Matched

I have waited my whole life for this night. As the air train glides through the darkness toward City Hall, I smooth the folds of my green silk dress, the golden compact my grandfather gave me cool in my hands. Tonight is my Match Banquet. Tonight, the Society, in its infinite wisdom, will show me the face of the person I am meant to be with forever. My best friend, Xander, sits beside me, calm and certain as always. "Are you nervous?" he asks, but I can only smile. I am not nervous; I am ready. This is the first, perfect step into the rest of my life.

The screen in the great hall stays dark when my name is called. A collective gasp rises from the tables, a sound like birds taking flight. A dark screen can only mean one thing: my Match is here, in this very room. The odds are infinitesimal. Then the announcer's voice rings out, clear and final: “Xander Thomas Carrow.” I cannot believe it. Xander, my friend since childhood, the boy I know better than anyone, is my perfect Match. A wave of relief and joy washes over me. There will be no uncertainty, no awkward meetings with a stranger from a distant province. My future is safe, familiar, and good.

But when I view the microcard with Xander's information, something impossible happens. His smiling face appears on the portscreen, just as it should, but then it flickers and vanishes. In its place, another face appears - dark-haired, intense, and just as familiar. Ky Markham. He is a quiet boy from my Borough, an outsider who has always lived on the edges of our group. The screen goes blank before I can make sense of it, leaving me with a secret I cannot share. An Official from the Matching Department explains it away as a cruel prank, a meaningless glitch. She tells me something else, a secret far heavier: Ky is an Aberration, a product of his father's past Infraction, and he can never be part of the Matching pool. He is an anomaly, a ghost in the system. I am told to forget I ever saw his face.

On his eightieth birthday, my grandfather prepares for his Final Banquet, the peaceful, planned end to a life well-lived. Before he goes, he gives me a gift that changes everything. Hidden within the secret compartment of my golden compact is a folded, yellowed piece of paper containing a poem, one that was culled from our world when the Society chose only the Hundred Best of everything. The words are a shock, a spark in the orderly grayness of my world. "Do not go gentle into that good night," it commands. "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." My grandfather did not want to be preserved, my father later confesses. He chose a true end, on his own terms. His last gift was not just a poem, but a question.

My world begins to open. During our summer hiking activity, Ky and I are paired together. On a hill cloaked in trees, away from the Society's view, I show him the poem. He, in turn, shows me something just as forbidden: he knows how to write, not just type, but form cursive letters with his hands. He begins to teach me, our fingers brushing as he guides my hand in the dirt. He shares his story in secret notes on crumpled napkins, drawing pictures of a life in the Outer Provinces, of a family lost to violence that rained from the sky. With each shared secret, each whispered word, I feel myself pulling away from the perfect life I was promised and falling toward something wilder, truer, and infinitely more dangerous.

The Society's perfect control begins to show cracks. One evening, Officials come to every house, collecting all personal artifacts in the name of equality. My compact, Bram's watch - everything is taken. Xander, ever loyal, helps me hide Ky's one possession, a compass, saving us both from certain trouble. But the warnings continue. An Official finds me, the same one from the beginning. She knows about my feelings for Ky. She tells me it was all an experiment, a test to gather data. She warns me to stop, threatening to send Ky back to the Outer Provinces if I continue. The message is clear: stay with Xander, stay safe, or risk destroying everything.

My final sorting test is not on a screen, but in the scalding heat and steam of the nutrition disposal center where Ky works. I am told to sort the laborers into two groups - the efficient and the inefficient. My sort, they tell me, will have real consequences. It is a test of my ability to make cold, data-driven decisions. Then, the Official reveals a final piece of information: the menial laborers here, many of them Aberrations, do not live to eighty. They die early. In that moment, I understand. I am being asked to decide Ky's fate. Believing I am sending him to a better life, a safer assignment, I place his number in the more efficient group. I make a choice, playing the part of an Official, hoping I am saving him.

In the predawn darkness, screams shatter the quiet of my Borough. Officials are leading Ky away in handlocks, his mother Aida crying his name. They are not taking him to a new job; they are sending him to the Outer Provinces to fight in a war we are losing. It was my sort, my choice, that marked him for this. As they force him onto the train, our eyes meet across the distance. He knows I see him, and I know he will not go gentle. Then, the highest Officials appear and command us all to take the red tablet, the one that will make us forget. But I crush mine under my foot. My Official sees me, and she lets me. She wants me to remember my choice, to live with what I have done.

My family is Relocated to the Farmlands, a punishment for knowing too much. But before we leave, Xander reveals a final secret: the red tablets don't work on him, and they never worked on Ky. He has always remembered everything. He helps me one last time, giving me a supply of blue survival tablets for the journey I know I must take. Now, I work in the fields of a distant province, planting seeds in the dirt, waiting. I carry Ky's story, our poems, and the compass he gave me. I am no longer the girl in the green silk dress who believed in the perfection of her world. I am a girl who has learned to write, to rage, and to love. And I will find him.