Matched

For a moment, I think that I should tel Xander everything. Not just about what happened last night with the Officials, which is what has him worried, but everything. I should tel him about Ky’s face on the screen. I should tel him about Ky in the woods, how he saw the poem. I should tel Xander about the poem itself and the way it felt to let it go. Instead, I shake my head. I don’t want to talk right now.

Xander changes the subject, his eyes lighting up. “I almost forgot. I have something to tel you. There’s a new Saturday activity coming up.”

“Real y?” I ask, grateful to him for understanding, for not pressing further. “Is there a new showing?”

“No, even better. We can replant the flower beds in front of First School and eat dinner outside. Like a—what’s the word?—like a picnic. There’s going to be ice cream afterward, too.”

The enthusiasm in Xander’s voice makes me smile a little. “Xander, that’s nothing but a glorified work project. They want some free labor and they’re bribing us with ice cream.”

He grins at me. “I know, but it’s good to have a break. Keeps me fresh for the games the next time. So you want to plant, too, right? I know the spots wil fil up fast, so I signed you up already in case you did.”

A tiny bit of annoyance that he did this without talking to me first flashes through me, but it vanishes almost instantly when I notice that his smile seems a little awkward. He knows he’s crossed a line—he never would have done something like this before we were Matched—and the fact that he worries about it makes it al right. Besides, even though it is a glorified work project, I would have signed up in a heartbeat myself. Xander knows that. He knows me and he looks out for me.

“That’s fine,” I tel Xander. “Thanks.” He lets go of the door and we walk into the hal together. In the back of my mind I find myself wondering what Ky wil do that night. They don’t tel you about free-rec options at work. By the time he gets home and finds out about it, the spots wil likely be ful because of the newness of the activity and because of the ice cream. We could sign him up, though. I could walk over to one of the ports here at the school and . . .

Time’s up. The chime rings over the speakers in the hal .

Xander and I duck through the classroom door, slide into our desks and take out our readers and scribes. Piper usual y sits next to us in Applicable Sciences, but I don’t see her. “Where’s Piper?”

“I meant to tel you. She got her final work position today.”

“She did? What is it?”

But the chime rings again and I have to face front and wait to find out until after class. Piper has her vocation! A few people get them early, like Ky, but the rest of us receive them at some point during the year after our seventeenth birthday. One by one we get picked off until everyone is gone and there’s no one left in our year at Second School.

I hope Xander and Em don’t get cal ed for a long time. It wouldn’t be the same here without them, especial y without Xander. I glance over at him.

He gazes at the instructor as though this is al he wants to do in the world. His fingers tap on the scribe; he jiggles one foot impatiently, always ready to know more. It’s hard to keep up with him—he’s so smart, he learns so fast. What if he moves on soon to his vocation and leaves me behind?

Things are happening so quickly. Getting to my seventeenth birthday felt like steps taken slowly down a path where I saw each pebble, noticed each leaf, and felt pleasantly bored and anticipatory at the same time. Now it feels as if I am running down the path, flat out and breathing hard. It feels like I’l arrive at my Contract date in no time at al . Wil things ever slow down again?

I look away from Xander. Even if Xander gets his vocation first, we’re still Matched, I remind myself. He’s not going to leave me behind. He doesn’t know that I saw Ky’s face that day on the screen.

If I told Xander, would he understand? I think he would. I don’t think it would jeopardize our Match, or our friendship. Al the same, those are two things I don’t want to risk losing.

I look back up at the instructor. The window behind her is dark, the sky fil ed with heavy low clouds. I wonder what they’d look like from the top of the big Hil . Can you climb high enough to get above the clouds, look down on the rain from a place in the sun?

Without meaning to, I envision Ky on the hil , face turned to the warmth. I close my eyes for a moment, imagining I am up there too.

The thunderstorm final y hits in the middle of class. I picture the rain in that greenspace where I met with the Official, making the fountain overflow and pounding the bench where I sat. I imagine I can hear the drops slap as they hit the metal, sigh as they reach the grass and dirt. It is dark as evening outside. The water beats on the roof and streams through the rain gutters. The one window in our classroom is sheeted and shaded in rain and we can’t see out for the flood.