“I hope you find out who did it,” I say. “You’re right. It’s cruel.”
“We’l find out,” she says, smiling at me. “I can promise you that.” Then she looks down, glances at her watch. “I have to leave now. I hope that I’ve been able to eliminate your concern.”
“Yes, thank you.” I try to pul my thoughts from the boy who is an Aberration. I should be thinking about how wonderful it is that everything is back in order. But instead I think about Ky—how sorry I feel for him, how I wish I didn’t have to know this about him and could have gone on thinking he had chosen to be a Single.
“I don’t need to remind you to keep the information about Ky Markham confidential, do I?” she asks mildly, but I hear the iron in her voice. “The only reason I shared it with you was so that you could know without a doubt that he was never intended to be your Match.”
“Of course. I won’t say anything to anyone.”
“Good. It’s probably best that you keep this to yourself. Of course, we could cal a meeting if you would like. I could explain to your parents and Xander and his parents what happened—”
“No!” I say forceful y. “No. I don’t want anyone to know, except—”
“Except who?”
I don’t answer, and suddenly her hand is on my arm. She does not grip me roughly, but I can tel that she wil wait out the answer to her brief question: “Who?”
“My grandfather,” I admit. “He’s almost eighty.”
She lets go of my arm. “When is his birthday?”
“Tomorrow.”
She thinks for a moment, then nods. “If you feel that you need to talk to someone about what happened, he would be the optimal one. Stil . That is the only person?”
“Yes,” I say. “I don’t want anyone else to know. I don’t mind Grandfather knowing because ...” I leave the sentence unfinished. She knows why. At least one of the reasons why, anyway.
“I’m glad you feel that way,” the Official says, nodding. “I have to admit that it makes things easier for me. Obviously, when you talk to your grandfather, you wil tel him that he wil be cited if he mentions this to anyone else. And that’s certainly not something he wants now. He could lose his preservation privileges.”
“I understand.”
The Official smiles, stands up. “Is there anything else I can help you with tonight?” I am glad the interview is over. Now that al is right again with my world, I want to take my place back inside that room ful of people. It suddenly feels very lonely out here.
“No, thank you.”
She gestures at the path leading back to the center. “Best wishes to you, Cassia. I’m glad I could help.” I thank her one last time and walk away. She stays behind, watching me go. Even though I know it’s nonsense, I feel as if she watches me al the way to the door, al the way down the hal s and back into the room and over to the table where Xander stil plays the game. He looks up and holds my gaze. He noticed that I was gone. Everything all right? his eyes ask me, and I nod. It is now.
Everything is back to normal. Better than normal—now I can again enjoy the fact that I’ve been Matched with Xander.
Stil , I wish she hadn’t told me about Ky. I won’t be able to look at him the same way again, now that I know too much about him.
There are so many of us inside the game center. It is hot and humid in the room, reminding me of the tropical ocean simulation we had in Science once, the one about the coral reefs that teemed with fish before the Warming kil ed them al . I taste sweat and breathe water.
Someone bumps into me as an Official makes an announcement over the main speaker. The crowd goes quiet to listen: Someone bumps into me as an Official makes an announcement over the main speaker. The crowd goes quiet to listen:
“Someone has dropped their tablet container. Please, stand completely still and do not speak until we locate it.” Everyone stops immediately. I hear the clatter of dice and a soft thud as someone, perhaps Xander, puts down a game piece. Then al is quiet.
No one moves. A lost container is a serious matter. I look at a girl near me, and she stares back at me, wide-eyed, openmouthed, frozen in place. I think again of that ocean simulation, how the instructor paused it in the middle to explain something, and the fish projected around the room stared back at us, unblinking, until she switched the simulation back on.
We al wait for the switch to be thrown, for the instructor to tel us what comes next. My mind begins to wander, to escape this place where we al hold stil . Are there other unknown Aberrations standing here in this room, swimming in this water? Water. I recal another memory of water, real this time, a day when Xander and I were ten.
Back then, we had more free-recreation time, and in the summers we almost always spent it at the swimming pool. Xander liked to swim in the blue-chlorinated water; I liked to sit on the pockmarked cement side of the pool and swish my feet back and forth before I went in. That’s what I was doing when Xander appeared next to me, a worried look on his face.
“I’ve lost my tablet container,” he told me quietly.
I glanced down to make sure that mine was stil hooked to my swimwear. It was; its metal clip snapped securely to the strap over my left shoulder.
We’d had our tablet containers for a few weeks, and at that point they contained one tablet. The first one. The blue one. The one that can save us; the one with enough nutrients to keep us going for several days if we have water, too.
There was plenty of water in the pool. That was the problem. How was Xander ever going to find the container?