Last time on Matched.com, a bunch of huge revelations about the functioning of her society boil down to how they affect Ky.

Now, Cassia’s running on the treadmill, which is telling her she’s going too fast and her heartrate is too high.

Usually, when I push too hard on the tracker I stop in time. I take things to the edge but I never jump.

Well don’t you sound well-adjusted.

Anyway, this time she doesn’t stop. She falls down and her skin’s torn up by the friction.

it will notice my absence in a moment. It will stop and then they will know I couldn’t keep up. But if I get back on fast enough, no one has to know what happened.

So that’s what she does.

My knees and elbows stream blood and I have tears in my eyes, but I am still going. The plainclothes will hide my wounds tomorrow and no one will ever know that I fell. No one will ever know what happened until it is too late.

So clearly whoever does evaluations is terrible at it, because they’re supposed to be screening for masochists and somehow missed this.

I think what bothers me is it’s not clear to what degree the narration is on her side here. Cassia did just find out some shocking things, so you can take this to be an outgrowth of that, an unhealthy reaction to a bad situation. But everything in her response just seems too practiced. We’re told she hasn’t fallen before, but she knows exactly what she needs to do and pulls it off successfully, and knows her wounds will be hidden. She doesn’t act as if this is something wholly new to her.

And this is absolutely and utterly bad, but the way it’s treated seems ambivalent.

Then there’s a videophone call. The officials say she did a great sorting job. She tugs her clothes to because the blood is running down her limbs.

no one will know that I am injured and bloody

I just can’t shake the feeling the book thinks this is acceptable, that mutilating yourself physically in response to emotional pain is an okay response, or that hiding it is a good idea.

“Are you sure that there aren’t any changes you want to make before the sort is implemented?”

Anyway, I really can’t see any way of looking at this other than that they’re yanking her chain to see what she’ll do. There’s no reason she’d want to second guess herself otherwise.

I almost say it. I have his number memorized; it would be so easy. Then I remember what she told me about life expectancy, and the words turn to rocks in my mouth

This should really not be something she’s struggling with. I think this is just an artifact of trying for drama and/or padding and shouldn’t reflect on Cassia’s character.

Her dad’s there and for a moment she wants to ask him if he was ever unsure about his match with her mom, then thinks better of it.

Of course he didn’t. They fell in love immediately and never looked back.

I’m not sure if this is meant to be taken as truth. It’s certainly what someone in Cassia’s position would think even when it wasn’t true. This far into the book and it’s still hard to tell if the narration is meant to be objective or not.

She goes to find her match box and for some reason it’s gone. Her mother, back from yet another trip, sees she’s looking and asks what for, and for some reason she lies and produces the little square of dress fabric preserved in glass. Her mother says it reminds her of stained glass, and says that she’s finally submitted the report.

I want to ask her what she meant about the trees that day, why she thought their loss was a warning to her, but I don’t think I want to know.

First off, I don’t know why it’s taken you this long to consider that, and second, a pox upon protagonists who don’t want to ask questions. This kind of thing is excusable if you have the plot moving at a decent clip without needing the protagonist to investigate, but this is definitely not that. It’s just been hiking, hiking, hiking, with occasional interludes where she fails to react to information in any useful way. Saying she doesn’t want to ask tells us nothing new about her character, because she never seems to want to talk to anyone in any communicative capacity. The most she’ll do is meaningless Ky chatter. Seriously, I’m pretty sure the only time she’s done anything resembling asking for advice and sharing information was to her grandfather, and that was really just confiding a thing that happened, since it’d already been resolved.

And you might argue that, well, it’s her character to be that way, but that makes her an awful character for a protagonist.

Cassia asks to see her mother’s matching dress.

The framed bit of fabric sits on a little shelf inside the closet she shares with my father, along with two silver boxes—hers and Papa’s—that held their microcards and, later, the rings for their Contract. The rings are purely ceremonial, of course—they don’t get to keep them—and they give the microcards back to the Officials at the Contract celebration. So my parents’ silver boxes are empty.

I think one of the problems with this book is the author cares more about metaphor than sense. I keep complaining it’s forcing things, and here I think the only purpose to the nonsensical design philosophy of giving them a permanent box for mementos but taking back the actual mementos is because the author thinks it sounds deep.

I put it next to mine along the windowsill. Together, side by side, I imagine that they look a little like a stained-glass window. The light behind them brightens them, and I can almost imagine that I could look through the colors and see a world made beautiful and different.
My mother understands. “Yes,” she says. “I imagine the windows looked something like that.”

This is a nice little bit, though.

I want to tell her everything but I can’t. Not now.

As you’ve shown, no, more like not ever.

Her mother can tell she’s upset and asks about her match.

How can I explain to my perfectly Matched mother everything that has happened? Everything I’ve risked? How can I explain to her that I’d do it again? How can I tell her that I hate the system that created her life, her love, her family? That created me?

Sometimes when you find yourself struggling to explain, it’s because you actually don’t have a good explanation. It’s stupid to hate the matching system. The problem appears to be specifically that you’re in love with an aberration – otherwise, he’d be in the pool to be matched with you and even if he wasn’t matched, no one would care much about you two having a fling. You have many reasons to hate how your society handles the whole aberration thing. You even just learned your society gives them horrible jobs that kill them early. But no, all about you and how the fact you aren’t supposed to kiss someone makes you hate everything about it.

Cassia asks how her mom knows something’s wrong.

I thought your Match was perfect for you. Xander is wonderful. And you might be able to stay in Oria, nearby, since both of your families live here. As a mother, I couldn’t imagine a better scenario.”

So that seems to suggest it isn’t a set matter of girls going to live with the boys normally, and also that people usually get moved around as adults since even with both families in Oria she only says “might”.

Anyway, so, eventually her mother realized the person her daughter was thinking so much about wasn’t her match.

“I’m married to someone wonderful. I have two beautiful children and a job I love. It’s a good life.” She holds out the piece of blue satin. “Do you know what would happen if I broke this glass?”
I nod. “The cloth would disintegrate. It would be ruined.”
“Yes,” she says, and then it’s almost as if she’s speaking to herself. “It would be ruined. Everything would be ruined.”

Thank god. Looks like we’re going to find out what’s up with her mom even though Cassia’s too useless to ask anything.

Her mother says that she was wrong about the trees being a warning, and Cassia thinks of how obvious it is her mother desperately wants to believe it but doesn’t quite. Cassia finally does ask what was up with the reports.

Her mom starts going on about how she doesn’t know how doctors can handle having people’s lives relying on them. Oh dear.

See, there were two crops being grown that were odd.

The Government asked me and two others to travel to the fields and submit reports about the crops. They wanted to know two things: Were the crops viable as foodstuffs? And were the growers planning a rebellion?”

I draw in my breath. It’s forbidden to grow food unless the Government has specifically requested it. They control the food; they control us. Some people know how to grow food, some know how to harvest it, some know how to process it; others know how to cook it. But none of us know how to do all of it. We could never survive on our own

Oh come on!

You spent the last twenty-six chapters going on and on about how awesome things are and how only you and Ky were unhappy. Yet you’re now telling me the only thing keeping everyone from instant rebellion is complete and constant control of your food supply?

Note also the inconsistent use of government rather than society. We are never going to have any explanation as to what, if any, distinction there is, I’ll bet.

Both crops were food crops.

The grower at the Arboretum had an entire field of Queen Anne’s lace.” My mother’s face changes suddenly, lights up. “Oh, Cassia, it was so beautiful. I’ve only seen a sprig here and there. This was a whole field, waving in the wind.”
“Wild carrot,” I say, remembering.

That is not a viable foodstuff by any stretch of imagination.

“Wild carrot” is related to carrots. It is not poisonous. It is edible when young. That’s all. You can’t feed people off it because you can’t grow the root to any decent size – the root quickly matures to be too woody to eat.

The other was sego lilies, which are a legitimate food crop – currently mostly used as an ornamental flower, but with a perfectly edible bulb.

Naturally, the people growing it say they’re just in it for the flower. Ironically, the Queen Anne’s lace one seems the more suspicious despite it being the more useless crop – mass growing something called wild carrot is the sort of attempt I’d expect someone to make, particularly when it’s a weed they should be familiar with and the flower is not particularly impressive to most people’s eye.

Interestingly, it’s considered a useful companion plant to other crops, though given everything else I suspect that entire train of thought doesn’t exist and it’s all monocultures all the time in this world. But anyway, if they wanted to try out growing it in preparation for rebellion, trying to sneak it in as a companion plant would have been smarter.

If they actually know plants, then what they should have done was grow some deadly nightshade. American deadly nightshade isn’t but it’s popularly considered so. Haven’t actually tried any myself (there’s a number of related species and toxicity varies, so it’s not something to just stuff in your mouth at a whim) but a lot of people have eaten it and lived to say it tasted fine. So if the growers pass around their own herbal knowledge, they’d have an oral tradition saying it’s edible while the official books say it isn’t.

One expert was convinced the growers were telling the truth. The other thought they were lying. They submitted conflicting reports. Everyone waited for mine. I asked for one last trip to be sure. After all, these growers will be Relocated or Reclassified based on our reports. Mine would tip the balance one way or the other.”

She explains that she knew perfectly well the people had know it was edible. The one growing Queen Anne’s lace had even grown up in the same town as hers yet was claiming to have never even seen the plant before..

then when I came home again and saw all of you, I realized I had to report the truth. I had to fulfill my duty to the Society and guarantee our happiness. And keep us all safe.”

The sensical reading here is that rebellion is dangerous and her family could be hurt by it, but it might also be that the society would punish her if she betrayed them. It just seems the latter is more how we actually see them functioning, and after all, the society is going to stop the people from growing those plants either way – she says even the good outcome is them being relocated.

It doesn’t seem to occur to her to wonder if the dissenting expert actually believed the people were telling the truth or was trying to cover for them. But perhaps it’s more she doesn’t want to consider it.

Cassia says she understands. She goes back to her room where she finds her box without any trouble (…so I guess that was just for symbolism too)

If there hadn’t been a mistake, if I’d just seen his face and everything had been normal, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have fallen in love with Ky

Also if you hadn’t decided after being told it was a mistake that it wasn’t, and then started obsessing over him for chapters. Totally out of your hands, all that.

What’s still so irritating is that really, seeing his face had nothing to do with it. They start talking because he sees her with the poem, and her getting the poem is unrelated. And had they fallen in love naturally everything else in this plot would work so much better.

If the sort is what I suspect, if Ky leaves for a better life, will I pick up the pieces of my life here? The biggest piece, my Match with Xander, would not be hard to shape a life around. I could love him. I do love him. And because I do, I have to tell him about Ky. I do not mind stealing from the Society. But I will not steal from Xander any longer. Even if it hurts, I have to tell him. Because either way, whichever life I build, has to be built on truth.

FINALLY.

It’s all really underwhelming, but at least it’s happening.

Still, you know what’d have been cool? If Cassia hadn’t been told everything about the sorting, if she’d had to make a decision while trying to figure out what she was really sorting him into. Sort him high so they might think he’s deserving of a better job, or low and hope the less efficient workers are the ones they decide to try out elsewhere? That kind of thing is more interesting than getting the right answer handed to you.

She decides she was telling the truth when she told Ky she first saw him on the hill because that was when she fell in love.

I saw him differently because I saw him outside, unguarded for a moment, with eyes the color of the sky in the evening before it goes down into dark. I saw him seeing me.

I’m tired of hearing about what a sue her love interest is. Get to the point where he gets sorted away and it turns out evil or she blows it by bursting into tears at the wrong moment or Xander gets taken by the secret police because while her whole drama was going on he had his own seditious stuff going on or something.

She says that because she wants one thing she’s starting to want everything.

I want to pick my work position. Marry who I choose. Eat pie for breakfast and run down a real street instead of on a tracker. Go fast when I want and slow when I want. Decide which poems I want to read and what words I want to write.

All because of fucking Ky. I want to like the sentiment here, but I can’t get over that it’s all prompted by fucking Ky. Like she can’t want these things on her own, it has to be an outgrowth of her wanting fucking Ky.

Most of all I want Ky.

ENOUGH WITH FUCKING KY

GO TO THE MUSEUM AND TALK TO AN ARCHIVIST OR SOMETHING GOD

“We’re running out of time,” Ky says.

…back to hiking with fucking Ky instead.

Kt can just sense that something’s going on, with the same sue powers that let him know everything else so far. They also inform him the reason is because the war with whoever’s on the other side of the society’s borders is going badly.

“I have a feeling,” he says. “From what you told me about your mother. From the shortage of Officials during free-rec hours. And there are changes coming at work.

Hey, book. You know what would have been nice? Having Cassia notice this shit instead of having fucking Ky explain it to us.

You were so close! Cassia has, by my count, suggested a shortage of officials twice – once when she said they used to have one living on their street, and once when she said there were unusually few officials that day at the game center. She gave no context for either – didn’t say if there used to be officials assigned to all the neighborhoods or even if the official in hers was there all the time to keep an eye on them, and her comment about the officials in the game center implied it was an unusual day rather than part of any larger change.

And not only is this just bad writing to not be setting this up properly so we could notice along with him, but what has the book been saying all this time? That Cassia is a super sorter. That Cassia is superhumanly good at finding and noticing pattens.

Yet she didn’t notice any of this. Ky did. Because Ky actually gets to do stuff while Cassia sits on the sidelines and waits for him to teach her.

She also, despite her bit about wanting to be more honest, does not volunteer her own knowledge about the changes at his work. He has to ask her directly why she was there, and she won’t say anything beyond that she had to sort the workers. Instead, she asks why he hasn’t told more of the story. Remember, she kept wondering about how he got away from the officials.

“I’m afraid,” he says simply. “Of what you’re going to think.”

Don’t worry, you’re a sue. Even if you did do something bad, which I’m hoping for since then you’d be more interesting, Cassia and the book will still support you unconditionally.

“It was in the spring. They came to talk with me at work, pulled me aside into a room there. They asked if I ever wondered what my life would be like if I weren’t an Aberration.”
…
Then they told me there had been a mistake. My data had been entered into the Matching pool.”

Huh. So they were both lying by omission.

This seems to be the explanation for that card mixup, then. 1984 again – the government creates their own problems. It seems like they did all this to see if…I don’t know, they could get Ky under control? Even though he already is. They already control everyone, yet they insist on dealing with them through threats and promises.

Also, see? Ky is the sue. Cassia is the protagonist but even the centerpiece of the plot was all for Ky’s sake, and she just got swept up in it as collateral damage.

I feel like something is dying, ruined beyond repair. If the Officials orchestrated our whole love affair, the one thing in my life I thought happened in spite of them—I can’t finish the thought.

This is idiotic.

It didn’t happen in spite of them, since she only gets interested in Ky because of his face appearing and what they tell her about it. And then she spends chapter upon chapter insisting that he’s her real match somehow, and never explains how or if she changed her mind on that before abruptly switching into saying the entire matching system is evil.

All she’s doing now is proving why people can’t be trusted to pick their own matches. How real can you claim your feelings are when you’re all but admitting it was really about doing something you weren’t supposed to?

Poor Ky doesn’t understand what the issue is. After all, he had no idea why she was suddenly interested, since she never told him a bit of it. She runs off.

“Cassia,” he calls after me. “You’re keeping something from me, too.”

Finally realized it, huh? Seems odd for someone who’s otherwise so perfect to have taken so long, but I guess he really didn’t want to know this bit.

And then we skip to her and Xander. Apparently she changed where she wanted to eat at the last minute, so her own meal is in the wrong place but that is suddenly not the inviolate law it’s been treated like throughout the rest of the book.

The nutrition personnel frowned at me when I asked for one of the extra meals they keep on hand, but after checking my data, they handed over the meal without further comment.
…
I realize how much food my container holds this time, now that it’s a general portion and not labeled specifically for me. My portions have been getting smaller. What purpose does that serve? Am I too fat? I look down at my arms and legs, strong from all the hiking. I don’t think so. And I realize again how distracted my parents must be; under normal circumstances, they would have noticed my smaller portions and had plenty to say to the nutrition personnel about them.
Things are wrong everywhere.

So what the fuck does any of this mean? I was theorizing maybe this could be related to the war going badly, but now we have confirmation it’s just you getting the tiny meals. If you’re getting fed so little, why don’t you ever say you’re hungry? And how can your legs be strong and muscular if you’re getting below a normal meal for someone not exercising?

Plus what would her parents noticing have accomplished? It’s not like people have any say in their meals, right? Doesn’t seem like they could even complain about the food always being lukewarm under the previous director.

After they eat, she decides to confess. Finally!

It’s better to say this quickly, before I find myself unable to say it at all. “I think I’m falling in love with someone else.”

…that’s not exactly the truth either, Cassia. More like you have fallen in love with someone else, and also you’d been basically dating the other guy behind his back, and really you’re only even going back to Xander because you think he’s leaving.

I suppose you could say she’s trying to make this easier on Xander, but if it’s just all about Xander’s feelings, she could just never tell him, and if she wants to confess but spare his feelings she’d be better off saying what she did do directly instead of how she feels about it – “I cheated on you, and I’m sorry” is better than “I love someone else”.

the pain is still there.
And something else too. Something that doesn’t look like surprise. It looks like recognition. Did some part of him know this was happening? Is that why he challenged Ky to the games?

I don’t know, Cassia, but why don’t you? Why are you so useless? You supposedly know him so well, you’re supposedly so great at seeing pattens, and this is the best you can do.

She explains her whole bit about her loving him as well, and Xander responds sanely:

“You love me too?” Xander says, his voice cold. “What game are you playing?”

Mako’s one. Sorry, Cassia, but you had a lot of chances to salvage this – to tell him when you should have or at least given excuses for why you couldn’t, and you failed to.

He’s similarly not impressed by her explaining that she loves him but differently.

it’s exactly like the last time we had an argument and he refused to speak to me. Years ago, when I decided that I didn’t like playing the games as much as I once had. Xander was mad. “But no one else plays like you,” he said. And then, when I wouldn’t give in, he wouldn’t talk to me. I still wouldn’t play.
It took two weeks before our peace was brokered, that day he saw me jump into the pool from the diving board after Grandfather jumped first. I surfaced, frightened and exhilarated, and Xander swam over to congratulate me. In the rush of the moment all was forgotten.

Holy shit Cassia you suck. You’ve been doing the sit around uselessly thing for four years straight? Xander was right to be furious at you and it is a shame for everyone, yourself included, that he forgot about it because you managed to participate one time.

Why are you like this? What purpose does this serve? It doesn’t even make sense when you’re supposedly athletic, so athletic in fact that you have a special pass that lets you be extra athletic. And it might have made sense to say that you were standing back to watch as part of your sorting interest, so you could notice things, except you noticed jack and shit! Xander figured out Ky was throwing games, Ky figured out everything ever, you figured out Ky has pretty eyes.

She wonders if her grandfather would be for or against jumping this time. I think we can work this out by the fact he said to keep the poems secret rather than shouting them in the street.

Cassia tries to explain herself by saying the officials stuck Ky’s face on her card for the lulz. As I’ve been trying to explain to Cassia, this does not even begin to excuse the resulting infidelity.

Xander, finally, says it out loud for me.

“I came up on the screen, too, Cassia,” he says quietly. “But he was the one you chose to see.” And then, quick as a player making his last move, he turns away and pushes through the doors. He leaves me behind.

Not at first! I want to tell him. And I still see you!

But you still cheated on him with Ky and kept it a secret! God, this shouldn’t be so hard. And look at you, you aren’t even feeling guilty now, you’re acting like this is something terrible happening to you.

One by one, the people I can talk to have gone. Grandfather. My mother. And now, Xander.

Your mother is still there and the reason you can’t talk to Xander now is because you’ve spent the book refusing to talk to him, and didn’t even honestly apologize when you finally did. Too little too late.

Cassia goes on about how much she wants the green tablet because it’s so hard dicking with other people’s feelings and then dealing with their justifiable anger.

The sun shines down on me where I have chosen to stand. No trees, no shade, no height from which I can look down on what I’ve done. And even if there were, I cannot see for the tears.

I would love to feel sympathy Cassia, but this really belonged in the chapter after you decided you and Ky were in love, not months later. If Xander was acting like this when you came to him immediately, it’d be different.