Matched by Ally Condie Read Free Book Online

way again, now that I know too much about him.
     
    There are so many of us inside the game center. It is hot and humid in the room, reminding me of the tropical ocean simulation we had in Science once, the one about the coral reefs that teemed with fish before the Warming killed them all. I taste sweat and breathe water.
    Someone bumps into me as an Official makes an announcement over the main speaker. The crowd goes quiet to listen:
    “Someone has dropped their tablet container. Please, stand completely still and do not speak until we locate it.”
    Everyone stops immediately. I hear the clatter of dice and a soft thud as someone, perhaps Xander, puts down a game piece. Then all is quiet. No one moves. A lost container is a serious matter. I look at a girl near me, and she stares back at me, wide-eyed, openmouthed, frozen in place. I think again of that ocean simulation, how the instructor paused it in the middle to explain something, and the fish projected around the room stared back at us, unblinking, until she switched the simulation back on.
    We all wait for the switch to be thrown, for the instructor to tell us what comes next. My mind begins to wander, to escape this place where we all hold still. Are there other unknown Aberrations standing here in this room, swimming in this water? Water . I recall another memory of water, real this time, a day when Xander and I were ten.
    Back then, we had more free-recreation time, and in the summers we almost always spent it at the swimming pool. Xander liked to swim in the blue-chlorinated water; I liked to sit on the pockmarked cement side of the pool and swish my feet back and forth before I went in. That’s what I was doing when Xander appeared next to me, a worried look on his face.
    “I’ve lost my tablet container,” he told me quietly.
    I glanced down to make sure that mine was still hooked to my swimwear. It was; its metal clip snapped securely to the strap over my left shoulder. We’d had our tablet containers for a few weeks, and at that point they contained one tablet. The first one. The blue one. The one that can save us; the one with enough nutrients to keep us going for several days if we have water, too.
    There was plenty of water in the pool. That was the problem. How was Xander ever going to find the container?
    “It’s probably underwater,” I said. “Let’s get the lifeguard to clear the pool.”
    “No,” Xander said, his jaw set. “Don’t tell them. They’ll cite me for losing it. Don’t say anything. I’ll find it.” Carrying our own tablets is an important step toward our own independence; losing them is the same as admitting we aren’t ready for the responsibility. Our parents carry our tablets for us until we are old enough to take them over, one by one. First the blue, when we are ten. Then, when we turn thirteen, the green one. The one that calms us if we need calming.
    And when we’re sixteen, the red one, the one we can only take when a high-level Official tells us to do so.
    At first, I tried to help Xander, but the chlorine always hurt my eyes. I dove and dove and then, when my eyes burned so much I could barely see, I climbed back onto the cement next to the pool and tried to look beneath the sun-bright surface of the water.
    None of us ever wears a watch when we are small; time is kept for us. But I still knew. I knew that he had been under the water much longer than he should. I had measured it out in heartbeats and in the slap of the waves against the side of the pool as one person, then another, then another, dove in.
    Did he drown ? For a moment, I was blinded by sunlight slanting off the water, white, and paralyzed by my fear, which felt white, too. But then I stood up and drew a deep breath into my lungs to scream to the world Xander is under the water, save him, save him! Before my scream was born, a voice I did not know asked, “Is he drowning?”
    “I can’t tell,” I said, tearing my eyes away from the water. A