Matched

Now that I’ve found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night? My wings aren’t white or feathered; they’re green, made of green silk, which shudders in the wind and bends when I move—first in a circle, then in a line, finally in a shape of my own invention. The black behind me doesn’t worry me; neither do the stars ahead.

I smile at myself, at the foolishness of my imagination. People cannot fly, though before the Society, there were myths about those who could. I saw a painting of them once. White wings, blue sky, gold circles above their heads, eyes turned up in surprise as though they couldn’t believe what the artist had painted them doing, couldn’t believe that their feet didn’t touch the ground.

Those stories weren’t true. I know that. But tonight, it’s easy to forget. The air train glides through the starry night so smoothly and my heart pounds so quickly that it feels as though I could soar into the sky at any moment.

“What are you smiling about?” Xander wonders as I smooth the folds of my green silk dress down neat.

“Everything,” I tel him, and it’s true. I’ve waited so long for this: for my Match Banquet. Where I’l see, for the first time, the face of the boy who wil be my Match. It wil be the first time I hear his name.

I can’t wait. As quickly as the air train moves, it stil isn’t fast enough. It hushes through the night, its sound a background for the low rain of our parents’ voices, the lightning-quick beats of my heart.

Perhaps Xander can hear my heart pounding, too, because he asks, “Are you nervous?” In the seat next to him, Xander’s older brother begins to tel my mother the story of his Match Banquet. It won’t be long now until Xander and I have our own stories to tel .

“No,” I say. But Xander’s my best friend. He knows me too wel .

“You lie,” he teases. “You are nervous.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Not me. I’m ready.” He says it without hesitation, and I believe him. Xander is the kind of person who is sure about what he wants.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re nervous, Cassia,” he says, gentle now. “Almost ninety-three percent of those attending their Match Banquet exhibit some signs of nervousness.”

“Did you memorize all of the official Matching material?”

“Almost,” Xander says, grinning. He holds his hands out as if to say, What did you expect?

The gesture makes me laugh, and besides, I memorized al of the material, too. It’s easy to do when you read it so many times, when the decision is so important. “So you’re in the minority,” I say. “The seven percent who don’t show any nerves at al .”

“Of course,” he agrees.

“How could you tel I was nervous?”

“Because you keep opening and closing that.” Xander points to the golden object in my hands. “I didn’t know you had an artifact.” A few treasures from the past float around among us. Though citizens of the Society are al owed one artifact each, they are hard to come by. Unless you had ancestors who took care to pass things along through the years.

“I didn’t, until a few hours ago,” I tel him. “Grandfather gave it to me for my birthday. It belonged to his mother.”

“What’s it cal ed?” Xander asks.

“A compact,” I say. I like the name very much. Compact means smal . I am smal . I also like the way it sounds when you say it: com-pact. Saying the word makes a sound like the one the artifact itself makes when it snaps shut.

“What do the initials and numbers mean?”

“I’m not sure.” I run my finger across the letters ACM and the numbers 1940 carved across the golden surface. “But look,” I tel him, popping the compact open to show him the inside: a little mirror, made of real glass, and a smal hol ow where the original owner once stored powder for her face, according to Grandfather. Now, I use it to hold the three emergency tablets that everyone carries—one green, one blue, one red.

“That’s convenient,” Xander says. He stretches out his arms in front of him and I notice that he has an artifact, too—a pair of shiny platinum cuff links. “My father lent me these, but you can’t put anything in them. They’re completely useless.”

“They look nice, though.” My gaze travels up to Xander’s face, to his bright blue eyes and blond hair above his dark suit and white shirt. He’s always been handsome, even when we were little, but I’ve never seen him dressed up like this. Boys don’t have as much leeway in choosing clothes as girls do. One suit looks much like another. Stil , they get to select the color of their shirts and cravats, and the quality of the material is much finer than the material used for plainclothes. “You look nice.” The girl who finds out that he’s her Match wil be thril ed.

“Nice?” Xander says, lifting his eyebrows. “That’s al ?”

“Xander,” his mother says next to him, amusement mingled with reproach in her voice.