied. The error was much bigger than she said it was.
Ky keeps talking. “I’m not even a ful citizen. They said the whole incident was completely irregular.” He smiles, a bitter twist to his mouth that it hurts me to see. “Then they showed me a picture. The girl who would have been my Match if I weren’t what I am.” Ky swal ows.
“Who was she?” I ask. My voice sounds harsh, grating. Don’t say that it was me. Don’t say that it was me, because then I will know that you saw me because they told you to look.
“You,” he says.
And now I see. Ky’s love for me, which I thought was pure and unblemished by any Officials or data or Matching pools, is not. They have touched even this.
I feel like something is dying, ruined beyond repair. If the Officials orchestrated our whole love affair, the one thing in my life I thought happened in spite of them—I can’t finish the thought.
The forest around me blurs into green and without the red flags marking the way, I would not know my way down. As it is, I tear at them wildly, pul ing them off the branches.
“Cassia,” he says behind me. “Cassia. Why does it matter?”
I shake my head.