Matched

“I can’t quit speaking to him. He’s my hiking partner. We live in the same neighborhood—” She interrupts me. “Of course you may talk with him. There are other lines you should not cross. Kissing, for example.” She smiles at me. “You wouldn’t want Xander to know about this, would you? You don’t want to lose him, do you?”

I am angry, and my face must show it. And what she says is true. I don’t want to lose Xander.

“Cassia. Do you regret your decision to be Matched? Do you wish that you had chosen to be a Single?”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what is it?”

“I think people should be able to choose who they Match with,” I say lamely.

“Where would it end, Cassia?” she says, her voice patient. “Would you say next that people should be able to choose how many children they have, and where they want to live? Or when they want to die?”

I am silent, but not because I agree. I am thinking of Grandfather. Do not go gentle.

“What Infraction have I committed?” I ask.

“Excuse me?”

“When they cal ed me out of school over the port, the message said I’d committed an Infraction.”

The Official laughs. Her laugh sounds easy and warm, which makes a shiver of cold prickle my scalp. “Ah, that was a mistake. Another one, it seems. They seem to keep happening where you are concerned.” She leans a little closer. “You haven’t committed an Infraction, Cassia. Yet.”

She stands up. I keep my eyes on the dry fountain, wil ing the water back to it. “This is your warning, Cassia. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” I say to the Official. The words are not entirely a lie. I do understand her, on some level. I know why she has to keep things safe and stable and some part of me respects that. I hate that most of al .

When I final y meet her gaze, her expression is satisfied. She knows she’s won. She sees in my eyes that I won’t risk making things worse for Ky.

“There’s a delivery for you,” Bram tel s me when I arrive home, his face eager. “Someone brought it by. It must be something good. I had to have my fingerprint entered in their datapod when I accepted it.”

He fol ows me into the kitchen where a smal package sits on the table. Looking at the pulpy brown paper wrapped around it, I think how much of Ky’s story he could put on those pages. But he can’t do that anymore. It’s too dangerous.

Stil , I can’t help but open the paper careful y. I smooth it out neatly, taking my time. This almost drives Bram crazy. “Come on! Hurry up!”

Deliveries don’t happen every day.

When Bram and I final y see what’s in the package we both sigh. Bram’s is a sigh of disappointment and mine is a sigh of something else I can’t quite define. Longing? Nostalgia?

It’s the scrap of my dress from the Match Banquet. In keeping with tradition they have placed the silk between two pieces of clear glass with a smal silver frame around the edge. The glass and the material both reflect the light, blinding me for a moment and reminding me of the glass mirror in my lost compact. I stare at the fabric, trying to remember the night at the Match Banquet when we were al pink and red and gold and green and violet and blue.

Bram groans. “That’s al it is? A piece of your dress?”

“What did you think, Bram?” I say, and the acid in my tone surprises me. “Did you think they were going to send our artifacts back? Did you think this was going to be your watch? Because it’s not. We’re not getting any of it back. Not the compact. Not the watch. Not Grandfather.”

Shock and hurt register on my brother’s face, and before I can say anything he leaves the room. “Bram!” I cal after him. “Bram—” I hear the sound of his door closing.

I pick up the box that the framed sample came in. As I do, I realize that it is the perfect size to hold a watch. My brother dared to hope, and I mocked him for it.

I want to take this frame and walk to the middle of the greenspace. I’l stand next to that dry fountain and wait until the Official finds me. And when she does and asks me what I’m doing, I’l tel her and everyone else that I know: they are giving us pieces of a real life instead of the whole thing.

And I’l tel her that I don’t want my life to be samples and scraps. A taste of everything but a meal of nothing.

They have perfected the art of giving us just enough freedom; just enough that when we are ready to snap, a little bone is offered and we rol over, bel y up, comfortable and placated like a dog I saw once when we visited my grandparents in the Farmlands. They’ve had decades to perfect this; why am I surprised when it works on me again and again and again?

Even though I am ashamed of myself, I take the bone. I worry it between my teeth. Ky has to be safe. That’s what matters.

I don’t take the green tablet; I’m stil stronger than they are. But not strong enough to burn the last bit of Ky’s story before reading it, the piece he pressed into my hand earlier on our way back down through the forest. No more after this, I tel myself. Only this, no more.