Matched

“You look beautiful,” Xander tel s me, and I flush a little even though I’ve known Xander al my life. I feel beautiful, in this dress: ice green, floating, ful -skirted. The unaccustomed smoothness of silk against my skin makes me feel lithe and graceful.

Next to me, my mother and father each draw a breath as City Hal comes into view, lit up white and blue and sparkling with the special occasion lights that indicate a celebration is taking place. I can’t see the marble stairs in front of the Hal yet, but I know that they wil be polished and shining.

Al my life I have waited to walk up those clean marble steps and through the doors of the Hal , a building I have seen from a distance but never entered.

I want to open the compact and check in the mirror to make sure I look my best. But I don’t want to seem vain, so I sneak a glance at my face in its surface instead.

The rounded lid of the compact distorts my features a little, but it’s stil me. My green eyes. My coppery-brown hair, which looks more golden in the compact than it does in real life. My straight smal nose. My chin with a trace of a dimple like my grandfather’s. Al the outward characteristics that make me Cassia Maria Reyes, seventeen years old exactly.

I turn the compact over in my hands, looking at how perfectly the two sides fit together. My Match is already coming together just as neatly, beginning with the fact that I am here tonight. Since my birthday fal s on the fifteenth, the day the Banquet is held each month, I’d always hoped that I might be Matched on my actual birthday—but I knew it might not happen. You can be cal ed up for your Banquet anytime during the year after you turn seventeen. When the notification came across the port two weeks ago that I would, indeed, be Matched on the day of my birthday, I could almost hear the clean snap of the pieces fitting into place, exactly as I’ve dreamed for so long.

Because although I haven’t even had to wait a ful day for my Match, in some ways I have waited al my life.

“Cassia,” my mother says, smiling at me. I blink and look up, startled. My parents stand up, ready to disembark. Xander stands, too, and straightens his sleeves. I hear him take a deep breath, and I smile to myself. Maybe he is a little nervous after al .

“Here we go,” he says to me. His smile is so kind and good; I’m glad we were cal ed up the same month. We’ve shared so much of childhood, it seems we should share the end of it, too.

I smile back at him and give him the best greeting we have in the Society. “I wish you optimal results,” I tel Xander.

“You too, Cassia,” he says.

As we step off the air train and walk toward City Hal , my parents each link an arm through mine. I am surrounded, as I always have been, by their love.

It is only the three of us tonight. My brother, Bram, can’t come to the Match Banquet because he is under seventeen, too young to attend. The first one you attend is always your own. I, however, wil be able to attend Bram’s banquet because I am the older sibling. I smile to myself, wondering what Bram’s Match wil be like. In seven years I wil find out.

But tonight is my night.

It is easy to identify those of us being Matched; not only are we younger than al of the others, but we also float along in beautiful dresses and tailored suits while our parents and older siblings walk around in plainclothes, a background against which we bloom. The City Officials smile proudly at us, and my heart swel s as we enter the Rotunda.

In addition to Xander, who waves good-bye to me as he crosses the room to his seating area, I see another girl I know named Lea. She picked the bright red dress. It is a good choice for her, because she is beautiful enough that standing out works in her favor. She looks worried, however, and she keeps twisting her artifact, a jeweled red bracelet. I am a little surprised to see Lea there. I would have picked her for a Single.

“Look at this china,” my father says as we find our place at the Banquet tables. “It reminds me of the Wedgwood pieces we found last year ...”

My mother looks at me and rol s her eyes in amusement. Even at the Match Banquet, my father can’t stop himself from noticing these things. My father spends months working in old neighborhoods that are being restored and turned into new Boroughs for public use. He sifts through the relics of a society that is not as far in the past as it seems. Right now, for example, he is working on a particularly interesting Restoration project: an old library. He sorts out the things the Society has marked as valuable from the things that are not.

But then I have to laugh because my mother can’t help but comment on the flowers, since they fal in her area of expertise as an Arboretum worker. “Oh, Cassia! Look at the centerpieces. Lilies.” She squeezes my hand.

“Please be seated,” an Official tel s us from the podium. “Dinner is about to be served.”