chapter 12
At work that evening, we have an interesting sort for a change. Even Norah becomes animated as she describes it to me at her desk. “We’re looking at different physical traits for a Matching pool,” she says. “Eye color. Hair color. Height and weight.”
“Is the Match Department going to use our sorts?” I ask.
She laughs. “Of course not. It’s for practice. This is to see if you pick up patterns in the Matchees’ data that the Officials have already noticed.”
Of course.
“There’s something else,” Norah adds. She lowers her voice, not because this is a secret but because she doesn’t want to distract the others from their work. “The Officials told me that they’re going to administer your next test personally.”
This is a good sign. This means that they want to see for themselves if I can work under pressure. This means that they may be considering me for one of the more interesting sorting-related vocations.
“Do you know when?”
She does, I can see, but she’s not supposed to tell me. “Sometime soon,” she says again, vaguely, and then she gives me one of her rare smiles. She turns back to her screen and I go to my station to get started.
This is good, I think. I might get an optimal vocation assignment if I can impress the Officials enough. Everything is going well again. I won’t think about Grandfather and the lost sample and the burned poems or my father and the Officials searching him. Or that Ky won’t ever get to be Matched to anyone or work anywhere besides the nutrition disposal center. I won’t think about any of it. It’s time to clear my mind and sort.
It is actually rather startling when you sort eye colors, how limited the possibilities truly are: such a small, finite number of options. Blue, brown, green, gray, hazel—these are all of the options for eye color, even with many ethnicities represented in the population. Long ago there were genetic mutations, like albinos, but those don’t exist anymore. Hair color is similarly limited: black, brown, blond, red.
So few options, and yet an infinite number of variations. For example, plenty of boys in this database have blue eyes and dark hair like Ky, but I am positive that not one of them looks as he does. And even if someone did, if one of those boys looked exactly like him or if he had a twin somehow, no one else could have the combination of movement and restraint, of honesty and secrecy, that Ky has. His face keeps appearing in my mind, but I know that it’s not the Society’s mistake anymore. It’s mine. I’m the one who keeps thinking of him when I should be thinking of Xander.
The tiny printer next to me beeps, and I jump.
I made a mistake and I didn’t notice my error within an acceptable time frame. A little slip of paper curls out onto the table next to me and I pick it up. “ERROR AT LINE 3568.” I hardly ever make errors, so this will cause interest. I go back to the line where the mistake was made and correct it. If this happens next week while the Officials are watching—
It won’t happen. I won’t let it happen. But before I lose myself in the sorting again, I allow myself one brief moment to think of Ky’s eyes, of his hand on my arm.
“Someone said a girl your age came to the work site today,” my father says. He came to meet me at the air-train stop, something he does now and then with Bram or me so that we can have a little one-on-one time before we get home. “Was it you?”
I nod. “They canceled hiking because of the rain, so I thought I’d come see you before school. Since I didn’t see you this morning. But you were busy and I didn’t have much time. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay.”
“You should come again, if you want to,” he says. “I’m back in the office all next week. That’s a much shorter ride.”
“I know. Maybe I will.” My answers sound a little distant, and I hope he can’t tell that I’m still slightly angry with him for losing the sample. I know it’s irrational and that he feels horrible, but I’m still upset. I miss my grandfather. I held on to that tube, to the hope that he might come back.
My father stops and looks at me. “Cassia. Did you have something you wanted to ask me? Or tell me? Is that why you came to the site?”
His kind face, so like Grandfather’s, looks worried. I have to tell him. “Grandfather gave me a paper,” I say, and my father turns instantly pale. “It was inside my compact. There were old words on it—”
“Shhh,” my father says. “Wait.”
A couple walks toward us. We smile and say hello and separate around them on the sidewalk. When they are far enough away my father stops. We stand in front of our house now, but I can tell that he doesn’t want to continue this conversation inside. I understand. I have something I want to ask him and I want the answer before we go where the port hums and waits in the foyer. I’m worried we won’t have a chance to talk about this again.
“What did you do with it?” he asks.
“I destroyed it. Today, at the work site. It seemed like the safest place.”
I think I see a flash of disappointment cross my father’s face but then he nods. “Good. It’s best that way. Especially right now.”
I know he’s referring to the visit from the Officials, and before I can stop myself I ask, “How could you lose the sample?”
My father covers his face with his hands, a gesture so sudden and anguished that I take a step back.
“I didn’t lose it.” He takes a deep breath, and I don’t want him to finish but I can’t find the words to stop him. “I destroyed it. That day. He made me promise that I would. He wanted to die on his own terms.”
The word “die” makes me cringe, but my father isn’t finished. “He didn’t want them to be able to bring him back. He wanted to choose what happened to him.”
“But you had a choice, too,” I whisper, angry. “You didn’t have to do it. And now he’s gone.”
Gone. Like the Thomas poem. I was right to destroy the poem. What did Grandfather think I could or would do with it? My family doesn’t rebel. He didn’t, aside from the small act of keeping the poem. And there’s no reason to rebel. Look what the Society gives us. Good lives. A chance at immortality. The only way it can be ruined is if we ruin it ourselves. Like my father did, because my grandfather asked him to.
Even as I turn away from my father and run inside, eyes burning with tears, part of me understands him and why he chose to do what Grandfather asked. Isn’t that what I’m doing, too, every time I think the words of the poem or try to be strong without the green tablet?
It’s hard to know which ways to be strong. Was it weak to let go of the paper, watch it drift to its death as silent and white and full of promise as a cottonwood seed? Is it weak to feel the way I do when I think of Ky Markham? To know exactly the spot on my skin where he touched me?
Whatever I’ve been feeling for Ky must stop. Now. I am Matched with Xander. It does not matter that Ky has been places I’ve never been or that he wept during the showing when he thought no one could see. It does not matter that he knows about the beautiful words I read in the woods. Following the rules, staying safe. Those are the things that matter. Those are the ways I have to be strong.
I will try to forget that Ky said “home” when he looked into my eyes.