Matched

I begin walking again, not bothering with cairns or cloths or anything that might slow me down. I’m careless and I disturb a group of birds, which flutters up and away from us into the sky. White on blue, like the colors of City Hal . Like the colors of angels.

“They’re flying your name,” Ky says from behind me.

I turn around and I see him standing in the forest, the white poem in his hand.

The birds’ cries fly away on the air with them. In the quiet that fol ows I don’t know who moves first, Ky or me, but soon there we are, standing close but not touching, breathing in but not kissing.

Ky leans toward me, his eyes holding mine, near enough that I can hear the slight crackle of the poem as he moves.

I close my eyes as his lips touch warm on my cheek. I think of the cottonwood seeds brushing against me that day on the air train. Soft, light, ful of promise.

CHAPTER 24

Ky gives me three gifts for my birthday. A poem, a kiss, and the hopeless, beautiful belief that things might work. When I open my eyes, as I put my hand up to the place on my cheek where his lips touched, I say, “I didn’t give you anything on your birthday, I don’t even know when it is.” And he says, “Don’t worry about that,” and I say, “What can I do?” and he answers, “Let me believe in this, al of this, and you believe it, too.”

And I do.

For one entire day I let his kiss burn on my cheek and into my blood, and I don’t push the memory away. I have kissed and been kissed before.

This is different. This, more than my real birthday the day of the Match Banquet, feels like a day to mark time by. This kiss, these words, they feel like beginning.

I let myself imagine futures that can never be, the two of us together. Even when I sort later that day, I keep my mind on the task at hand by pretending each number sorted is a code, a message to Ky that I wil keep our secret. I wil keep us safe; I won’t reveal a thing. Each sort I perform correctly keeps attention away from us.

Since it is not my turn for the sleep tags that night, I let my dreams take me where they wil . To my surprise, I don’t dream of Ky on the Hil . I dream of him sitting on the steps in front of my house, watching the wind shuffle the leaves of the maple tree. I dream of him taking me to the private dining hal and pul ing my chair out, bending so close to me that even the pretend candles flutter at his presence. I dream of the two of us digging up the newroses in his yard and of Ky teaching me how to use the artifact. Everything I dream is something simple and plain and everyday.

That’s how I know they are dreams. Because the simple and plain and everyday things are the ones that we can never have.

“How?” I ask him the next day on the Hil , once we are deep enough into the forest that no one can hear us. “How can we believe this might work?

The Official threatened to send you back to the Outer Provinces, Ky!”

Ky doesn’t answer for a moment, and I feel as though I’ve yel ed when real y I kept my voice as low as possible. Then we walk past the cairn from our last hike and he looks straight at me and I swear I feel that kiss again. But this time, I feel it on my lips instead.

“Have you ever heard of the prisoner’s dilemma?” Ky asks me.

“Of course.” Is he teasing me? “It’s the game you played against Xander. We’ve al played it before.”

“No, not the game. The Society changed the game. I mean the theory behind the game.”

I don’t know what he’s talking about. “I guess not.”

“If two people commit a crime together, are caught, and then separated and interrogated, what happens?”

I am stil lost. “I don’t know. What?”

“That’s their dilemma. Do they tel on each other in hopes that the Officials wil go easy on them—a plea bargain? Do they refuse to say anything that would betray their partner? The best scenario is for both to say nothing. Then they can both be safe.”

We’ve stopped near a group of fal en trees. “Safe,” I say.

Ky nods. “But that never happens.”

“Why not?”

“Because one prisoner wil almost always betray the other. They’l tel what they know to get a break.”

I think I know what he’s asking me. I’m getting better at reading his eyes, at knowing his thoughts. Perhaps it comes from knowing his story, from final y knowing more of him. I hand him a red cloth; neither of us try anymore not to let our fingers touch, come together, cling before letting go.

Ky continues. “But in the perfect scenario, neither would say anything.”

“And you think we can do that?”

“We’l never be safe,” Ky says, brushing my face with his hand. “I final y understand that. But I trust you. We’l keep each other as safe as we can for as long as we can.”

Which means that our kisses have to stay promises, promises left like his first kiss, soft on my cheek. Our lips do not meet. Not yet. For once we do that, the Infraction wil have been committed. The Society wil be betrayed. And so wil Xander. We both know this. How much time can we steal from them? From ourselves? Because I can see in his eyes that he wants that kiss as much as I do.