I pick up the box that the framed sample came in. As I do, I realize that it is the perfect size to hold a watch. My brother dared to hope, and I mocked him for it.
I want to take this frame and walk to the middle of the greenspace. I’l stand next to that dry fountain and wait until the Official finds me. And when she does and asks me what I’m doing, I’l tel her and everyone else that I know: they are giving us pieces of a real life instead of the whole thing.
And I’l tel her that I don’t want my life to be samples and scraps. A taste of everything but a meal of nothing.
They have perfected the art of giving us just enough freedom; just enough that when we are ready to snap, a little bone is offered and we rol over, bel y up, comfortable and placated like a dog I saw once when we visited my grandparents in the Farmlands. They’ve had decades to perfect this; why am I surprised when it works on me again and again and again?
Even though I am ashamed of myself, I take the bone. I worry it between my teeth. Ky has to be safe. That’s what matters.
I don’t take the green tablet; I’m stil stronger than they are. But not strong enough to burn the last bit of Ky’s story before reading it, the piece he pressed into my hand earlier on our way back down through the forest. No more after this, I tel myself. Only this, no more.
This picture is the first one with color. A red sun, low in the sky, right on the napkin crease again so that it is part of both boys, both lives. The younger Ky has dropped the words of father and mother; they have vanished from the picture. Forgotten, or left behind, or so much a part of him that they don’t have to be written anymore. He looks over at the older Ky, reaches for him.
they were too much to carry
so I left them behind
for a new life, in a new place
but no one forgot who I was
I didn’t
and neither did the people who watch
they watched for years
they watch now
The older, current Ky’s hands are in handlocks in front of him, an Official on each side. He’s colored his hands red, too—I don’t know if he means to represent the way they look after he’s been working, or if he means something else. His parents’ blood stil on his hands from al those years ago, even though he did not kil them.
The hands of the Officials are red, too. And I recognize one of them; he’s caught her face in a few lines, a few sharp strokes.
My Official. She came for him, too.
CHAPTER 23
The next morning I wake to a shrieking so high and keening that I bolt straight out of bed, tearing the sleep tags from my skin.
“Bram!” I scream.
He is not in his room.
I run down the hal to my parents’ room. My mother came home from her trip last night; they should both be there. But their room is empty, too, and I can tel they left in a hurry: I see twisted sheets and a blanket on the floor. I draw back. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen their bed unmade and, even in the fear of the moment, the intimacy of that tangled bedding catches my eye.
“Cassia?” My mother’s voice.
“Where are you?” I cal in a panic, turning around.
She hurries down the hal toward me, stil wearing her sleepclothes. Her long, blond hair streams behind her, and she looks almost unearthly until she pul s me into arms that feel real and strong. “What happened?” she asks me. “Are you al right?”
“The screaming—” I say, looking around her for the source. Just then I hear another sound added to the screaming: the sound of metal on wood.
“It’s not screaming,” my mother says, her voice sad. “You’re hearing the saws. They’re cutting down the maple trees.” I hurry out onto the front steps where Bram and my father also stand. Other families wait outside, too, many of them stil wearing their sleepclothes like us. This is another intimacy so shocking and unusual that I am taken aback. I can’t think of another time when I’ve seen any of my neighbors dressed like this.
Or maybe I can. The time when Patrick Markham went out and walked up and down the street in his sleepclothes after his son died, and Xander’s father found him and brought him home.
The saw bites into the trunk of our maple tree, slices through so fast and clean that at first I think nothing happened except the scream. The tree seems fine for a brief moment, but it is dead as it stands. Then it fal s.
“Why?” I ask my mother.
When she doesn’t answer right away, my father puts his arm around her and tel s me. “The maple trees have become too much of a problem. The leaves get too messy in the fal . They’re not growing uniformly. For example, ours grew too big. Em’s is too smal . And some of them have diseases, so they al need to be chopped down.”
I look at our tree, at its leaves stil reaching for the sun, stil working to turn light into food. They don’t know they are dead yet. Our yard looks like a different place without the tree standing tal in front of our house. Things seem smal er.
I look over at Em’s house. Her yard, on the other hand, doesn’t look much different now that their sad little tree is gone, the one that never quite grew. It was never much more than a stick-stalk of a tree with a little burst of leaves on the top. “It’s not as bad for Em,” I say. “Her tree isn’t as much of a loss.”
“It’s sad for al of us,” my mother says fiercely.
Last night when I couldn’t sleep, I crouched down near the wal to listen to her talk with my father. They spoke so softly that I couldn’t make out any of the words, but she sounded tired and sad. Eventual y I gave up and climbed back into bed. Now she looks angry, standing in front of the house with her arms folded across her chest.
The workers with the saws have already moved on to another house now that our tree is down. That part was easy. Tearing up the roots wil be the hard part.
My father holds my mother close. He doesn’t love the trees the way she does; but he loves other things that were destroyed and he understands.
My mother loves the plants; my father loves the history of things. They love each other.
And I love them both.
It isn’t only myself and Ky and Xander I’l hurt if I commit an Infraction. It’s al these other people I love.
“It’s a warning,” my mother says, almost to herself.
“I didn’t do anything!” Bram exclaims. “I haven’t even been late to school in weeks!”