Last time on Matched.com, Cassia goes up to see the person she’s matched with, and the screen is blank.

The whispers rise soft around me like birds beating their wings under the dome of City Hall. “Your Match is here this evening,” the hostess says, smiling. The people around me smile as well, and their murmurs become louder. Our Society is so vast, our Cities so many, that the odds of your perfect Match being someone in your own City are minuscule. It’s been many years since such a thing happened here.

Well, that was an irritating fakeout. Authors, it’s generally bad to try to make something sound ominous to the reader when it’s actually good in context. It’s fine to embrace those sort of juxtapositions when it’s the point, but not write around the characters’ actual reactions to make it sound like it’s bad for fake suspense.

Anyway, you already know it’s going to turn out to be Xander since she’s been thinking how pretty he is.

Cassia seems thrilled, so I’m curious where the love triangle is going to come into it.

The man sitting next to my father whispers, “What a piece of luck for your family. You don’t have to trust her future to someone you know nothing about.”

I’m surprised by the unhappy edge to his tone; the way his comment seems to be right on the verge of insubordination.

Huh, our first dissenter, and the first real suggestion the society might have a very dim view of free speech. I wonder if they’re a democracy.

Cassia says she doesn’t recognize the guy’s daughter, apparently there are multiple schools within the city. I wonder how the population works – so there’s lots of them, but also they have empty ancient neighborhoods? My guess the neighborhoods have something about them keeping people out has just gained shambling legs. The fact they’ve taking so long to reclaim them suggests that the government deliberately locked the areas down and is only retaking areas when it becomes necessary. Maybe there actually was a sudden revolution or something culturally, and they treated the areas as unclean.

Other girls take their turns standing up.

Odd fact – although her description says that the boy is also called up in response to a girl elsewhere being his match, the book only mentions girls being called up and boys on the screen, never the opposite.

Before we leave, the hostess of the Match Banquet asks Xander and me and our families to step aside and speak with her. “This is an unusual situation,” she says, but she corrects herself immediately. “Not unusual. Excuse me. It is merely uncommon.”

Ah, getting to the dystopic. So, for some reason “unusual” is doubleplusungood.

Anyway, because they already know each other there’s a couple other courtship guidelines for them and she says they should read up on those. I’m curious what they’ll turn out to be, as well as what the basic guidelines are.

If you choose to be Matched, your Marriage Contract will take place when you are twenty-one. Studies have shown that the fertility of both men and women peaks at the age of twenty-four. The Matching System has been constructed to allow those who Match to have their children near this age—providing for the highest likelihood of healthy offspring.

What? No. I’m wondering if the author tried to research this and found that a lot of the statistics were done lumping 20-24 as an age group and decided from that twenty-five was the decline, instead of because they were going in units of five. And that’s for women, it pretty much doesn’t even matter for men until much later on. And fertility rate is chance of pregnancy, not chance of healthy kids. There’s some evidence that slightly older mothers are better for the latter. Also, if you’re spacing the kids like Cassia’s family apparently did, you want to make sure to start early so you have time for a second kid within that healthy window. At twenty-one, most people will conceive within a year, but seven years past then brings you to twenty-eight.

Also, who cares about fertility if you’re having few kids? Maybe that seven year gap wasn’t intentional, but then, if they’re struggling with fertility problems and birth defects, there’d be more variety in the kids.

Oh! Unless the reason there’s so few kids is because they kill all the weird ones. But still, in that case they should want the couples to start having sex as soon as it’s safe for the women, and just cull any offspring.

Also, they should just suck out the eggs early and implant them later on. That way you can remove the biggest problem with women having healthy kids when older.

(And in that line, it’s actually better to have children with multiple fathers. Plus, pregnant women tend to have trouble caring for kids at the same time. So, why not have everyone get kids assigned to them, and completely divorce relation from family?)

Cassia thinks about how unlike everyone else, she already knows her match, and feels suddenly a bit sad that she doesn’t get to go through all the excitement of wondering about them.

But then Xander looks at me and asks, “What are you thinking about?” and I answer, “That we are very lucky,” and I mean it. There is still much to discover. Until now, I have only known Xander as a friend. Now he is my Match.

Cassia is a wonderfully non-whiny protagonist.

The women quickly reminds them that they’re not supposed to use words like luck, because there’s no such thing! Cassia is duly chastized.

should know better than to use such an archaic, inaccurate term. There’s only probability now. How likely something is to occur, or how unlikely.

But that’s one of the meanings of luck – an unlikely event happened that you’re happy about. She’s not saying the fortune gods caused events to occur, she’s saying she’s pleased that things lined up so that a thing she liked happened.

So clearly, yes, science cult.

The woman says they can read the new guidelines later because she’s sure they’re all tired out now, and there’s no rush.

Cassia jumps in to tell us about how there certainly isn’t!

We live longer and better than any other citizens in the history of the world.

Hm. I’m inclined to take this at face value and assume this is something leading to the moral that there’s other things that matter. But – do they? I mean, I can go make chocolate cake with cream frosting right now.

She explains that this has to do with the whole arraigned marriage thing, because that’s designed to make physically and emotionally healthy offspring. So I guess it isn’t who you’re most suited for, it’s who you’re most suited to raise a kid with.

Anyway, their parents are thrilled.

I can’t believe that this is me, wearing a beautiful green dress, holding gold in one hand and silver in the other, walking next to my best friend. My Match.

So how does the love triangle enter into this? Do they change their mind and try to reassign her?

When they get on the train he grabs her hand to help her on board, and they’re both omg omg holding hands. This is all surprisingly cute. Please don’t become a creep, Xander. She also says they haven’t done so since childhood, so I guess this is a society that’s very touchy about touching. More evidence for this being a society built by upper middle class America.

She thinks more about how great this is and how before now they always thought they couldn’t have a relationship and otherwise continues to sound incredibly pleased with all this.

Her brother is surprised to hear about the match, and she says well maybe the same will be true for him and he’ll end up matched with the neighboring girl who he fights with all the time!

“Cassia,” my mother says disapprovingly, glancing around to make sure that no one heard. We are not supposed to disparage other members of our street and our community. Mapletree Borough is known for being tight-knit and exemplary in this way.

Wow, though, this place is uptight. Nothing about that was disparaging, it’s not lol that horrible neighbor girl it’s lol you think you don’t like her but you’ll be matched with her.

Her father encourages her inside because curfew is coming. But she doesn’t want to accept everything’s over.

I don’t want to take off the dress and go back to my plainclothes; I don’t want to return to the usual days, which are good, but nothing special like this.

I’m not sure yet if the problem with this culture is supposed to be that it’s just boring and samey or actually deprived. The way she talks is the former, but the omg cake thing suggests it’s the latter and they’re deluding themselves about quality of life.

“Don’t be long,” my father says gently. He doesn’t want me to break curfew. It is the City’s curfew, not his, and I understand.

Do people break the rules at all? There doesn’t seem to be any concept of acceptable wiggle room. I remember in The Giver that everyone breaks the rules about bicycle age, “secretly” teaching the kids to ride in advance of officially getting their first bike. The bicycle rule’s intention was to prevent the kids from riding around on their own. Secretly teaching them to ride early on a parent’s bike doesn’t violate the purpose of the law, and keeping it against the rules prevents younger kids from ever doing it on their own. As creepy as that society was, it really seemed like everyone involved were people.

Compare that to not taking home a chunk of chocolate cake. They’re not taking any more than they’re given, it’d be a big deal to the younger kid to get to share it, and it’s not even like it’s secret coming-of-age food, since she says it’s just the same high-quality food as at secular winter festival.

Both the rules here seem more like what-would-the-neighbors-think stuff – don’t stay out a second past the socially approved time, don’t take food back with you for someone to eat later.

She says that her dress is borrowed? Huh, I don’t think she mentioned that before. So it’s sort of like a rented prom dress, I assume.

Also, she explains she’ll be working tomorrow despite it being a Saturday

After that I’ll have my Saturday night free-rec hours, one of the few times I get to spend with my friends outside of Second School.

I’d be interested to know what the full schedule for everyone is. From this M-F days don’t have free nights. Maybe that’s homework time and they’re not allowed out. You know, if their time is this regimented, why also have curfew? Presumably going out during earlier homework hours is just as prohibited. Or maybe you get free run of an area when you’re done with whatever you’re supposed to do, but you’re not supposed to go anywhere else.

Anyway, so she goes back in and she puts the unknown pills into the usual pillholder.

I know what the blue and green tablets do.

But I don’t! Say it already!

I don’t know anyone who knows for certain what the red tablet does. There have been rumors about it for years.

But you must have some clue, if only just the circumstances you’re supposed to take it. For example, if the only reason you should take it is that a certain alarm goes on, maybe it’s a suicide pill.

Also, weird.

Also, wonder how their government works. There’s no way this could be a democracy.

She drops the subject, because For the first time in my life, I’m allowed to dream of Xander.

Maybe they get unmatched because society hates emotion and they realize she’s gone over regulation levels of attachment.