Someone saw me.
Ky takes a breath, leans in closer. “I saw you,” he says, his voice soft and deep like water fal ing in the distance. He is careful with his words, speaking them so they can’t be overheard. “In the woods.”
Then. For the first time I can remember, he touches me. His hand on my arm, fast and hot and gone before I know it. “You have to be careful.
Something like that—”
“I know.” I want to touch him back, to put my hand on his arm too, but I don’t. “I’m going to destroy it.” His face stays calm but I hear the urgency in his tone. “Can you do it without getting caught?”
“I think so.”
“I could help you.” He glances over at the Officer as he says this, casual y, and I realize something that I haven’t noticed until now because he’s so good at hiding it. Ky always acts as though someone watches him. And, apparently, he watches back.
“How did you beat me to the top?” I ask suddenly. “If you saw me in the woods?” Ky looks surprised by the question. “I ran.”
“I ran too,” I say.
“I must be faster,” he says, and for a moment I see a hint of teasing, almost a smile. Then it’s gone, and he’s serious again, urgent. “Do you want me to help you?”
“No. No, I can do it.” Then, because I don’t want him to think I’m an idiot, a risk-taker for the sake of risk-taking, I say more than I should. “My grandfather gave it to me. I shouldn’t have kept it as long as I did. But . . . the words are so beautiful.”
“Can you remember them without it?”
“For now.” I have the mind of a sorter, after al . “But I know I won’t be able to keep them forever.”
“And you want to?”
He thinks I’m stupid. “They are so beautiful,” I repeat lamely.
The Officer cal s out; more people come through the trees; someone cal s to Ky, someone cal s to me. We separate, say good-bye, walk to different places on the top of the little hil .
Everyone looks out into the distance at something. Ky and his friends face the dome of City Hal , talking about something; the Officer looks out at the Hil . The group I stand with gazes off toward the Arboretum’s meal hal and chatters about our lunch, about getting back to Second School, whether or not the air trains wil be on time. Someone laughs, because the air trains are always on time.
A line from the poem comes to my mind: there on the sad height.
I tilt my head back again and look at the sun through my closed eyelids. It is stronger than I am; it burns red against the black.
The questions in my mind seem to make a humming sound, like that of the bugs in the woods earlier. What happened to you in the Outer Provinces? What Infraction did your father commit that made you an Aberration? Do you think I’m crazy for wanting to keep the poems? What is it about your voice that makes me want to hear you speak?
Are you supposed to be my Match?
Later, I realize that the one question that didn’t even cross my mind was the most urgent one of al : Will you keep my secret?
CHAPTER 10
The pattern in my neighborhood has shifted this evening; something is wrong. People wait at the air-train stop with faces closed, not talking to each other. They climb on without the usual greetings to those of us climbing off. A smal white air car, an Official vehicle, sits sidled up next to a blue-shuttered house on our street. My house.
Hurrying down the metal stairs from the air-train stop, I look for more shifts in the pattern as I walk. The sidewalks tel me nothing. They are clean and white as always. The houses near mine, shut tight, tel me a little more—if this is a storm, it wil be waited out behind closed doors.
The air-car’s landing gear is delicately splayed out, resting on the grass. Behind the plain white curtains in the window, I see figures move. I hurry up the steps and hesitate at the door. Should I knock?
I tel myself to stay calm, stay clear. For some reason I picture the blue of Ky’s eyes and I can think better, realizing that reading the situation correctly is part of getting through it safely. This could be anything. They could be checking the food distribution system, house to house. That happened once, in a Borough near here. I heard about it.
This might have nothing to do with me.
Are they tel ing my parents about Ky’s face on the microcard? Do they know what Grandfather gave me? I haven’t had a chance to destroy the poems yet. The paper is stil in my pocket. Did someone besides Ky see me reading it in the woods? Was it the Officer’s shoe that snapped the stick?
This might have everything to do with me.
I don’t know what happens when people break the rules, because people here in the Borough don’t break them. There are minor citations issued from time to time, like when Bram is late. But those are smal things, smal errors. Not large errors, or errors committed with purpose. Infractions.
I’m not going to knock. This is my house. Taking a deep breath, I twist the knob and open the door.
Someone waits for me inside.
“You’re back,” Bram says, relief in his tone.
My fingers tighten around the piece of paper in my pocket, and I glance in the direction of the kitchen. Maybe I can make it to the incineration tube and stuff the poems down into the fire below. The tube wil register a foreign substance; the thick paper is completely different from the paper goods
—napkins, port printings, delivery envelopes—that we are al owed to dispose of in our residences. But that might stil be safer than keeping it. They can’t reconstruct the words themselves after I’ve burned them.
I catch a glimpse of a Biomedical Official in a long white lab coat moving through the hal into the kitchen. I let go of the poems, take my hand out of my pocket. Empty.
“What’s wrong?” I ask Bram. “Where are Papa and Mama?”
“They’re here,” Bram says, voice shaking. “In their room. The Officials are searching Papa.”
“Why?” My father doesn’t have the poems. He never even knew about them. But does that matter? Ky’s classification is because of his father’s Infraction. Wil my mistake change my whole family?
Perhaps the compact is the safest place for the poems after al . My grandparents kept it hidden there for years. “I’l be right back,” I say to Bram, and I slip into my room, slide the compact out of my closet. Twist. I open the base, put the paper in.