Last time, Cassia fails to actually fight back and her family supports her utterly in going through with her stupid plan to try to find Ky instead.

My hands are in the soil; my body is tired, but I will not let this work take away my thoughts. Because that is what the Officials here want: workers who work but do not think.

Yes because historically, overworked populations doing rote work have been so even tempered. And look at how well that worked for Ky!

More, the level of overworking it takes to have any soulcrushing properties is far more than someone who’s never done much menial labor at all would consider hard labor.

When we reached our new home, my parents requested that I be sent on a three months’ work detail because I showed signs of rebellion. The Officials in our new village checked my data; it correlated with my parents’ statement.

And then apparently ignored all the other data that contradicted the idea her parents would volunteer her. They can predict what dress she’ll pick and exactly how much she’ll love her perfect match but not that her family wouldn’t send her off for being rebellious?

She’s sent to a province in the west with Sisyphus running through it, because there was a work opening there and apparently there’s no note in her file saying to keep her away from where Ky was sent.

Just for the record, dropping seeds and covering them really isn’t even that bad or tiring as farmwork goes. Weeding is the worst.

He and Xander and my mother keep me updated on anything they learn about where Ky might be.

I’m just going to assume the government knows about all this and the matching department is letting it continue for the same reason as before.

Cassia tells us that she and Xander would have been as happy together as her parents, but of course she’s still going to get herself killed over another boy.

We wear no chains. We have nowhere to go. They wear us down with work; they don’t beat us or hurt us. They simply want to make us tired.

Holy shit Cassia, just make a break for it then! Hell, if this is where they send rebellious kids, why aren’t people taking off all the time?

No, really, this should have been perfect. She’s either still officially matched to Xander or the reason for the breakup is that she’s in a different province, I think they only match people within different cities of a given province. Either way, they could have claimed she was rebellious because she was distraught over having to leave him, her home, and all her friends. Then when she disappears, they’ll have the officials looking for her in the wrong direction while she keeps going west toward the outer provinces – after all, as far as they know she doesn’t know where to begin looking for Ky, and so long as the official doesn’t blab about Cassia not taking the pill properly, they think she doesn’t even know anything happened to Ky. She should take off as soon as she gets her bearings. After all, the longer she waits the better the chance of the official deciding her study’s finished and telling them who Cassia’s really after.

But no, she just stays there and is tired and dispirited but her love for Ky keeps her going! Fucking Ky.

We finally learn the last part of Ky’s story.

There was only one Ky drawn on the napkin. Smiling. A smile in which I could see both who he had been and who he became. His hands were empty again, and open, and reaching a little. Toward me.
Cassia.
I know which life is my real one now, no matter what happens. It’s the one with you.

So exactly what we already knew, once again.

At least she’s doing stuff on her own, sort of. She writes in the dirt and even shows the innovation of taking a piece of black burned wood from one of the cropfires to write in. She doesn’t say what cropfires are, they seem to be like campfires because she can get close enough to burn things in them.

My words never last long. I have to destroy them before anyone sees them.

Yes because god knows it’d be a terrible idea to try to spread your seditious knowledge when you’re surrounded by rebellious kids here as a punishment. Keep being a hipster rebel instead.

But. I remember them all. For some reason, the act of writing them down makes me remember. Each word I write brings me closer to finding the right ones. And when I see Ky again, which I know will happen, I will whisper the words I have written in his ear, against his lips. And they will change from ash and nothing into flesh and blood.

And that’s the end of this done with this terrible disappointment.

The book informs me the author is a retired English teacher, proving that I was right and they really don’t know much about what makes for a good story, and she lives at Salt Lake so this is probably another Mormon book. Fucking Mormons and their shitty love triangles.