Crossed (Matched, #2)

by Ally Condie

I know all of this because I’ve been to the edge several times. But I’ve never been inside. “What are you grinning about?” Vick asks me,

“Aren’t you going to give us a speech or anything?” Eli asks. “We just got here.”

“I’m not the Society’s spokesman.” “But you’re the only one with one of those,” Eli says, pointing at the port clipped to Vick’s belt.

They’ll have heard the same lecture we did when we came in on the air ships about how the Society needs us to act like villagers and civilians to draw out the Enemy. How it’s only a six-month job, and once we go back to Society our Aberration status will be wiped clean.

pulls the port from his belt and tosses it to a decoy who has been around a couple of weeks. “Take this for a run,” he says. “Make sure it still works out by the end of the town.”

“The ammunition is all blanks. So don’t bother trying to defend yourselves.” Eli interrupts. “But we practiced firing with them back in training camp,” he protests.

“If this is a village, where are all the women and kids?” “You’re a kid,” Vick says. “Am not,” Eli says. “And I’m not a girl. Where are they?” “No girls,” Vick says. “No women here.”

“They’re killing us anyway. No one cares. And now we’ve got work to do. We’re supposed to be a village full of farmers. So let’s get farming.”

“At least we have enough water to drink,” I say to Vick, gesturing to the full canteen. “Thanks to you.” “Don’t thank me,” Vick says. He lowers his voice. “There’s not even enough to drown in.”

“No wonder we don’t worry about there being no girls or kids,” Eli says behind me. “The Enemy must know this isn’t a real village just from looking at

haven’t fallen into the trap of talking to anyone while we work, except for Vick.

“It’s stupid,” I tell Eli, “but it’s more realistic than some of the stuff the Society has done. A few of the villages around here started as farming communities for Aberrations.

So it’s not completely impossible that someone would be farming here.”

“Here,” he says, tossing the port to Eli, who has stopped crying. “Take this for a run.”

“My village was only a few miles away. I know the area.”

There it is. The real question. The one we all ask ourselves all the time.

“Are you thinking about going back to your village?” Vick asks. “Can someone there help you?...

“We’re not going to go across or down. We’re going to go through.” Vick turns. “Through what?” “The canyons,”

“If you hike in far enough there’s fresh water.”

have built a settlement and they help travelers. I heard that from people who’d been inside.” “Wait. You know people who’ve gone into the canyons?” Vick asks. “I knew people who had been there,”

“To keep the Society from hunting us down and making an example of us, the best time to go is during a firing when there’s chaos. Like a night firing. But with a full moon, so that we can see. They might think we died instead of escaped.”

“Three?” Vick asks. “Eli’s coming with us.” I hadn’t known until I said it.

“You’re crazy,” Vick says. “There’s no way that kid will last until then.” “I know,”

“There’s a girl I know back in Oria,” I say. “He reminds me of her brother.” “That’s not reason enough.” “It is for me,”

“You’re getting weak,” Vick says finally. “And that might kill you. Might mean you never see her again.” “If I don’t look out for him,” I tell Vick, “I’d be someone she didn’t know, even if she did see me again.”

roll over onto my side and slip the Archivist’s paper from my pocket.

understood the girls’ uneasiness—I feel it, too. We’ve always known the night before where we’d be sent the next day.

It’s not a map, or even a set of directions. It’s a story, and I know the moment I read the first line that it’s not one of the Hundred:

“When I am finished, it will be your turn to take my place.” The child was not afraid. “What are you making?” “A river,”

The Pilot leads the Rising—the rebellion against the Society—and the Pilot never dies. When one Pilot’s time has finished, another comes to lead.

place past the edge of the Society’s map, the Pilot will always live and move.

There’s a rebellion. Something real and organized and longstanding, with a leader. Ky and I are not alone.

could climb down and wake the other girls and tell them about the Rising. Maybe they already know. I don’t think

Except for Indie. But, though she has more fire to her than the others, she also doesn’t have purpose.

It took me long agonizing moments to rip the paper into tiny bits.

Click. Click. The heels of the patrol Officer’s boots on the cement.

Officers bring girls from other cabins, some of whom cry and try to twist away.

“We need two girls from this cabin,” one of them says. “Bunk 8 and Bunk 3.”

Someone stands alone on the edge of the trees that grow near the path. It’s Indie.

She must have heard too and slipped out somehow. I didn’t see her leave. She’s going to run.

slip the three tablets from my container—green, blue, red—and wrap them up inside my packet of blue tablets.

I have to get rid of as many signs of Citizenship as I can. And then I realize. Something is missing from my bag. The silver box from my Match Banquet.

I haven’t dropped it or lost it; it’s gone.

“Run, Indie,” I whisper under my breath. I hope we both get what we want.

you love someone, if someone loved you, if they taught you to write and made it so you could speak, how can you do nothing at all?

Because once you love, it is gone. You love and you cannot call it back. Ky is heavy in my mind, deep in my heart,

Loving him gave me wings and all my work has given me the strength to move them.

“She tried to run,” he says, pushing her into the seat next to me. He snaps a pair of handlocks onto Indie’s wrists.

“They’re Aberrations,” he snaps. “Does it matter? We have to go.” “Should we

Indie looks over at me and our eyes meet. For the first time since I’ve known her, I feel a strange sense of kinship with her,