For one entire day I let his kiss burn on my cheek and into my blood, and I don’t push the memory away. I have kissed and been kissed before.
This is different. This, more than my real birthday the day of the Match Banquet, feels like a day to mark time by. This kiss, these words, they feel like beginning.
I let myself imagine futures that can never be, the two of us together. Even when I sort later that day, I keep my mind on the task at hand by pretending each number sorted is a code, a message to Ky that I wil keep our secret. I wil keep us safe; I won’t reveal a thing. Each sort I perform correctly keeps attention away from us.
Since it is not my turn for the sleep tags that night, I let my dreams take me where they wil . To my surprise, I don’t dream of Ky on the Hil . I dream of him sitting on the steps in front of my house, watching the wind shuffle the leaves of the maple tree. I dream of him taking me to the private dining hal and pul ing my chair out, bending so close to me that even the pretend candles flutter at his presence. I dream of the two of us digging up the newroses in his yard and of Ky teaching me how to use the artifact. Everything I dream is something simple and plain and everyday.
That’s how I know they are dreams. Because the simple and plain and everyday things are the ones that we can never have.
“How?” I ask him the next day on the Hil , once we are deep enough into the forest that no one can hear us. “How can we believe this might work?
The Official threatened to send you back to the Outer Provinces, Ky!”
Ky doesn’t answer for a moment, and I feel as though I’ve yel ed when real y I kept my voice as low as possible. Then we walk past the cairn from our last hike and he looks straight at me and I swear I feel that kiss again. But this time, I feel it on my lips instead.
“Have you ever heard of the prisoner’s dilemma?” Ky asks me.
“Of course.” Is he teasing me? “It’s the game you played against Xander. We’ve al played it before.”
“No, not the game. The Society changed the game. I mean the theory behind the game.” I don’t know what he’s talking about. “I guess not.”
“If two people commit a crime together, are caught, and then separated and interrogated, what happens?” I am stil lost. “I don’t know. What?”
“That’s their dilemma. Do they tel on each other in hopes that the Officials wil go easy on them—a plea bargain? Do they refuse to say anything that would betray their partner? The best scenario is for both to say nothing. Then they can both be safe.” We’ve stopped near a group of fal en trees. “Safe,” I say.
Ky nods. “But that never happens.”
“Why not?”
“Because one prisoner wil almost always betray the other. They’l tel what they know to get a break.” I think I know what he’s asking me. I’m getting better at reading his eyes, at knowing his thoughts. Perhaps it comes from knowing his story, from final y knowing more of him. I hand him a red cloth; neither of us try anymore not to let our fingers touch, come together, cling before letting go.
Ky continues. “But in the perfect scenario, neither would say anything.”
“And you think we can do that?”
“We’l never be safe,” Ky says, brushing my face with his hand. “I final y understand that. But I trust you. We’l keep each other as safe as we can for as long as we can.”
Which means that our kisses have to stay promises, promises left like his first kiss, soft on my cheek. Our lips do not meet. Not yet. For once we do that, the Infraction wil have been committed. The Society wil be betrayed. And so wil Xander. We both know this. How much time can we steal from them? From ourselves? Because I can see in his eyes that he wants that kiss as much as I do.
There are other parts to our lives: many hours of work for Ky; sorting and Second School for me. But when I look back, I know those moments won’t be remembered the way I remember each detail of those days with Ky, hiking on the Hil .
Except one memory, of a strained Saturday night at the showing theater where Xander holds my hand and Ky acts as though nothing is different.
There is a terrible moment at the end when the lights go up and I see the Official from the greenspace looking around. When she meets my eyes and sees my hand in Xander’s she looks at me and gives me a tiny smile and disappears. I glance over at Xander after she’s gone and an ache of longing goes through me, an ache so deep and real that I can stil feel it later, when I think of that night. The longing isn’t for Xander, it’s for the way things used to be between us. No secrets, no complications.
But stil . Though I feel guilty about Xander, though I worry for him, these days belong to Ky, to me. To learning more stories and writing more letters.
Sometimes Ky asks me if I remember things. “Remember Bram’s first day of school?” he asks me one day as we move fast through the forest to make up for al the time we spent writing earlier on the hike.
“Of course,” I say, breathless from hurrying and from thinking about his hands on mine. “Bram wanted to stay home. He caused a scene at the air-train stop. Everyone remembers that.” Children start First School the autumn after they turn six. It’s supposed to be an important rite of passage, a prequel to the Banquets to come. At the end of the first successful day, the children bring a smal cake home to eat after dinner, along with a tangle of brightly colored bal oons. I don’t know which Bram was more excited about—the cake, which we have so rarely, or the bal oons, which are unique to the occasion of the First Day. That was also the day he would receive his reader and scribe, but Bram didn’t care one bit about that part of it.
When the time came to board the train to First School, Bram wouldn’t get on. “I don’t want to go,” he said. “I’l stay here instead.” It was morning and the station brimmed with people leaving for work and school. Heads turned to look at us as Bram refused to board the air train with my parents. My father looked worried but my mother took it in stride. “Don’t worry,” she whispered to me. “The Officials in charge of his pre-School care center warned me this might happen. They predicted he’d have a little trouble with this milestone.” Then she knelt down next to him and told him, “Let’s get on the train, Bram. Remember the bal oons. Remember the cake.”
“I don’t want them.” And then, to everyone’s surprise, he began to cry. Bram never cried, not even back when he was very smal . Al the confidence left my mother’s face, and she put her arms around him and held him tight. Bram is the second child she thought she might never have.