“It’s red and orange there. Colors you don’t see here very often.”
“That’s true,” I say, and I try to think of things that are red. Some of the dresses at the Match Banquet. The fires in the incinerators. Blood.
“Why is there so much green and brown and blue here?” he asks me.
“Maybe because they are growing colors and so much of our Province is agricultural,” I say. “You know. How blue is the color of water, and brown the color of fal and harvest. And green is the color of spring.”
“People always say that,” Ky says. “But red is the first color of spring. It’s the real color of rebirth. Of beginning.” He’s right, I realize. I think of the ruddy color of the tight new buds on the trees. Of the red of his hands the day before in the nutrition disposal center and the new beginning I hope I have given him.
CHAPTER 27
Warning. Warning. The light on the tracker flashes and words scrol across the screen. You have reached maximum speed earlier than recommended for this exercise session.
I punch the numbers so that I go even faster.
Warning. Warning. You have exceeded your optimal heart rate.
Usual y, when I push too hard on the tracker I stop in time. I take things to the edge but I never jump. But if I go to the edge enough times, I’m going to get pushed over or fal right in.
Maybe it’s time to jump. But I can’t do it without dragging al the people I love with me.
Warning. Warning.
I’m going too fast. I’m too tired. I know it. But my fal stil surprises me.
My foot slips and before I know it I’m down, down on the tracker with the belt stil going and burning, burning, burning my skin. I lie there for a moment, in shock and on fire, and then I rol off as fast as I can. The tracker keeps going, but it wil notice my absence in a moment. It wil stop and then they wil know I couldn’t keep up. But if I get back on fast enough, no one has to know what happened. I glance at my skin, rubbed raw and red from the moving belt. Red.
I jump up. I tense my muscles and spring at just the right time and I hit the tracker running. Pound. Pound. Pound pound pound.
My knees and elbows stream blood and I have tears in my eyes, but I am stil going. The plainclothes wil hide my wounds tomorrow and no one wil ever know that I fel . No one wil ever know what happened until it is too late.
When I come back upstairs after running on the tracker, my father gestures me toward the port. “Just in time,” he says. “There’s a communication for you.”
The sorting Officials wait on the screen. “Your sort looks excel ent,” the blond Official tel s me. “Congratulations on passing the test. I’m sure you’l hear news regarding your work position soon.”
I nod my head, sweat dripping off me and blood from my cuts running down my knees and my arms. She can only see the sweat, I think to myself.
I tug my sleeves down a little to make sure they cover everything, so that no one wil know that I am injured and bloody.
“Thank you. I look forward to it.” I step back, sure that the portscreen communication is finished, but the Official has one last question for me.
“Are you sure that there aren’t any changes you want to make before the sort is implemented?” My last chance to take back what I’ve done. I almost say it. I have his number memorized; it would be so easy. Then I remember what she told me about life expectancy, and the words turn to rocks in my mouth and I can’t speak around them.
“Cassia?”
“I’m sure.”
I turn away from the port and almost run into my father. “Congratulations,” he says. “Sorry. I hope you don’t mind that I listened. They didn’t say it was a private communication.”
“It’s fine,” I say. Then I ask, “Did you ever wonder ...” I pause, unsure of how to phrase this. How to ask him if he ever doubted his Match with my mother. If he ever wanted someone else.
“Did I ever wonder what?” he asks me.
“Never mind,” I say, because I think I already know the answer. Of course he didn’t. They fel in love immediately and never looked back.
I go into my room and open my closet. Once it held the compact and the poem. Now it is empty except for clothes and shoes and the smal , framed piece of my dress. I don’t know where my silver box is and I panic. Did they accidental y take it when they took the artifacts? No, of course not. They know what the silver boxes are. They’d never mistake them for something from the past. The Match Banquet boxes are clearly for the future.
I’m hunting around through my meager belongings when my mother comes into the room. She returned late last night from her third trip out of Oria. “Are you looking for something?” she asks.
I straighten up. “I found it,” I say, holding up the fragment of green under glass. I don’t want to tel her that I can’t find the Match Banquet box.
She takes the square from me and holds it up, the green fabric from the dress catching the light. “Did you know that there used to be windows with colored glass?” she asks. “People put them in places where they worshipped. Or in their own homes.”
“Stained glass,” I say. “Papa’s told me about it.” It does sound beautiful: light shining through color, windows as art or tribute.
“Of course he has,” she says, laughing at herself. “I final y submitted that report today, and now I’m so tired I can’t think wel .”
“Is everything al right?” I ask. I want to ask her what she meant about the trees that day, why she thought their loss was a warning to her, but I don’t think I want to know. After the real-life sort I feel like I can’t take any more pressure; I feel as though I already know too much. Besides, my mother seems happier now than she’s seemed in weeks, and I don’t want to change that.
“I think it wil be,” she says.
“Oh, good,” I say. We’re both silent for a moment, looking at my dress under glass.
“Are you going to have to travel again?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she says. “I think that’s finished. I hope.” She stil looks exhausted, but I can see that submitting the report has lifted a burden.
I take the memento back from her, and as I do, I have an idea. “Can I see the piece of your dress?” The last time I looked at it was the night before my Match Banquet. I was a little nervous, and she brought me the dress fragment and told me again the story of their Match with its happy ending. But so much has changed since then.