Matched

“Not yet,” I said. “But I have to give a presentation on one of the Hundred Paintings in my Culture class next week. I might take it then. I don’t like speaking in front of everyone.”

“Which painting?” he asked.

“Number nineteen,” I tel him, and he looks thoughtful, trying to remember which one that is. He doesn’t—didn’t—know the Hundred Paintings as wel as the Hundred Poems. But stil , he knew it after enough thought. “The one by Thomas Moran,” he guesses, and I nod. “I like the colors in that one,” he said.

“I like the sky,” I told him. “It’s so dramatic. Al the clouds up above, and in the canyon.” The painting felt a little dangerous—streaming gray clouds, jagged red rocks—and I liked that, too.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s a beautiful painting.”

“Like this,” I said, even though the greenspace was beautiful in an entirely different way. Flowers bloomed everywhere, in colors we were not al owed to wear: pinks, yel ows, reds, almost startling in their boldness. They drew the eye; they scented the air.

“Greenspace, green tablet,” Grandfather said, and then he looked at me and smiled. “Green eyes on a green girl.”

“That sounds like poetry,” I said, and he laughed.

“Thank you.” He paused for a moment. “I wouldn’t take that tablet, Cassia. Not for a report. And perhaps not ever. You are strong enough to go without it.”

Now, I lie down on my side, curl my hand around the green tablet. I don’t think I’l take it, not even tonight. Grandfather thinks I’m strong enough to go without it. I close my eyes and think of Grandfather’s poetry.

Green tablet. Green space. Green eyes. Green girl.

When I fal asleep, I dream that Grandfather has given me a bouquet of roses. “Take these instead of the tablet,” he tel s me. So I do. I pul the petals off each rose. To my surprise each petal has a word written on it, a word from one of the poems. They’re not in the right order, and this puzzles me, but I put them in my mouth and taste them. They taste bitter, the way I imagine the green tablet would taste. But I know Grandfather is right; I have to keep the words inside if I want to keep them with me.

When I wake in the morning, the green tablet is stil in my hand, and the words are stil in my mouth.

CHAPTER 11

Breakfast sounds from the kitchen carry down the hal to my room. The chime, announcing the arrival of the food delivery sliding through its slot. A crash—Bram knocking something over. Chairs scrape, voices murmur as my mother and father talk with Bram. Soon, the smel of the food comes in underneath my door, or maybe it drifts through the thin wal s of our house, permeating everything. The smel is a familiar one, a smel of vitamins and something metal ic, perhaps the foilware.

“Cassia?” my mother says outside my door. “You’re late for breakfast.”

I know. I want to be late to breakfast. I don’t want to see my father today. I don’t want to talk about what happened yesterday, but I don’t want to not-talk about it either, to sit at the table with our portions of food and pretend that Grandfather isn’t gone for good.

“I’m coming,” I say, and I pul myself out of bed. Out in the hal I hear an announcement on the port, and I think I catch the word hiking.

When I walk into the kitchen, my father has already left for work. Bram pul s on his raingear, grinning wildly. How can he forget about last night so quickly? “It’s supposed to rain today,” he informs me. “No hiking for you. They said so on the port.”

My mother gives Bram his hat and he jams it onto his head. “Good-bye!” he says, and he heads for the air train, early for once because he likes the rain.

“So,” my mother says. “It looks like you’l have a little free time. What do you think you’l do?”

I know immediately. Most of the other hikers wil use their time hanging out in the common area inside the school, or finishing assignments in the school’s research library. I have something else in mind, a visit to a different library. “I think I might go visit Papa.”

My mother’s eyes soften; she smiles. “I’m sure he’d like that, since you missed him this morning. He won’t be able to stop work long, though.”

“I know. I just want to say hel o.” And destroy something dangerous, something I’m not supposed to have. Something more likely to be found at an old library than anywhere else, if they truly do record the composition of everything burned in the incineration tubes.

I pick up one of the dry triangles of toast tucked inside my foilware, thinking of the way the two poems looked on the paper. I remember many of the words, but not al of them, and I want al of them. Every last one. Is there any way I can sneak one more glance before I destroy the paper? Is there any way to make the words last?

If only we stil knew how to write instead of just type things into our scribes. Then I could write them down again someday. Then I might be able to have them when I am old.