Matched

My parents talk upstairs. My brother does his schoolwork and I run to nowhere. Everyone in this house does what he or she is supposed to do. It’s going to be al right. My feet hit smack-slap on the belt of the tracker and I pound the worry out of me step by step. Step by step by step by step by step.

I’m tired, I don’t know if I can go any farther, when the tracker beeps and slows, slows, slows to a stop. Perfect timing, programmed by the Society. I bend my head down, gasping for breath, sucking in air. There is nothing to see at the top of this hil .

Bram sits on the edge of my bed, waiting for me. He holds something. At first I think it is my compact and I take a step forward, worried—Has he found the poetry?—but then I realize that it is Grandfather’s watch. Bram’s artifact.

“I sent a port message to the Officials a few minutes ago,” Bram says. His round eyes look up at me, tired and sad.

“Why did you do that?” I ask in shock. Why would he want to see or talk to an Official after what happened today?

Bram holds up the watch. “I thought that maybe they could get enough tissue from this. Since Grandfather touched it so many times.”

Hope shoots through my veins like adrenaline. I pul a towel from the hook in my closet and wipe it across my face. “What did they say? Did they respond?”

“They sent back a message saying it wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t work.” He rubs the shiny surface of the watch with his sleeve to clean away the smudges where his fingers were. He looks at the face of the clock as if it can tel him something.

But it can’t. Bram doesn’t even know how to tel time yet. And besides, Grandfather’s watch hasn’t worked in decades. It’s nothing but a beautiful artifact. Heavy, made of silver and glass. Nothing like the thin plastic strips we wear now.

“Do I look like Grandfather?” Bram asks hopeful y. He slides the watch onto his arm. It is loose around his thin wrist. Skinny, brown-eyed, straight-backed, smal —he does look a little like Grandfather in that moment.

“You do.” I wonder if there is anything of Grandfather to see in me. I liked hiking today. I like reading the Hundred Poems. Those things that were a part of him are a part of me. I think about the other grandparents I have, out in the Farmlands, and about Ky Markham and the Outer Provinces and about al the things I do not know and places I wil never see.

Bram smiles at my response and looks down proudly at the watch.

“Bram, you can’t take that to school, you know. You could get in trouble.”

“I know.”

“You saw what happened to Papa when the Officials got after him. You don’t want them getting mad at you for breaking the rules about artifacts.”

“I won’t,” he says. “I know better than that. I don’t want to lose it.” He reaches for my silver box from the Match Banquet. “Can I keep it in here? It seems like a good place. You know, special.” He shrugs in embarrassment.

“Al right,” I say, a little nervously. I watch him open the silver box and put the artifact careful y inside next to the microcard. He doesn’t even glance at the compact sitting on the shelf and for that I am grateful.

Later that night when it is dark and Bram has gone to bed, I open the compact and take the paper out. I do not look at it; instead, I slip it into the pocket of my plainclothes for the next day. Tomorrow, I wil try to find a trash incinerator away from home to drop it in. I don’t want anyone to catch me doing it here. It’s too dangerous now.

I lie down and look up at the ceiling, trying again to think of Grandfather’s face. I can’t bring it back. Impatient, I rol over, and something hard presses into my side. My tablet container. I must have dropped it when I changed my plainclothes earlier. It isn’t like me to be so careless.

I sit up. The light from the street lamps outside comes in foggy through the window, enough to see the tablets as I twist open the container and spil them onto the bed. For a moment, as my eyes adjust, they al seem to be the same color. But then I can see which is which. The mysterious red tablet. The blue one that wil help us survive in case of an emergency, because even the Society can’t control nature al of the time.

And the green one.

Most people I know take the green tablet now and then. Before a big test. The night of the Match Banquet. Any time you might need calming. You can take it up to once a week without the Officials taking special note of it.

But I’ve never taken the green tablet.

Because of Grandfather.

I was so proud to show him when I started carrying it. “Look,” I told him, unscrewing the lid of the silver container. “I’ve got blue and green now. Al I need is the red one and I’l be an adult.”

“Ah,” Grandfather said, looking properly impressed. “You are growing up, that’s for certain.” He paused for a moment. We were walking outside, in the greenspace near his apartment. “Have you taken the green one yet?”