Matched

“Do you think anyone believes in them anymore?” he asks.

“I don’t know. No. Do you?”

“I believe in you,” he says, his voice hushed and almost reverent. “That’s more faith than I ever thought I’d have.”

We move quickly through the trees. I feel more than see that we must be nearing the top of the Hil . Eventual y, our work here wil be done and this time wil be over. It doesn’t take long anymore to traverse the first part of the Hil ; everything is tamped down and wel marked and we know where we are going, at least initial y. But there is stil unexplored territory left. There are stil things to discover. For that I am grateful. I’m so grateful that I wish I did believe in angels so that I could express my gratitude to someone or something.

“Tel me more,” Ky says.

“I wore a green dress.”

“Green,” he says, glancing back at me. “I’ve never seen you in green.”

“You’ve never seen me in anything but brown or black,” I tel him. “Brown plainclothes. Black swimwear.” I flush.

“I take back what I said,” he says later, as the whistle blows. “I have seen you in green. I see you in green everyday, here in the trees.”

The next day, I ask him, “Can you tel me why you cried in the showing that day?”

“You saw me?”

I nod.

“I couldn’t help it.” His gaze is distant, hard now. “I didn’t know they had footage like that. It could have been my vil age. It was definitely one of the Outer Provinces.”

“Wait.” I think of the people, dark shadows running. “You’re saying this was—”

“Real,” he finished. “Yes. Those aren’t actors. It’s not a stage. It happens in al the Outer Provinces, Cassia. When I left, it was happening more and more.”

Oh no.

The whistle wil blow soon, I can tel . He knows, too. But I reach for him and hold on here in the forest where the trees screen us and the birdcal s cover our voices. The entire Hil is complicit in our embrace.

I pul away first because I have something to write before our time ends. I’ve been practicing in air, but I want to carve in earth.

“Close your eyes,” I say to Ky, and I bend down, his breathing above me while he waits. “There,” I say, and he looks at what I’ve written.

I love you.

I feel embarrassed, as though I am a child who has tapped out these words on her scribe and held them out for a boy in her First School class to read. My writing is awkward and straggly and not smooth like Ky’s.

Why are some things easier to write than say?

Stil , I feel undeniably brave and vulnerable as I stand there in the forest with words that I cannot take back. My first written words, other than our names. It’s not much of a poem, but I think Grandfather would understand.

Ky looks at me. For the first time since the showing, I see tears in his eyes.

“You don’t have to write it back,” I say, feeling self-conscious. “I just wanted you to know.”

“I don’t want to write it back,” he tel s me. And then he says it, right out there on the Hil , and of al the words I have hidden and saved and treasured, these are the ones I wil never forget, the most important ones of al .

“I love you.”

Lightning. Once it has forked, hot-white, from sky to earth, there is no going back.

It’s time. I feel it, I know it. My eyes on him, his on me, and both of us breathing, watching, tired of waiting. Ky closes his eyes, but mine are stil open. What wil it feel like, his lips on mine? Like a secret told, a promise kept? Like that line in the poem—a shower of all my days—silvery rain fal ing al around me, where the lightning meets the earth?

The whistle blows below us and the moment breaks. We are safe.

For now.

CHAPTER 26

We hurry back down from the Hil . I see glimpses of white through the trees, and I know they are not the birds we saw earlier. These white figures aren’t made for flight. “Officials,” I say to Ky, and he nods.

We report to the Officer, who looks a bit preoccupied with the visitors waiting for us. I wonder again how he ended up with this assignment. Even supervising the marking of the big Hil seems like a waste of time for someone of his rank. As I turn away, I see al the lines that discipline has etched in his face and I realize again that he is not very young.

The Officials, I discover when I get closer, are ones I’ve seen before. The ones who tested my sorting abilities. The blond female Official takes charge this time; apparently this is her portion of the test to administer. “Hel o, Cassia,” she says. “We’re here to take you to your on-site portion of the sorting test. Can you come with us now?” She glances over at the Officer with a touch of deference in her look.

“Go on,” the Officer says, glancing at the others who have returned from the Hil . “You can al go. We’l meet here again tomorrow.”

A few of the other hikers look at me with interest but not concern; many of us await our final work positions and Officials always seem to be a part of that process. “We’l take the air train,” the blond Official says to me. “The test wil only last a few hours. You should be home in time for your evening meal.”