After having me quickly and easily, it took her years to become pregnant with him, and he was born weeks before her thirty-first birthday, the cutoff age for having children. We al feel lucky to have Bram, but my mother especial y.
I knew if the crying kept up much longer we’d be in trouble. Back then, an Official assigned to watch out for problems lived on each street.
So I said loudly to Bram, “Too bad for you. No reader, no scribe. You’l never know how to write. You’l never know how to read.”
“That’s not true!” Bram yel ed. “I can learn.”
“How?” I asked him.
He narrowed his eyes, but at least he stopped crying. “I don’t care if I can’t read or write.”
“That’s fine,” I said, and out of the corner of my eye I saw someone knocking on the Official’s door at the house right next to the air-train stop. No.
Bram already has too many citations from the care center.
The train swooshed to a stop and in that moment I knew what I had to do. I picked up his schoolbag and held it out to him. “It’s up to you,” I said, looking right into his eyes and holding his gaze. “You can grow up or you can be a baby.” Bram looked hurt. I shoved the bag into his arms and whispered into his ear, “I know a way to play games on the scribe.”
“Real y?”
I nodded.
Bram’s face lit up. He took the bag and went through the air-train doors without a backward glance. My parents and I climbed on after him, and my mother hugged me tight once we were inside. “Thank you,” she said.
There weren’t any games on the scribe, of course. I had to invent some, but I’m not a natural sorter for nothing. It took Bram months to figure out that none of the other kids had older siblings who hid patterns and pictures in screens ful of letters and then timed them to see how fast they could find them al .
That was why I knew before anyone else that Bram would never be a sorter. But I stil invented levels and records of achievement and spent almost al my free time during those months coming up with games I thought he would like. And even when he figured it out, he wasn’t mad. We’d had too much fun, and after al , I hadn’t lied. I had known a way to play games on the scribe.
“That was the day,” Ky says now, and stops.
“What?”
“The day I knew about you.”
“Why?” I say, feeling hurt somehow. “Because you could see I fol owed the rules? That I made my brother fol ow them, too?”
“No,” he says, as if it should be obvious. “Because I saw the way you cared about your brother and because I saw that you were smart enough to help him.” Then he smiles at me. “I already knew what you looked like, but that day was when I first knew about you.”
“Oh,” I say.
“What about me?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“When did you first see me?”
For some reason I can’t tel him. I can’t tel him that it was his face on the screen the morning after my Match Banquet—the mistake—that made me first begin to think of him this way. I can’t tel him that I didn’t see him until they told me to look.
“On the top of the first hil ,” I say instead. And I wish that I did not have to tel him this lie, when he knows more of my truth than anyone else in the world.
Later that night I realize that Ky did not give me any more of his story and I did not ask. Perhaps it is because now I live in his story. Now I am a part of his, and he of mine, and the part we write together sometimes feels like the only part that matters.
But stil , the question haunts me: What happened when the Officials took him away and the sun was red and low in the sky?
CHAPTER 25
Our time together feels like a storm, like wild wind and rain, like something too big to handle but too powerful to escape. It blows around me and tangles my hair, leaves water on my face, makes me know that I am alive, alive, alive. There are moments of calm and pause as there are in every storm, and moments when our words fork lightning, at least for each other.
We hurry up the Hil together, touching hands, touching trees. Talking. Ky has things to tel me and I have things to tel him and there is not enough time, not enough time, never enough time.
“There are people who cal themselves Archivists,” Ky says. “Back when the Hundred Committee made their selections, the Archivists knew the works that didn’t get selected would become a commodity. So they saved some of them. The Archivists have il egal ports, ones they’ve built themselves, for storing things. They saved the Thomas poem I brought you.”
“I had no idea,” I say, touched. I never thought that someone might think far enough ahead to save some of the poems. Did Grandfather know this? It doesn’t seem like he did. He never gave them his poems to save.
Ky puts his hand on my arm. “Cassia. The Archivists aren’t altruistic. They saw a commodity and they did what they could to preserve it. Anyone can have it who’s wil ing to pay, but their prices are high.” He stops as though he’s revealed too much—that this poem cost him something.
“What did you trade with them?” I ask, suddenly afraid. As far as I know, Ky has two things of value: his artifact and the words of the Do not go gentle poem. I don’t want him to give up the artifact, his last tie to his family. And for some reason, the thought of our poem being traded repulses me. Selfishly, I don’t want just anyone to have it. I realize that I’m not much better than the Officials in this regard.
“Something,” he says, and his eyes are amused. “Don’t worry about the price.”
“Your artifact—”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t trade that. I didn’t trade our poem, either. But Cassia, if you ever need to, they don’t know about the poem. I asked how many Dylan Thomas writings they had and they didn’t have much. The birthday poem, and a story. That was al .”
“If I ever need to what?”
“Trade,” he says careful y. “Trade for something else. The Archivists have information, connections. You could tel them one of the poems your grandfather gave you.” He frowns. “Although proving authenticity might be a problem, since you don’t have the original paper . . . stil , I’m sure they would be worth something.”
“I’d be too afraid to trade with people like that,” I say, and then I wish I hadn’t. I don’t want Ky to think I get scared easily.