by Ally Condie
“We’ll never be safe,” Ky says, brushing my face with his hand. “I finally understand that. But I trust you. We’ll 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 will have been committed. The Society will be betrayed. And so will 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 Hill.
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 still 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 still. 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 all 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 small cake home to eat after dinner, along with a tangle of brightly colored balloons. I don’t know which Bram was more excited about—the cake, which we have so rarely, or the balloons, 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’ll 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 balloons. 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 small. All 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. 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 all feel lucky to have Bram, but my mother especially.
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’ll never know how to write. You’ll never know how to read.”
“That’s not true!” Bram yelled. “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.”
“Really?”
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 full of letters and then timed them to see how fast they could find them all.
That was why I knew before anyone else that Bram would never be a sorter. But I still invented levels and records of achievement and spent almost all 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 all, 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 followed the rules? That I made my brother follow 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 tell him. I can’t tell 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 tell him that I didn’t see him until they told me to look.
“On the top of the first hill,” I say instead. And I wish that I did not have to tell 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 still, 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 Hill together, touching hands, touching trees. Talking. Ky has things to tell me and I have things to tell him and there is not enough time, not enough time, never enough time.
“There are people who call 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 illegal 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 willing 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 all.”
“If I ever need to what?”
“Trade,” he says carefully. “Trade for something else. The Archivists have information, connections. You could tell 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 . . . still, 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.
“They’re not completely evil,” he says. “I’m trying to get you to see that they’re no better or worse than anyone else. No better or worse than the Officials. You have to be careful with the Archivists the same way you have to be careful with everyone else.”
“Where would I find them?” I ask him, frightened by his need to let me know this. What does he think is going to happen? Why does he think I might need to know how to sell our poem?
“The Museum,” he tells me. “Go to the basement and stand in front of the exhibit about the Glorious History of Oria Province. No one ever goes there. If you stay long enough, someone will ask you if you want them to tell you more about the history. You say yes. They’ll know you want contact with an Archivist.”
“How do you know this?” I ask him, surprised again at all the ways he knows how to survive.
He shakes his head. “It’s better if I don’t tell you.”
“What if someone goes there who really does want to know more about the history?”
Ky laughs. “No one ever does, Cassia. No one here wants to know anything about the past.”
We hurry on, hands still touching through the branches. I hear Ky humming a piece of one of the Hundred Songs, the one we heard together. “I love that one,” I say, and he nods. “The woman who sings it has such a beautiful voice.”
“If only it were real,” he says.
“What do you mean?” I ask him.
He looks at me, surprised. “Her voice. She’s not real. It’s generated. The perfect voice. Like all of the singers, in all of the songs. Didn’t you know that?”
I shake my head, disbelieving. “That can’t be right. When she’s singing, I can hear her breathe.”
“That’s part of it,” Ky says, his eyes distant, remembering something. “They know that we like to feel that things are authentic. We like to hear them breathe.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve heard real people singing,” he says.
“So have I, at school. And my father sang to me.”
“No,” he says. “I mean, singing out, as loud as you can. Whenever you felt like it. I’ve heard people sing like that, but not here. And even the most beautiful voice in the world didn’t sound anywhere near as perfect as that voice in the music hall.”
For a split second, I imagine him at home in that landscape he has drawn for me, listening to others sing. Ky glances up at the sun blinking through the trees above us. He’s gauging the time. He trusts the sun more than his watch. I’ve noticed this. As he stands there, shielding his eyes with one hand, another line from the Thomas poem comes to mind
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight
I would like to hear Ky sing.
Ky reaches into his pocket, pulls out my birthday poem. “Do you know it well enough yet?”
I know what he’s saying. It’s time to destroy the poem. It’s dangerous to keep it for too long.
“Yes,” I say. “But let me look at it one more time.” I read it over and look back up at Ky. “It’s not as sad to destroy this one,” I say, telling him and reminding myself. “Other people know it. It still exists somewhere else.”
He nods at me.
“Do you want me to take it home and incinerate it?” I ask.
“I thought we could leave it here,” he says. “Bury it, in the ground.”
I’m reminded of planting with Xander. But this poem has nothing tied to it; it’s severed, neat and clean, from where it came. We know the name of the author. We don’t know anything about him, don’t know what he wanted the poem to mean, what he thought when he formed the words, how he wrote it. That long ago, were there scribes? I can’t remember from the Hundred History Lessons. Or did he write it as Ky writes, with his hands? Did the poet know how lucky he was, to have such beautiful words and a place to put them and keep them?
Ky reaches for the poem.
“Wait,” I say. “Let’s not bury all of it.” I hold out my hand for the paper and he gives it to me, smoothing it flat over my palm. There’s not much to the poem; it’s small, one verse. It will be easily buried. I tear carefully along the line that talks about the birds:
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
I tear it smaller, smaller, until the pieces are tiny and light. Then I toss them into the breeze, to let them fly for a moment. They are so small that I don’t see where most of them settle, but one lands soft on a branch near me. Perhaps a real bird will use it for a nest, will tuck it away from everyone else, as I have the other Thomas poem.
We do know about the author, I realize as Ky and I bury the rest of the paper. We know him through his words.
And someday I will have to share the poems. I know it. And someday I will have to tell Xander what is happening here on the Hill.
But not yet. I burned poetry before to be safe. I can’t do it now. I hold tight to the poetry of our moments together, protecting them, protecting us. All of us.
“Tell me about your Match Banquet,” Ky says another time.
He wants me to tell him about Xander?
“Not about Xander,” he says, reading my mind and smiling that smile I love. Even now, when he smiles more often, I am still greedy for it. Sometimes, I reach out and touch his lips with my hand when he does it. I do that now, feel them move as he says, “About you.”
“I was nervous, excited ...” I stop.
“What did you think about?”
I wish I could tell him that I thought about him, but I lied to him once and I won’t do it again. And besides, I wasn’t thinking about Xander either.
“I thought about angels,” I say.
“Angels?”
“You know. The ones in the old stories. How they can fly to heaven.”
“Do you think anyone believes in them anymore?” he asks.
“I don’t know. No. Do you?”
“I believe in you,” he says, his voice hushed and almost reverent. “That’s more faith than I ever thought I’d have.”
We move quickly through the trees. I feel more than see that we must be nearing the top of the Hill. Eventually, our work here will be done and this time will be over. It doesn’t take long anymore to traverse the first part of the Hill; everything is tamped down and well marked and we know whe
re we are going, at least initially. But there is still unexplored territory left. There are still things to discover. For that I am grateful. I’m so grateful that I wish I did believe in angels so that I could express my gratitude to someone or something.
“Tell me more,” Ky says.
“I wore a green dress.”
“Green,” he says, glancing back at me. “I’ve never seen you in green.”
“You’ve never seen me in anything but brown or black,” I tell him. “Brown plainclothes. Black swimwear.” I flush.
“I take back what I said,” he says later, as the whistle blows. “I have seen you in green. I see you in green everyday, here in the trees.”
The next day, I ask him, “Can you tell me why you cried in the showing that day?”
“You saw me?”
I nod.
“I couldn’t help it.” His gaze is distant, hard now. “I didn’t know they had footage like that. It could have been my village. It was definitely one of the Outer Provinces.”
“Wait.” I think of the people, dark shadows running. “You’re saying this was—”
“Real,” he finished. “Yes. Those aren’t actors. It’s not a stage. It happens in all the Outer Provinces, Cassia. When I left, it was happening more and more.”
Oh no.
The whistle will blow soon, I can tell. He knows, too. But I reach for him and hold on here in the forest where the trees screen us and the birdcalls cover our voices. The entire Hill is complicit in our embrace.
I pull away first because I have something to write before our time ends. I’ve been practicing in air, but I want to carve in earth.
“Close your eyes,” I say to Ky, and I bend down, his breathing above me while he waits. “There,” I say, and he looks at what I’ve written.
I love you.
I feel embarrassed, as though I am a child who has tapped out these words on her scribe and held them out for a boy in her First School class to read. My writing is awkward and straggly and not smooth like Ky’s.
Why are some things easier to write than say?
