Matched

I climb down the stairs and walk toward the library. I’m out of place at this work site. But not forbidden. Stil , it would be better if no one saw me yet. I edge close enough to see down into the hole. The workers, most dressed in blue plainclothes, suck up piles of papers with the incineration tubes. My father told us that right when they thought they had gone through everything, they found steel boxes of books buried down in the basement. Almost as though someone tried to hide and preserve the books against the future. My father and the other Restoration specialists have been through the boxes and they haven’t found anything special, so they wil incinerate al of it.

One figure wears white. An Official. My father. Al workers have protective helmets, so I can’t see his face, but the confidence is back in his walk.

He moves purposeful y, in his element, giving directions and pointing out where he wants the tubes to go next.

Sometimes I forget that my father is an Official. I rarely see him on-duty, in his uniform, which he changes into at work. The sight of him in his uniform simultaneously comforts me—they didn’t take away his ranking after last night, at least not yet—and sets me on edge. It is strange to see people in different ways.

Another thought crosses my mind: before he turned seventy and was required to quit work, Grandfather was an Official. But it’s different with Papa and Grandfather, I tel myself. Neither of them are, or were, high-level Officials in places like the Match Department or the Safety Department.

Those are the ones that do most of the Official-type things, like implement rules. We’re thinkers, not enforcers: learners, not doers.

Most of the time. My great-grandmother, an Official herself, did steal that poem.

My father glances once at the sky, aware of the impending thunderstorm. Speed is important, but they have to be methodical. “We can’t just set things on fire,” he’s told me. “The tubes are like the incineration devices at home. They record the amount and type of the matter destroyed.” There are a few piles of books left and, as I watch, the workers move from one to another, fol owing his orders. It’s faster to incinerate individual pages instead of books, so they slice the books open, gutting them along the spines, preparing them for the tubes.

My father looks at the sky again and gestures in a “hurry up” motion to the other workers. I need to get back to school, but I keep watching.

I’m not the only one. As I glance up, over across the chasm of spiders and books, I see another figure in white. An Official. Watching, too.

Checking on my father.

The site personnel drag the incineration tube to a newly readied pile. The books’ backs are broken; their bones, thin and delicate, fal out. The workers shove them toward the incineration tube; they step on them. The bones crackle under their boots like leaves. It reminds me of fal , when the City brings around the incineration equipment to our neighborhoods and we shovel the fal en maple leaves into the tubes. My mother always laments the waste, since decayed leaves can be good fertilizer, just as my father laments the waste of the paper that could be recycled when he has to incinerate a library. But the higher Officials say some things are not worth saving. Sometimes it’s faster and more efficient to destroy.

One leaf escapes. Caught on a swirl of wind from the impending thunderstorm, it rises up, almost reaching my feet as I stand near the edge of this smal canyon that was once a library. It hovers there, so close I can almost see the words written on it, and then the wind dies down for a moment and it fal s back.

I glance up. Neither Official watches me. Not my father, not the other. My father is intent on the books he’s destroying; the other Official is intent on my father. It’s time.

I reach into my pocket and pul out the paper Grandfather gave me. I let go of it.

It dances on the air for a moment before it fal s, too. A fresh gust of wind almost saves it, but a worker catches sight of it and lifts a tube up to suck the paper from the air, to suck the words from the sky.

I’m sorry, Grandfather.

I stand and watch until al the bones are shoved into the incineration tubes, until al the words have been turned into ash and nothing.

I lingered too long at the library work site and I’m almost late for class. Xander waits for me near the main doors of Second School.

He pushes one of them open, holding its weight with his shoulder. “Is everything al right?” he asks quietly as I stop there in the doorway.

“Hi, Xander,” someone cal s out to him. He nods in their direction, but doesn’t look away.