Before we leave the forest, Ky finishes teaching me to write my name in the soft dirt underneath one of the fal en trees. We crouch down, red cloths in hand, acting as though we are tying them on in case anyone comes by and sees us. It takes me a little while to learn s but I like the way it looks—
like something leaning into the wind. The clean line and dot of i is easy to master, and I already know how to write a.
I write each letter in my name and connect them together, Ky’s hand near mine to guide me. We don’t quite touch, but I feel the warmth of his hand, the length of his body crouched behind me as I write. Cassia.
“My name,” I say, leaning back and looking at the letters. They are wavery, less sure than the letters Ky writes. Someone passing by might not even recognize mine as letters at al . Stil , I can tel what they say. “What next?”
“Now,” Ky says, “we go back to the beginning. You know a. Tomorrow we’l do b. Once you know them al , you can write your own poems.”
“But who would read them?” I ask, laughing.
“I would,” he says. He gives me another folded napkin. There, between greasy thumbprints and traces of food, is more of Ky for me to see.
I put the napkin in my pocket and I think of Ky writing out his story with his red hands, seared from the heat of the job he does. I think of him risking everything each time he slips one napkin into his pocket. Al these years he’s been so careful, but now he’s wil ing to take a chance. Because he’s found someone who wants to know. Someone he wants to tel .
“Thank you,” I say. “For teaching me how to write.”
“Thank you,” he answers. There is a light in his eyes and I am the one who put it there. “For saving my artifact and for the poem.” There’s more to say, but we’re learning how to speak. Together we step out of the trees. Not touching. Not yet.
CHAPTER 20
I walk home from the air-train stop with Em after school and sorting. Once the others who came with us have gone ahead or fal en behind, Em puts her hand on my arm. “I’m so sorry,” she says quietly.
“Em, don’t worry about it anymore. I’m not angry.” I look her in the eye so that she knows I mean it but her eyes are stil sad. So many times in my life I’ve felt as though looking at Em is like seeing another variation of myself, but I don’t feel that way now. Too much has changed recently. Stil , Em is my best girlfriend. Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots wil always be tangled. I’m glad for that. “You don’t have to keep apologizing,” I tel her. “I’m happy I lent it to you. At least we both got to enjoy it before they took it away.”
“I stil don’t understand,” Em says softly. “They have plenty of displays in the Museum. It doesn’t make any sense.” I’ve never heard anything so close to insubordination come out of Em’s mouth before, and I grin at her. Maybe we aren’t becoming so different after al .
“What are we doing tonight?” I ask, changing the subject.
Em seems relieved about the shift in topic. “I talked to Xander today and he wants to go to the game center tonight. What do you think?” What I real y think is that I’d like to go back to the top of the first little hil . The thought of being in that center with its stuffiness and crowds when we could be sitting and talking under a clean night sky seems like more than I can take. But I can do it. I can do whatever I need to in order to keep things normal. I have Ky’s words to read. And perhaps, if I’m lucky, I’l see Ky himself later. I hope he comes with us.
Em interrupts my thoughts by saying, “Look. Your mother’s waiting for you.”
Em’s right. My mother sits on the steps of the house with her face turned in our direction. When she sees me looking at her, she stands up, waves, and starts walking toward us. I wave back and Em and I pick up the pace a little.
“She’s back,” I say out loud, and it isn’t until I hear the surprise in my voice that I recognize that part of me worried that she would stay away forever.
“Was she gone?” Em asks, and I realize that my mother’s absence is likely one of those things that we aren’t supposed to mention outside of our family. Not that the Officials said that explicitly; it’s simply the kind of thing we’ve learned to keep to ourselves.
“Back early from work,” I clarify. It’s not even a lie.
Em says good-bye and goes into her house. Her maple tree isn’t going to make it, I think, noticing that even in the middle of summer the tree only has about ten green, tired leaves. Then I look toward my house, where the tree grows ful and the flowers are beautiful and my mother comes to meet me.
This reminds me of times when I was very smal in First School and my mother’s work hours ended before I got home. She and Bram sometimes walked up the street to meet my train. They never made it far because Bram stopped to look at everything along the way. “That kind of attention to detail might be a sign that he’s meant to be a sorter,” my father used to say, until Bram got older and it became apparent that he lost his ability to pay attention to detail along with his baby teeth.
When I reach my mother she hugs me right there on the sidewalk. “Oh, Cassia,” she says. Her face looks pale and tired. “I’m so sorry. I missed your first official outing with Xander.”
“You missed something else last night, too,” I say, my face against her shoulder. She is tal er than I am and I don’t think I wil ever catch up. I’m slight and short, like my father’s family. Like Grandfather. I smel my mother’s familiar smel of flowers and clean fabric, and I breathe in deeply. I’m so glad she’s back.
“I know.” My mother never speaks against the government. The most defiant she’s ever been was when the Officials searched my father. I don’t expect her to rant and rave about the unfairness of the Officials taking the artifacts, and she doesn’t. It occurs to me that if she did, she’d be ranting and raving against her own husband. He is, after al , an Official, too.
Though he isn’t the one who held out his hand and asked us to drop our prized possessions into it, he did that to other people.
When my father came home last night, he gave Bram and me each a long hug and then went straight to his room without saying anything. Maybe because he couldn’t stand to see the pain in our faces and remember that he had caused that same pain in others.