“I’m sorry, Cassia,” my mother says now as we walk home. “I know how much that compact meant to you.”
“I feel sorry for Bram.”
“I know. I do, too.”
When we enter the front door I hear the chime that means our food has arrived. But when I go into the kitchen only two portions sit in the delivery area. “What about Papa and Bram?”
“Papa requested dinner early so he and Bram could go for a walk before Bram’s free-rec hours.”
“Real y?” I ask. We don’t often make such requests.
“Yes. Your father thought that Bram could use something special after everything that’s happened lately.” I’m happy, especial y for Bram’s sake, that the nutrition Officials granted Papa’s request. “Why didn’t you go too?”
“I wanted to see you.” She smiles at me and then looks around the kitchen. “We haven’t eaten together in a long time. And of course, I want to hear about your outing with Xander.”
We sit across from each other at the table, and I notice again how tired she looks. “Tel me about your trip,” I say, before she can ask about last night. “What did you see?”
“I’m stil not sure,” she says softly, almost to herself. Then she straightens up. “We went to another Arboretum to look at some crops. After that, we had to go to some Farmlands. It al took some time.”
“But now everything’s back to normal, right?”
“For the most part. I have to write a formal report and submit it to the Officials in charge of the other Arboretum.”
“What’s the report about?”
“I’m afraid that’s confidential information,” my mother says regretful y.
We both fal silent, but it is a good silence, a mother-daughter one. Her thoughts are far away somewhere, perhaps back at the Arboretum.
Maybe she’s writing the report in her mind. That’s al right with me, though. I relax and let my own thoughts go where they want, which is to Ky.
“Thinking about Xander?” my mother says, giving me a knowing smile. “I always daydreamed about your father, too.” I smile back. There’s no point tel ing her that I’m thinking about the wrong boy. No, not the wrong boy. Ky may be an Aberration but there’s nothing about him that is defective. It’s our Government and their classification system and al their systems that are wrong. Including the Matching System.
But if the system is wrong and false and unreal, then what about the love between my parents? If their love was born because of the Society, can it stil be real and good and right? This is the question that I can’t get out of my mind. I want the answer to be yes. That their love is true. I want it to have beauty and reality independent of anything else.
“I should get ready to go to the game center,” I tel her, and she yawns. “You should go to sleep. We can talk more tomorrow.”
“Wel , maybe I’l rest for a little while,” she says. We both stand up: I take her foilware container to the recycling bin for her and she carries my water bottle to the sterilizer for me. “Come say good-bye before you leave, though, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
My mother goes into her room and I slip into mine. I have a few minutes before I’m due to meet everyone. Do I have time to read a little more of Ky’s story? I decide that I do. I pul the crumpled napkin from my pocket.
I want to know more about Ky before I see him tonight. I feel as if the two of us are our true selves when we hike in the trees on the hil s. When we’re with everyone else on Saturday nights, though, it becomes difficult. We go through a forest that is complicated and ful of tangles and there are no stone cairns to guide us except the ones we build ourselves.
Sitting on my bed to read, I glance again at the spot in my closet where I kept the compact. I feel a sharp pain of loss and turn back to Ky’s story.
But as I read and the tears slip down my cheeks, I realize that I do not know anything about loss.
In the middle of the crease Ky drew a vil age, little houses, little people. But al the people lie prone, on their backs. No one stands straight, except the two Kys. The young one’s hands are no longer empty; they carry something. One hand holds the word Mother, slumping over the edge of his hand, shaped a little like a body. The top of the t tips up, like an arm flung askew.
The other hand holds the word Father, and that word lies stil too. And the young Ky’s shoulders are bent with the weight of these two little words, and his face is stil tipped to the sky, where I see now the rain has turned into something dark, something deadly and solid. Ammunition, I think. I’ve seen it in the showing.
The older Ky has turned his face away from the vil age in the middle, from the other boy. His hands are no longer open. They are clenched.
Behind him, people in Official uniforms watch him. His lips curve in a smile that never touches his eyes; he wears plainclothes, a line indicating the crisp crease where he’s ironed them neat.
at first when the rain fell
from the sky so wide and deep
it smelled like sage, my favorite smell
I went up on the plateau to watch it come
to see the gifts it always brought
but this rain changed from blue to black
and left
nothing.
There’s a drought of Officials at the game center, even though the center itself brims with people playing, winning, losing. I see three Officials, watching the largest of the game tables. They look earnest and on edge in their white uniforms, their faces showing more stress than usual. This is strange. Usual y, we have twelve or more lower-level Officials in the center, keeping the peace, keeping score. Where are the rest of them tonight?
Somewhere, things aren’t going quite right.
But here, as far as I’m concerned, at least one thing has. Ky’s with us. I look at him once as we weave our way through the masses of people, fol owing Xander, hoping that Ky understands from that look that I have read his story, that I care. He walks right behind me and I want to reach back and take his hand but there are too many people. The one thing I can do for Ky is to help keep him safe, to hold onto what I want to say until there is a good place to say it. And to remember the words he wrote, the pictures he made, even though I wish that part of the story had never happened to him.
His parents died. He saw it happen. Death came from the sky, and that’s what he remembers. Every time it rains.