chapter 9
Two days later, I stand with a group of other students in front of the main building of the Arboretum. An early morning mist lifts around us, shapes of people and trees appearing, it seems, out of nowhere.
“Have you ever done this before?” the girl next to me asks. I don’t know her at all, so she must be from another Borough, a different Second School.
“Not really,” I say, distracted by the fact that one of the figures appearing out of the mist has the shape of Ky Markham. He moves quiet and strong. Careful. When he sees me, he lifts his hand to wave. Apparently he has signed up for hiking as his summer leisure activity, too. After a second’s pause, during which I smile and wave back at Ky, I add, “No. I’ve been walking. Never hiking.”
“No one has done this before,” says Lon, an annoying boy that I know from Second School. “It hasn’t been offered in years.”
“My grandfather knew how,” I say.
Lon won’t shut up. “Knew? As in past tense? Is he dead?”
Before I can answer, an Officer in Army green clears his throat as he comes to stand in front of us. He’s older with crisp-short white hair and olive skin. His coloring and bearing remind me of Grandfather.
“Welcome,” the Officer says in a voice as clipped and sharp as his hair. He does not sound welcoming, and I realize that the similarities to Grandfather do not go far. I have to stop looking for Grandfather. He won’t materialize from the trees, no matter how much I wish it could happen. “I’m your instructor. You will address me as Sir.”
Lon can’t stop himself. “Do we get to go on the Hill?”
The Officer fixes him with a gaze and Lon wilts.
“No one,” the Officer says, “speaks without my permission. Is that understood?”
We all nod.
“We’re not going to waste any time. Let’s get started.”
He points behind him to one of the thickly forested Arboretum hills. Not the Hill, not the big one, but one of the smaller foothills that are usually off-limits unless you’re an Arboretum employee. These small hills are not that high, but my mother tells me that they are still a good climb through underbrush and growth.
“Get to the top of it,” he says, turning on his heel. “I’ll be waiting.”
Is he serious? No tips? No training before we start?
The Officer disappears into the undergrowth.
Apparently he is serious. I feel a small smile lifting the corners of my mouth, and I shake my head to get rid of it. I am the first to follow the Officer into the trees. They are thick summer green and when I push my way through them, they smell like Grandfather. Perhaps he is in the trees after all. And I think, If I ever dared to open that paper, this would be the place.
I hear other people moving through the trees around me and behind me. The forest, even this type of semicultivated forest, is a noisy place, especially with all of us tromping through it. Bushes smack, sticks crunch, and someone swears nearby. Probably Lon. I move faster. I have to fight against some of the bushes, but I make good progress.
My sorting mind wishes I could identify the birdcalls around me and name the plants and flowers I see. My mother likely knows most of them, but I won’t ever have that kind of specialized knowledge unless working in the Arboretum becomes my vocation.
The climb gets harder and steeper but not impossible. The little hill is still part of the Arboretum proper, so it isn’t truly wild. My shoes become dirty, the soles covered in pine needles and leaves. I stop for a moment and look for a place to scrape off some of the mud so I can move faster. But, here in the Arboretum, the fallen trees and branches are all removed immediately after they fall. I have to settle for scraping my feet, one at a time, along the bark-bumped side of a tree.
My feet feel lighter when I start walking again and I pick up speed. I see a smooth, round rock that looks like a polished egg, like the gift Bram gave to Grandfather. I leave it there, small and brown in the grass, and I move even faster, pushing the branches out of my way and ignoring the scratches on my hands. Even when a pine branch snaps back and I feel the sharp slap of needles and sinewy branch on my face, I don’t stop.
I’m going to be the first one to the top of this hill and I’m glad. There is a lightness to the trees ahead of me, and I know it is because there is sky and sun behind them instead of more forest. I’m almost there. Look at me, Grandfather, I think to myself, but of course he can’t hear me.
Look at me.
I veer suddenly and duck into the bushes. I fight my way through until I crouch alone in the middle of a thick patch of tangled leaves where I hope I will be well concealed. Dark brown plainclothes make good camouflage.
My hands shake as I pull out the paper. Was this what I planned all along when I tucked the compact inside the pocket of my plainclothes this morning? Did I know somehow that I’d find the right moment here in the woods?
I don’t know where else to read it. If I read it at home someone might find me. The same is true of the air train and school and work. It’s not quiet in this forest, crowded with vegetation and thick, muggy morning air wet against my skin. Bugs hum and birds sing. My arm brushes against a leaf and a drop of dew falls onto the paper with a sound like ripe fruit dropping to the ground.
What did Grandfather give me?
I hold the weight of this secret in my palm and then I open it.
I was right; the words are old. But even though I don’t recognize the type, I recognize the format.
Grandfather gave me poetry.
Of course. My great-grandmother. The Hundred Poems. I know without having to check on the school ports that this poem is not one of them. She took a great risk hiding this paper, and my grandfather and grandmother took a great risk keeping it. What poems could be worth losing everything for?
The very first line stops me in my tracks and brings tears to my eyes and I don’t know why except that this one line speaks to me as nothing else ever has.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
I read on, through words I do not understand and ones that I do.
I know why it spoke to Grandfather:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
And as I read on, I know why it speaks to me:
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
My words have forked no lightning. Grandfather even told me this, before he died, when I gave him that letter that I didn’t truly write. Nothing I have written or done has made any difference in this world, and suddenly I know what it means to rage, and to crave.
I read the whole poem and eat it up, drink it up. I read about meteors and a green bay and fierce tears and even though I don’t understand all of it—the language is too old—I understand enough. I understand why my grandfather loved this poem because I love it too. All of it. The rage and the light.
The line under the title of the poem says Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953.
There is another poem on the other side of the paper. It’s called “Crossing the Bar,” and it was written by someone who lived even further in the past than Dylan Thomas—Lord Alfred Tennyson. 1809-1892.
So long ago, I think. So long ago they lived and died.
And they, like Grandfather, will never come back.
Greedy, I read the second poem, too. I read the words of both poems over again several times, until I hear the sharp snap of a stick near me. Quickly, I fold up the paper and put it away. I have lingered too long. I have to go; to make up the time I’ve lost.
I have to run.
I don’t hold back; this isn’t the tracker, so I can push myself hard, through the branches and up the hill. The words of the Thomas poem are so wild and beautiful that I keep repeating them silently to myself as I run. Over and over I think do not go gentle, do not go gentle, do not go gentle. It isn’t until I’m almost at the top of the hill that realization hits me: There’s a reason they didn’t keep this poem.
This poem tells you to fight.
One more branch stings my face as I break through the clearing, but I don’t stop—I push out into the open. I look around for the Officer. He’s not there, but someone else is already at the top. Ky Markham.
To my surprise, we are alone on top of the hill. No Officer. No other hikers.
Ky’s more relaxed than I have ever seen him, leaning back on his elbows with his face tipped toward the sun and his eyes closed. He looks different and unguarded. Looking at him, I realize that his eyes are where I notice most the distance he keeps. Because when he hears me, he opens them and looks at me, and it almost happens. I almost catch a glimpse of something real before I see again what he wants me to see.
The Officer appears out of the trees next to me. He moves quietly, and I wonder what he’s observed in the woods. Did he see me? He looks down at the datapod in his hand and then back up at me. “Cassia Reyes?” he asks. Apparently I was predicted to finish second. My stop must not have been as long as I thought.
“Yes.”
“Sit there and wait,” the Officer says, pointing toward the grassy clearing at the top of the hill. “Enjoy the view. According to this, it’s going to be a few minutes before anyone else gets up here.” He gestures to the datapod and then disappears back into the trees.
I pause for a moment before I walk toward Ky, trying to calm down. My heart pounds, fast, from the running. And from the sound in the trees.
“Hello,” Ky says, when I get closer.
“Hello.” I sit on the grass next to him. “I didn’t know you were doing hiking, too.”
“My mother thought it would be a good choice.” I notice how easily he uses the word “mother” to describe his aunt Aida. I think about how he has slipped into his life here, how he became who everyone expected him to be in Mapletree Borough. Despite being new and different, he did not stand out for long.
In fact, I’ve never seen him finish first in anything before, and I speak before I think. “You beat us all today,” I say, as if that fact weren’t obvious.
“Yes,” he says, looking at me. “Exactly as predicted. I grew up in the Outer Provinces and have had the most experience with activities like this.” He speaks formally, as if reciting data, but I notice a sheen of sweat across his face; and the way he’s stretching his legs out in front of him looks familiar. Ky’s been running, too, and he must be fast. Do they have trackers in the Outer Provinces? If not, what did he run to out there? Were there also things he had to run from?
Before I can stop myself, I ask Ky something that I should not ask: “What happened to your mother?”
His eyes flash to me, surprised. He knows I don’t mean Aida, and I know that no one else has ever asked him that question. I don’t know what made me do it now; perhaps Grandfather’s death and what I’ve read in the woods have left me on edge and vulnerable. Perhaps I don’t want to dwell on who might have seen me back in the trees.
I should apologize. But I don’t and it’s not because I feel like being mean. It’s because I think he might want to tell me.
But I am mistaken. “You shouldn’t ask me that question,” he says. He doesn’t look at me, so all I can see is one side of him. His profile, his dark hair wet with the mist and the water that fell from the trees as he passed through them. He smells like forest, and I lift my hands to my face to smell them—to see if I do, too. It might be my imagination, but it seems to me that my fingers smell like ink and paper.
Ky’s right. I know better than to ask a question like that. But then he asks me something that he shouldn’t ask. “Who did you lose?”
“What do you mean?”
“I can tell,” he says simply. He’s looking at me now. His eyes are still blue.
The sun feels hot on the back of my neck and the top of my hair. I close my eyes the way Ky did earlier and tip my head back so that I can feel the heat on my eyelids and across the bridge of my nose.
Neither of us says anything. I don’t keep my eyes closed for long, but when I open them the sunlight still blinds me for a moment. In that moment, I know I want to tell Ky. “My grandfather died last week.”
“Was it unexpected?”
“No,” I say, but really, in some ways, it was. I did not expect Grandfather to say the things he said. But I did expect his death. “No,” I say again. “It was his eightieth birthday.”
“That’s right,” Ky says thoughtfully, almost to himself. “People here die on their eightieth birthday.”
“Yes. Isn’t it like that where you came from?” I’m surprised that the words escaped my mouth—not two seconds ago he reminded me not to ask about his past. This time, though, he answers me.
“Eighty is . . . harder to achieve,” he says.
I hope that the surprise doesn’t show on my face. Are there different death ages in different places?
People call and feet crunch from the edge of the forest. The Officer steps out of the bushes again and asks people their names as they break into the clearing.
I shift my position to stand up and I swear I hear the compact in my pocket chink against my tablet container. Ky turns to look at me and I hold my breath. I wonder if he can tell that there are words in my head, words I am struggling to remember and memorize. Because I know that I can never open the paper again. I have to get rid of it. Sitting here next to Ky, drinking in the sun with my skin, my mind is clear— and I let myself realize what that sound in the woods meant earlier. That sharp, stick-snapping sound.
Someone saw me.
Ky takes a breath, leans in closer. “I saw you,” he says, his voice soft and deep like water falling in the distance. He is careful with his words, speaking them so they can’t be overheard. “In the woods.”
Then. For the first time I can remember, he touches me. His hand on my arm, fast and hot and gone before I know it. “You have to be careful. Something like that—”
“I know.” I want to touch him back, to put my hand on his arm too, but I don’t. “I’m going to destroy it.”
His face stays calm but I hear the urgency in his tone. “Can you do it without getting caught?”
“I think so.”
“I could help you.” He glances over at the Officer as he says this, casually, and I realize something that I haven’t noticed until now because he’s so good at hiding it. Ky always acts as though someone watches him. And, apparently, he watches back.
“How did you beat me to the top?” I ask suddenly. “If you saw me in the woods?”
Ky looks surprised by the question. “I ran.”
“I ran too,” I say.
“I must be faster,” he says, and for a moment I see a hint of teasing, almost a smile. Then it’s gone, and he’s serious again, urgent. “Do you want me to help you?”
“No. No, I can do it.” Then, because I don’t want him to think I’m an idiot, a risk-taker for the sake of risk-taking, I say more than I should. “My grandfather gave it to me. I shouldn’t have kept it as long as I did. But . . . the words are so beautiful.”
“Can you remember them without it?”
“For now.” I have the mind of a sorter, after all. “But I know I won’t be able to keep them forever.”
“And you want to?”
He thinks I’m stupid. “They are so beautiful,” I repeat lamely.
The Officer calls out; more people come through the trees; someone calls to Ky, someone calls to me. We separate, say good-bye, walk to different places on the top of the little hill.
Everyone looks out into the distance at something. Ky and his friends face the dome of City Hall, talking about something; the Officer looks out at the Hill. The group I stand with gazes off toward the Arboretum’s meal hall and chatters about our lunch, about getting back to Second School, whether or not the air trains will be on time. Someone laughs, because the air trains are always on time.
A line from the poem comes to my mind: there on the sad height.
I tilt my head back again and look at the sun through my closed eyelids. It is stronger than I am; it burns red against the black.
The questions in my mind seem to make a humming sound, like that of the bugs in the woods earlier. What happened to you in the Outer Provinces? What Infraction did your father commit that made you an Aberration? Do you think I’m crazy for wanting to keep the poems? What is it about your voice that makes me want to hear you speak?
Are you supposed to be my Match?
Later, I realize that the one question that didn’t even cross my mind was the most urgent one of all: Will you keep my secret?