Crossed (Matched, #2)

by Ally Condie

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The only time we can see people is when the Society allows it. In life, on the port, on a microcard. Once there was a time when the Society let its citizens carry around pictures of those they loved. If people were dead or had gone away, at least you remembered how they looked. But that hasn’t been allowed in years. And now the Society has even stopped the tradition of giving new Matches pictures of each other after their first face-to-face meeting.

The rules are this: If a parent becomes Reclassified, the whole family does, too. But if a child becomes Reclassified, the family does not. The child alone bears the weight of the Infraction.

Because in the end you can’t always choose what to keep. You can only choose how you let it go.

“Thank you for helping me.” “It’s what I do,” Xander says. “I know it is,” I say.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like being left?” “Of course I do,” I say, stung. “No,” he says. “Not the way Ky left you. He didn’t want to go. Do you know what it’s like for someone to choose to leave you?”

I love Xander in ways that are perhaps more complicated than I first expected. But it’s Ky I have to find.

We both know the Society wants the Aberrations dead. It explains why we’re dumped out here. Why we don’t get to fight. But there’s another question, one I can’t answer: Why do they hate us so much?

“But the Enemy must know we’re not real villagers, then,” Eli says. “They must have figured it out.” “Right,” Vick says. “They’re killing us anyway. No one cares.

“So why keep him around? Why bring him along?” “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,” I say.

The Pilot is a man who pushed a stone and washed away in the water. It is a woman who crossed the river and looked to the sky. The Pilot is old and young and has eyes of every color and hair of every shade; lives in deserts, islands, forests, mountains, and plains. 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.

“What’s your real name?” Vick asks me suddenly. “Ky is my real name,” I tell him. “But what’s your full name?” I pause for a minute as it flashes across my mind for the first time in years. Ky Finnow. That was my name then. “Roberts,” Vick says, impatient with my hesitation. “That’s my last name. Vick Roberts.” “Markham,” I tell him. “Ky Markham.” Because that’s the name she knows me by. That’s my real name now.

“Keep running, Eli,” I tell him. “Don’t you care that they’re dying?” Eli asks. Pop-pop-pop. The pathetic little sounds of the guns we rigged come from behind us. Out here, it’s nothing. “Don’t you want to live?” I ask Eli, furious that he’s making this so hard, that he won’t let me forget what is happening behind us.

They believed me and I learned how to lie just enough to not get caught.

It doesn’t seem like Ky, to leave people behind, and yet it does seem like Ky to find the one chance in a hopeless situation and take it.

“But if they don’t care about us, why would they care about our data?” Eli asks. “Death,” I say. “It’s the one thing they haven’t fully conquered. They want to know more about it.”

I climb into the dark for you Are you waiting in the stars for me?

“Before the Society took control, there were people who saw it coming and didn’t want any part of it. They started storing things inside the Carving.” I point at some of the curves and bends in the sandstone walls. “There are caves hidden everywhere in here. The farmers had enough food to see them through until some of the seeds they brought could be planted and harvested. They called their settlement a township, because they didn’t want to use the Society’s words for that, either.”

The whole room, like the township, has that sense of being assembled carefully. Every item seems filled with meaning. The Society didn’t drop it into your lap. You worked for it. Found it. Made it yourself.

I don’t want to think about Patrick and Aida and what happened next. I love them more than anyone in the world besides Cassia, and if I ever find her, we will look for them. But I can’t think about them for long—the parents who took me in and received nothing in exchange but more loss. It was brave of them to love again. It made me think I could do it too.

They decided to center all their efforts on increasing productivity and physical health. Those at the highest level of Official voted to eliminate distractions such as excess poetry and music while retaining an optimal amount to enhance culture and satiate the desire for experiencing art. The Hundred Committees, one for each area of the arts, were formed to oversee the choices. This was the beginning of the Society’s abuse of power. They also ceased to have each generation vote on whether or not they wanted to live under Society’s rule. The Society began to remove Anomalies and Aberrations from the general population and isolate or eliminate those who caused the most trouble.

This is a piece of Xander’s official Matching information. The information I never did view on the microcard; all of the things I thought I already knew. I look at the sealed tablets in my hand. How did he do this? How did he get the scrap inside? Are there more? I picture him now, printing out a copy of his information from the port, tearing each line carefully into strips and finding a way to put them inside the packaging. He must have guessed that I never looked at the microcard; he knew I turned away and chose to see Ky.

The pool grows darker. Something, a large round sphere, sits at the bottom of the water. As I look closer, I see that the sphere lets off a slow release of toxin. They didn’t mean to kill Vick. They do mean to kill this stream.

Vick keeps talking to me while I carve a piece of sandstone into a fish to leave on his shallow grave. The fish’s scales are dull and orange. A rainbow without all the colors. Not real like the one Vick saw. But the best I can do. I want it to mark not only that he died but that he loved someone and she loved him back.

Xander. I shake my head. Always playing the game. Of course Cassia didn’t leave him behind completely. He’s her best friend. He’s still her Match.

Snap. The tube breaks and blood runs red down Hunter’s hand. “They killed us to store themselves,” he says.

And after that final firing, who came to get the survivors? The Society. Not the Rising. I’ve seen how they leave you when they don’t need you anymore. I’m afraid of the Rising. Even more than that, I’m afraid of who I’d be in the Rising.

“My mother painted with water,” he says. “And my father played with fire.”

“I’m still not the Pilot.” “You are,” she says. “You don’t want to be, so you’re running away from the Rising. Someone needs to bring you back to the rebellion. That’s what I’m trying to do.” “The Rising isn’t what you imagine,” I say. “It’s not Aberrations and Anomalies and rebels and rogues running free. It’s a structure. A system.”

“I thought we’d both be in it,” he said. His voice sounded strange, confused. I hadn’t heard Xander sound that way before. “I thought you’d probably known about it all along.” He paused. “Do you think they asked her, too?” We both knew who he meant. Cassia. Of course. “I don’t know,” I told Xander. “It seems probable. They asked us. They must have had a list of people to approach in the Borough.”

“You’re in love with the idea of the Rising, Cassia. But you don’t actually know what it is. You don’t know what it’s like to try to rebel and see everyone die around you. You don’t know.” “You hate the Society,” Cassia says. Still trying to do the math, make the numbers add up. “But you don’t want to be part of the Rising.” “I don’t trust the Society, and I don’t trust rebellions,” I say. “I don’t choose either of them. I’ve seen what they both can do.”

“You’re in love with Xander,” I say, my voice too hard, too cruel. Indie doesn’t deny it.

I lift the tablet to my mouth. And then I hear a voice from a place deep in my memory. You are strong enough to go without. Fine, Grandfather, I think to myself. I will be strong enough to go without the tablet. But there are other things I’m not strong enough to go without, and I intend to fight for them.

“You have to remember that the people back then chose the Society and its controls as a way to prevent a future Warming event and as a way to help eliminate illness. We did not, so we left. We would not participate in the Society; so we would not receive its benefits or protection. We would farm and eat and keep to ourselves and they would leave us alone. For a long time, they did. And if any came, we cut them down.”

I close my eyes. I love Ky. But I don’t understand him. He won’t let me reach him. I have made mistakes, too, I know it, but I am tired of chasing him through canyons and out onto plains and stretching out my hand only to have him take it some times and not others. Perhaps that’s the real reason he’s an Aberration. Perhaps even the Society couldn’t predict what he would do.

We have all been carved out by our sorrow. Cut deep like canyon walls.

Do I have to tell her about the night when I turned my back on all the other decoys and only took Vick and Eli? Vick, because I knew he’d help us survive, Eli to appease my guilt? I have to tell her the truth, but I haven’t even told it to myself.

Looking at Ky and Eli and Hunter, I think of how many invisible injuries are possible. Ones scored on your heart, your brain, your bones. How do we all stand? I wonder. What is it that keeps us moving?

My father might have been the reason all those people died. But he also helped make their lives bearable. He gave them hope. I used to think that didn’t matter but it does. Good and bad. Good in my father, bad in me. No fire raining on me can burn it away. I have to get rid of it myself.

“Are you sure?” she whispers. I am. “You came a long way to look for me,” I say. “I can come to the Rising with you.”

“Vick,” I tell Cassia. It surprised me at first that Eli didn’t choose his parents, and then I remembered that they wouldn’t have been there. Eli and his family had been Aberrations for years.

“What happened to that ship?” I ask someone standing next to me. “I don’t know,” he says. “It went out a few nights ago and came back like that.” He shrugs. “You’re new, aren’t you? You’ll learn that you only know your own assignments. It’s safer that way if we get caught.” That’s true enough. And even if I’m right about how that ship got burned, it could be something other than what I think.