Matched

Bram looks terrified but excited. He’s stil not old enough to carry his own red tablet, so my father gives him the extra one he carries.

My Official starts checking people, too. She moves closer and closer to me, but I can’t take my eyes from Bram and then from Em as she takes the tablet. For a moment, I remember my dream and I feel horror as I watch her. But nothing happens. Nothing that I can see, anyway.

And then it is Xander’s turn. He glances over and sees me watching him, and an expression crosses his face that is nothing but pain. I want to look away, but I don’t. I watch as Xander nods to me and lifts the red tablet toward me, almost in a toast.

Before I see him take it, someone blocks my view of everyone and theirs of me. It’s my Official.

“Let me see your tablet, please,” she says.

“I have it.” I hold out my hand but I don’t open my palm.

I think I almost see her smile. Even though I know she carries extra tablets—I’ve seen them—she doesn’t offer me one yet.

Her glance flickers down to the grass at my feet and then back up to my face. I lift my arm and pretend to put something in my mouth and then I swal ow, hard. And she moves on to the next person.

Even though this is what I want, I hate her. She wants me to remember what happened here. What I’ve done.

CHAPTER 30

When the darkness final y lifts, it is a flat, hot, steel-colored morning, a morning without dimension or depth. The houses around me could be the set for a showing; they could be pictures on a bigscreen. I feel that if I walk too far I’l walk right into canvas or through a paper wal and then out into black-nothing and the end of everything.

Somehow I’ve run out of fear; I feel lethargic instead, which is almost worse. Why care about a flat planet populated by flat people? Who cares about a place where there is no Ky?

This is one of the reasons I need Ky, I realize. Because when I am with him, I feel.

But he is gone. I saw it happen.

I made it happen.

Did Sisyphus have to do this, too? I wonder. Stop for a minute and concentrate on holding firm, on pushing the rock just enough to keep it from rolling down and crushing him, before he could even think about trying to climb again?

�� The red tablet took effect almost immediately after the Officers and Officials shepherded us home. The events of the past twelve hours have been wiped from my family’s minds. Within the hour, a delivery of new containers and tablets arrived with a letter of explanation that ours were found to be defective and removed earlier this morning. Everyone else in my family accepts the explanation without question. They have other things to worry about.

My mother is confused—where did she put her datapod for work when she finished with it last night? Bram can’t remember whether he finished writing his assignment on his scribe.

“Wel , turn it on and check, honey,” my mother says, flustered. My father looks a little blank, too, but not as confused. I think he’s experienced this before, possibly many times in his line of work. While the tablet stil works, he seems less bewildered by the feeling of disorientation.

Which is good, because the Officials haven’t finished with our family yet.

“Private message for Mol y Reyes,” the generic voice from the port cal s out.

My mother looks up, surprised. “I’l be late for work,” she protests softly, although whoever sent this message can’t hear her. They also can’t see her straighten her shoulders before she walks over to the port and puts on the earpiece. The screen darkens, the picture on it only visible from the exact spot in which she stands.

“What now?” says Bram. “Should I wait?”

“No, go on to school,” my father tel s him. “We don’t want you to be late.”

On his way out the door, Bram complains, “I always miss everything.” I wish I could tel him that wasn’t true; but then again, would I real y want him to keep the memory of what happened this morning?

Something happens to me when I look at Bram leaving our house, and things become real again. Bram is real. I am real. Ky is real, and I need to get started on finding him. Now.

“I’m going into the City for the morning,” I tel my father.

“Don’t you have hiking?” he asks, and then he shakes his head as if to clear it. “Sorry. I remember. Summer leisure activities ended early this year, right? That’s why Bram’s already on his way to school instead of swimming. My mind’s foggy this morning.” He doesn’t seem surprised by that fact, and I think again that this is something that’s happened to him before. And I remember how he let my mother take the red tablet first; somehow he knew it wouldn’t hurt her.

“They didn’t assign us anything else to do yet to take the place of hiking,” I tel my father. “So I have time to go into the City before Second School.” This in itself is an oversight, another little hitch in the wel -oiled machine of our Society that proves something is wrong somewhere.