Matched (Matched #1)

by Ally Condie

He is crying. Without a sound. A tear slips down his cheek and he brushes it away so quickly I almost don’t know if it was there, but it was. It was. And now another tear, gone as quickly as the first. His eyes are so full that I wonder how he can see. But he does not look away from the screen. I am not used to seeing someone suffer. I turn away.

What is it about your voice that makes me want to hear you speak?

perhaps his eyes have no color. They reflect what he wears, who the Officials tell him to be. When he wore brown, his eyes looked brown. Now that he wears blue, they look blue.

Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled.

That word, calm, sounds impossibly beautiful, gloriously uncomplicated. A water-smooth word, a word that can take the edge away from fear, gloss it over, make it shiny. Calm. Gentle.

when our lips touch, there is no need, for once, for any words at all.

He calls my name. “Cassia!” In that one word, I hear it all: That he loves me. That he’s afraid.

Tears well up but I blink them away. Because if there is one moment in my life that I want to see clearly, this is it.

I wish my mother could take me back inside my house, tuck me back in bed like she did when I was a child. When I watched night fall outside my window without a worry, when I did not know what it was like to want to break free.