Last time on Matched.com, they climb to the top and kiss.
This time, screaming! Yes, the plot has returned to us!
then we are all in the hall, going toward the front door, because someone on our street is screaming and the sound of it is so uncommon it cuts deep. We may not hear the sound of pain often in Mapletree Borough, but the instinct to try to help has not yet been Matched out of us.
Uh, not sure what matching has to do with it, but yes, that is totally a thing humans do that it’s hard to train people out of.
The screaming is Aida, Ky’s mom, and she’s chasing someone being rushed off by both officials and officers, and yes, we still have no clue what difference there is between the two. So it’s Ky they’re taking away, but come on, like you were expecting anyone else?
For the first time in my life, I run as fast as I can in public. No tracker to slow me, no branches to stop me. My feet fly over grass, over cement. I cut across the lawns of my neighbors and through their flowers, trying to catch up to the lead group moving toward the air-train stop. An Officer detaches from them and hurries toward Aida. She’s drawing too much attention; other houses have open doors and people standing on the steps watching.
I run faster; my feet hit the sharp, cool grass of Em’s lawn. A few houses more.
“Cassia?” Em calls from her doorway. “Where are you going?”
Ky hasn’t heard me over Aida’s screams. They’re almost to the steps that go up to the air-train platform. When they walk under the light at the bottom, I see they’ve locked Ky’s hands together.
Just like they did in the picture.
“Ky!” I scream again, and his head snaps up. He turns his face toward me, but I am not close enough to see his eyes. I have to see his eyes.
Things are happening!
No, really, I like this. The book’s squandered all the buildup, but you can see the hints of the story that should have preceded this – of Cassia being good and doing what she’s supposed to, and it all shatters at once right now, she forgets about what she’s supposed to do and finally acts.
Cassia can’t get to him, but she has just enough time to run to next to the platform.
in the middle of all the noise, I point to the sky. I hope he understands what I mean, because I mean so many things: My heart will always fly his name. I won’t go gentle. I’ll find a way to soar like the angels in the stories and I will find him.
Wouldn’t this have been a great beginning for the book’s plot? Say, a couple chapters to get us used to the world, then this happens with her declaring she won’t accept this and then actual adventure.
Anyway, that’s all they have time for. Ky is hustled off as the officer reaches her. Luckily, her dad’s there and he’s telling them to leave her alone. The guy says Cassia’s making a scene.
“Of course she is,” my father retorts. “They’ve taken her childhood friend away in the early hours of the morning while his mother screams. What’s going on?”
I hear how loud my father’s voice is as he dares to ask this question, and I dart a glance over at my mother to see how she feels about this. Her face shows nothing but pride as she looks at him
So like I said, the book’s been pretty good with both genders appearing, unlike most of these books where women barely exist. But you can very much tell that it’s written from a more regressive viewpoint. The only thing Cassia’s mother has done is the report, otherwise her role is to look loving and supportive. I appreciate that she has more depth than simply that, and if there was just another family or something where the woman was the one calling the shots there wouldn’t be a problem at all, but-
Xander’s father speaks up
There isn’t. The men exist in their own right, the women exist as secondary. The only one who shows up on her own is Ky’s mother, who’s only showed up now and has already disappeared.
An official pops up to say Ky has a new job and his mom just got upset because it’s in another province. Cassia says everyone just accepts this, although she doesn’t seem to consider if it’s that people don’t notice the holes in the story or just that they know they can’t do anything about it – and that’s kind of important, Cassia, if people are brainless sheep or it’s just they don’t know there’s another option.
Cassia then starts thinking about how this is all her fault. Damn it, for once do something, would you? Who the fuck even cares at this point why it’s happening, that won’t fix the fact it did happen.
“Lies,” Patrick Markham says. Everyone turns to look at him. Even standing there in his sleepclothes, his face drawn and thin from all he has suffered, he still has a quiet dignity—a quality no one can touch. It is something I have only seen in one other person. Though Patrick and Ky are not related by blood, they both possess the same kind of strength.
See what I mean? Push comes to shove, the women are gone and the men are talking. The only recurring women is the official woman Cassia’s decided is just sadistic.
So anyway, Patrick explains that the official story is a new work position, but they’re actually going to the outer provinces because the war’s going badly and they’ll be used to fight.
All the original villagers are dead. All of them.”
The book seems to think villages are the same as people fighting a war for some reason. It sounds more like they’ve just going to be in the line of fire. Besides, if they’re getting bombed or whatever from the air, people really don’t matter fightingwise.
Patrick goes on to say that of course it’d be aberrations that’d be sent off first but he thought they’d make an exception for him. Then Aida appears again to sob about how Ky will die.
It’s a death sentence back there.” Then she pulls away, screams at the Officials, “He’s going to die!”
But I keep coming back to the fact they knew full well this was happening, and it would happen to other people. They just thought they’d be spared.
It’s worse when it’s someone you know and care about, that’s always true but – you knew and you didn’t give a damn because it was other people? Then why should anyone else care about you?
So Patrick and Aida are gagged and dragged off.
Then Cassia tells us “her” official is here. Joy, the one woman who’s halfway plot important whose role is just to be endlessly demonized. And then there’s a super high level official guy.
Who tells everyone to take out a red tablet.
This chapter is just great for plot, isn’t it?
When they take them out, they’re told to hand over their tablet containers as well for some reason.
Officers seem to multiply. They walk down the street, keeping everyone who stayed in their houses where they are and isolating the dozen or so of us who stand near the air-train stop—the handful of us who know what happened today in Mapletree Borough and across the country.
Unless those houses are crazy well soundproofed, probably people heard the shouting about them taking Ky away to die because their country is losing the war.
Cassia says this is probably the only place this happened, though, since most aberrations probably aren’t living with high up officials who know about the war.
And it’s all my fault. I didn’t play God or angel; I played Official. I let myself think that I knew what was best and changed someone’s life accordingly.
I guess this is one of the book’s aesops. It’s not a very well supported one. We’ve seen no sign their system actually doesn’t work, the issue is how it’s being used. It’s probably a good thing the author’s expunged history or we’d probably be hearing that Hitler used statistics.
I look down at the red tablet, so small in my hand. Even if it means death, I think I would welcome that now.
But wait. I promised Ky. I pointed to the sky and promised him. And now, moments later, I’m going to give up?
Fucking Ky.
That’s it. That’s what everyone’s motivations boil down to. Cassia only anythings if it’s about Ky, other people only care about death if it’s Ky’s.
She drops it into the grass and says red is the color of beginning, then crushes the tablet under her foot.
No one’s taken the red pill yet, so they ask if anyone wants to go first, and her mom immediately volunteers. Cassia tells her not to and her dad makes her stop and says he’ll go too.
Together, as we all watch, they both swallow their tablets down. The Official checks my parents’ mouths and nods briefly. “They dissolve within seconds,” he tells us. “Too quickly for you to try and throw it back up, but it’s unnecessary anyway. It won’t hurt you. All it does is clear your mind.”
It’s like they all have some sort of mild case of Tourette’s compelling them to blurt out information they shouldn’t. If you make a big deal about not being able to spit it out, everyone’s hearing you say that for some reason they should want to spit it out.
Cassia interprets this as meaning it’ll erase their memory of what happened and what they learned.
that the Enemy is winning the war
This is the second time the “Enemy” has been referenced, the first time being when Patrick said it a few paragraphs ago.
One of the many frustrating things is that there’s no way of telling what she knows about the war. Did she even know they were at war before recently? Is “enemy” the term they’re taught, or is the reason she’s using that word because she knows nothing about their opponents than that they’re opponents?
And I realize why they didn’t have us take the tablets when something happened to the first Markham boy: because we needed to remember how dangerous Anomalies can be. How vulnerable we would be without the Society to keep them all away.
Did they let that Anomaly out on purpose? To remind us?
But they couldn’t erase your memory of that because the kid’s still dead. It’s one thing to fuck up your memories of the past hour or something, but they can’t erase the fact a kid existed, and even if they could, the number of people they’d have to drug would be enormous.
More, if anomalies really do hack up ten year olds, then it’s not like they’re trying to scare you, they’re actually dangerous. And the whole problem with that affair was that it was the society screwing up, because they’re supposed to keep the anomalies under control and they failed.
Cassia says she doesn’t want to forget.
As much as it hurts, I have to hold onto the whole story of him, the painful parts, too.
So is this a straight dystopia or a failed utopia? Is the red pill a method of control or an attempt to keep people happy? If you said you didn’t want to forget bad things, would that brand you a threat or would they just think you didn’t know what was best for yourself?
So everyone lines up to take their pills. Xander looks at her and seems really upset right before taking it. Then it’s demonized official lady again, there to make sure Cassia takes the pill. Cassia holds out a closed hand because remember, she stupidly crushed the pill rather than keep it out for inspection.
I think I almost see her smile. Even though I know she carries extra tablets—I’ve seen them—she doesn’t offer me one yet.
Her glance flickers down to the grass at my feet and then back up to my face. I lift my arm and pretend to put something in my mouth and then I swallow, hard. And she moves on to the next person.
Even though this is what I want, I hate her. She wants me to remember what happened here. What I’ve done.
Because she’s just evil, as Cassia has been insisting this whole time for no reason.