Last time on Matched.com, a second face appears on the screen!

What?” Completely startled, I touch the screen and the face dissolves under my fingertips, pixelating into specks that look like dust. Words appear, but before I can read them the screen goes completely blank. Again.

Okay, that’s sounding more like a random glitch. Considering we were just told last chapter that this society assumes technology is unreliable shit, she should just assume the computer malfunctioned and contact a human to figure out what’s up.

The portscreen stays blank. I feel blank, too. This is a thousand times worse than the empty screen last night.

How can it be a thousand time worse if that wasn’t bad at all? Everyone thought it was awesome. You thought it was awesome.

I don’t understand. The Society doesn’t make mistakes.

But what else could this be? No one has two Matches.

Okay, first, you just told us that your society’s computers can make mistakes and that’s why your job is boring. Second, this is obviously a mistake because it isn’t presenting you with information on either one. If a blank screen never happens in this instance, and it’s happening, then there’s an error. This isn’t hard.

Then Xander shows up.

For some reason, she wants to keep it a secret, even though she lives in a society where you give up being able to make decisions so someone better qualified can make them for you, so the instinct should be to call in for guidance. How do they even have a concept of keeping secrets when they have no privacy and the government knowing every detail about your personality is considered a good thing?

Also. The only reason to keep it secret is if she thinks she’s wrongly matched but wants to keep it, but that goes against both her beliefs about the matching system and the fact that her house is monitored so they saw the other match just now.

Xander says he read up on the card, and has she read the new guidelines? So she knows he must not have seen anything odd. Unless he’s doing the same thing as she is and trying to keep it a secret, of course. But he does seem to know what the new guidelines are when her card wouldn’t display anything, so probably not.

He tells us most are boring but one was interesting. Cassia is still distracted by what the hell’s going on and how people are looking at them so she misses the chance to ask which one. Presumably it’s the one he volunteers next, that they’re allowed to express “physical affection” now.

Cassia thinks that sounds good. And she realizes why people are looking at them.

It’s jealousy, pure and simple. I relax a little, because I can understand why. None of us ever thought we could have golden, charismatic, clever Xander. We always knew he would be Matched with another girl in another City, another Province.

But he’s not. He’s Matched with me.

This actually suggests a good reason he shouldn’t be. It seems like the matching system usually matches strangers just because of population numbers, so it shouldn’t be hard to just add in a blanket ban on matching people who already know each other to discourage kids from forming relationships prior to being matched. If teens start thinking that it’s possible, everyone who falls in love will be sure they’re a perfect match and then be upset when they aren’t paired together.

She then admits that she’s holding on to try to prove that they’re properly matched and that it was all just some error. You know, with that kind of logic you”d think someone would have latched onto his side prior to the matching. And she’s not at all worried about being in trouble for touching him if he turns out to not be her match, which, given how controlling her society is, seems it should be an issue.

Instead what really nags at her is that it wasn’t a random face but another boy she also knows. Huh. Not sure what that would mean, although maybe it’s just a sign that whatever criteria they use to select matches has her being most compatible with someone in the near area.