chapter 2
The whispers rise soft around me like birds beating their wings under the dome of City Hall. “Your Match is here this evening,” the hostess says, smiling. The people around me smile as well, and their murmurs become louder. Our Society is so vast, our Cities so many, that the odds of your perfect Match being someone in your own City are minuscule. It’s been many years since such a thing happened here.
These thoughts tumble in my mind, and I close my eyes briefly as I realize what this means, not in abstract, but for me, the girl in the green dress. I might know my Match. He might be someone who goes to the same Second School that I do, someone I see every day, someone—
“Xander Thomas Carrow.”
At his table, Xander stands up. A sea of watching faces and white tablecloths, of glinting crystal glasses and shining silver boxes stretches between us.
I can’t believe it.
This is a dream. People turn their eyes on me and on the handsome boy in the dark suit and blue cravat. It doesn’t feel real until Xander smiles at me. I think, I know that smile, and suddenly I’m smiling, too, and the rush of applause and smell of the lilies fully convince me that this is actually happening. Dreams don’t smell or sound as strong as this. I break protocol a bit to give Xander a tiny wave, and his smile widens.
The hostess says, “You may take your seats.” She sounds glad that we are so happy; of course, we should be. We are each other’s best Match, after all.
When she brings me the silver box, I hold it carefully. But I already know much of what is inside. Not only do Xander and I go to the same school, we also live on the same street; we’ve been best friends for as long as I can remember. I don’t need the microcard to show me pictures of Xander as a child because I have plenty of them in my mind. I don’t need to download a list of favorites to memorize because I already know them. Favorite color: green. Favorite leisure activity: swimming. Favorite recreation activity: games.
“Congratulations, Cassia,” my father whispers to me, his expression relieved. My mother says nothing, but she beams with delight and embraces me tightly. Behind her, another girl stands up, watching the screen.
The man sitting next to my father whispers, “What a piece of luck for your family. You don’t have to trust her future to someone you know nothing about.”
I’m surprised by the unhappy edge to his tone; the way his comment seems to be right on the verge of insubordination. His daughter, the nervous one wearing the pink dress, hears it, too; she looks uncomfortable and shifts slightly in her seat. I don’t recognize her. She must go to one of the other Second Schools in our City.
I sneak another glance at Xander, but there are too many people in my way and I can’t see him. Other girls take their turns standing up. The screen lights up for each of them. No one else has a dark screen. I am the only one.
Before we leave, the hostess of the Match Banquet asks Xander and me and our families to step aside and speak with her. “This is an unusual situation,” she says, but she corrects herself immediately. “Not unusual. Excuse me. It is merely uncommon.” She smiles at both of us. “Since you already know each other, things will proceed differently for you. You will know much of the initial information about each other.” She gestures at our silver boxes. “There are a few new courtship guidelines included on your microcards, so you should familiarize yourselves with those when you have an opportunity.”
“We’ll read them tonight,” Xander promises sincerely. I try to keep from rolling my eyes in amusement because he sounds exactly the way he does when a teacher gives him a learning assignment. He’ll read the new guidelines and memorize them, as he read and memorized the official Matching material. And then I flush again, as a paragraph from that material flashes across my mind:
If you choose to be Matched, your Marriage Contract will take place when you are twenty-one. Studies have shown that the fertility of both men and women peaks at the age of twenty-four. The Matching System has been constructed to allow those who Match to have their children near this age—providing for the highest likelihood of healthy offspring.
Xander and I will share a Marriage Contract. We will have children together.
I don’t have to spend the next few years learning everything about him because I already know him, almost as well as I know myself.
The tiny feeling of loss deep within my heart surprises me. My peers will spend the next few days swooning over pictures of their Matches, bragging about them during meal hour at school, waiting for more and more bits of information to be revealed. Anticipating their first meeting, their second meeting, and so on. That mystery does not exist for Xander and me. I won’t wonder what he is like or daydream about our first meeting.
But then Xander looks at me and asks, “What are you thinking about?” and I answer, “That we are very lucky,” and I mean it. There is still much to discover. Until now, I have only known Xander as a friend. Now he is my Match.
The hostess corrects me gently. “Not lucky, Cassia. There is no luck in the Society.”
I nod. Of course. I should know better than to use such an archaic, inaccurate term. There’s only probability now. How likely something is to occur, or how unlikely.
The hostess speaks again. “It has been a busy evening, and it’s getting late. You can read the courtship guidelines later, another day. There’s plenty of time.”
She’s right. That’s what the Society has given us: time. We live longer and better than any other citizens in the history of the world. And it’s thanks in large part to the Matching System, which produces physically and emotionally healthy offspring.
And I’m a part of it all.
My parents and the Carrows can’t stop exclaiming over how wonderful this all is, and as we walk down the steps of City Hall together, Xander leans over and says, “You’d think they’d arranged everything themselves.”
“I can’t believe it,” I say, and I feel opulent and a little giddy. I can’t believe that this is me, wearing a beautiful green dress, holding gold in one hand and silver in the other, walking next to my best friend. My Match.
“I can,” Xander says, teasing me. “In fact, I knew all along. That’s why I wasn’t nervous.”
I tease him back. “I knew, too. That’s why I was.”
We’re laughing so much that when the air train pulls up neither of us notice for a moment, and then there is a brief moment of awkwardness as Xander holds out his hand to help me climb aboard. “Here,” he says, his voice serious. For a moment, I don’t know what to do. There is something new in touching each other now, and my hands are full.
Then Xander wraps his hand around mine, pulling me onto the train with him.
“Thank you,” I say as the doors close behind us.
“Any time,” he says. He does not let go of my hand; the little silver box I hold creates a barrier between us even as another one breaks. We have not held hands like this since we were children. In doing that tonight, we move across the invisible divide that separates friendship from something more. I feel a tingle along my arm; to be touched, by my Match, is a luxury that the other Matchees at Banquets tonight do not share.
The air train carries us away from the sparkling, icy-white lights of City Hall toward the softer yellow porch lights and streetlights of the Boroughs. As the streets flash past on our way home to Mapletree Borough, I glance over at Xander. The gold of the lights outside is similar to the color of his hair, and his face is handsome and confident and good. And familiar, for the most part. If you’ve always known how to look at someone, it’s strange when that directive changes. Xander has always been someone I could not have, and I have been the same for him.
Now everything is different.
My ten-year-old brother, Bram, waits for us on the front porch. When we tell him about the Banquet, he can’t believe the news. “You’re Matched with Xander? I already know the person you’re going to marry? That’s so strange.”
“You’re the one who’s strange.” I tease him, and he dodges me as I pretend to grab him. “Who knows. Maybe your Match lives right on this street, too. Maybe it’s—”
Bram covers his ears. “Don’t say it. Don’t say it—”
“Serena,” I say, and he turns away, pretending that he didn’t hear me. Serena lives next door. She and Bram torment each other incessantly.
“Cassia,” my mother says disapprovingly, glancing around to make sure that no one heard. We are not supposed to disparage other members of our street and our community. Mapletree Borough is known for being tight-knit and exemplary in this way. No thanks to Bram, I think to myself.
“I’m teasing, Mama.” I know she can’t stay mad at me. Not on the night of my Match Banquet, when she has been reminded of how quickly I am growing up.
“Come inside,” my father says. “It’s almost curfew. We can talk about everything tomorrow.”
“Was there cake?” Bram asks as my father opens the door. They all look back at me, waiting.
I don’t move. I don’t want to go inside yet.
If I do, that means that this night is coming to an end, and I don’t want that. I don’t want to take off the dress and go back to my plainclothes; I don’t want to return to the usual days, which are good, but nothing special like this. “I’ll come in soon. Just a few minutes more.”
“Don’t be long,” my father says gently. He doesn’t want me to break curfew. It is the City’s curfew, not his, and I understand.
“I won’t,” I promise.
I sit down on the steps of my house, careful, of course, of my borrowed dress. I glance down at the folds of the beautiful material. It does not belong to me, but this evening does, this time that is dark and bright and full of both the unexpected and the familiar. I look out into the new spring night and turn my face to the stars.
I don’t linger outside for long because tomorrow, Saturday, is a busy day. I’ll need to report to my trial work position at the sorting center early in the morning. After that I’ll have my Saturday night free-rec hours, one of the few times I get to spend with my friends outside of Second School.
And Xander will be there.
Back in my bedroom, I shake the tablets out of the little hollow in the base of the compact. Then I count—one, two, three; blue, green, red—as I slide the tablets back into their usual metal cylinder.
I know what the blue and green tablets do. I don’t know anyone who knows for certain what the red tablet does. There have been rumors about it for years.
I climb into bed and push away thoughts of the red tablet. For the first time in my life, I’m allowed to dream of Xander.