Matched

Neither of us speaks for a moment; I stand back, seeing him whole. Then he turns and begins to walk through the trees again. It is slow going; the underbrush grows so tangled here that it’s more of a climb than a hike. Trees that fel have not been cleared away and lie like giant bones across the forest floor.

“Yesterday ...” I begin. I have to ask, as inconsequential as the question now seems. “Were you teaching Livy how to write?”

Ky stops again and looks at me. His eyes seem almost green under the canopy of the trees. “Of course not,” he says. “She wanted to know what we were doing. She saw us writing. We weren’t careful enough.”

I feel stupid and relieved. “Oh.”

“I told her I’d been showing you how to draw the trees.” He picks up a stick next to me and starts moving it around to make a pattern that does look remarkably like leaves. Then he places the stick down as the trunk of the tree. I keep looking at his hands after he has finished, not sure what else to do.

“No one draws once they’re out of First School.”

“I know,” he says. “But at least it’s not expressly forbidden.”

I reach into the bag I carry for a piece of red cloth and tie it on a fal en tree near Ky. I keep my eyes down, looking now at my fingers as they twist the fabric into a knot. “I’m sorry. About the way I acted yesterday.” When I straighten up, Ky has already moved on.

“Don’t be,” Ky says, pul ing a tangle of climbing green vines away from a shrub so that we can pass through. He throws the vines at me and I catch them in surprise. “It’s good to see you jealous once in a while.” He smiles, sun in the woods.

I try not to smile in return. “Who said I was jealous?”

“No one,” he says. “I could tel . I’ve been watching people for a long time.”

“Why did you let me hold onto it, anyway?” I ask him. “The case with the arrow. It’s beautiful. But I wasn’t sure—”

“No one but my parents know that I have it,” he says. “When Em gave me the compact to give back to you, I noticed how much alike they were. I wanted you to see it.”

His voice sounds lonely al of a sudden, and I can almost hear another sentence, the one that instinct stil keeps him from saying: I wanted you to see me. Because isn’t this what it’s al about, the golden case with the arrow, the bits of story offered here and there? Ky wants someone to see him.

He wants me to see him.

My hands ache to reach for him. But I can’t bring myself to betray Xander in that way after everything he has done. After he saved us both—Ky and me—just last night.

But there is something I can continue to give Ky that is purely mine, that doesn’t belong to Xander. The poem.

I only mean to tel him a few more lines, but once I start tel ing him it’s hard to hold back, and I say the whole thing. The words go together. Some things are created to be together.

“The words aren’t peaceful,” Ky says.

“I know.”

“Then why do they make me feel calm?” Ky asks in wonder. “I don’t understand.”

In silence, we push our way through more undergrowth, the poem heavy in our minds.

Final y, I know what it is I want to say. “I think it’s because when we hear it we know we’re not the only ones who ever felt this way.”

“Tel it to me again,” Ky asks softly. His breath catches; his voice is husky.

Al the rest of the time, until we hear the Officer’s whistle, we move up the Hil repeating the poem back to each other like a song. A song that just the two of us know.

Before we leave the forest, Ky finishes teaching me to write my name in the soft dirt underneath one of the fal en trees. We crouch down, red cloths in hand, acting as though we are tying them on in case anyone comes by and sees us. It takes me a little while to learn s but I like the way it lookslike something leaning into the wind. The clean line and dot of i is easy to master, and I already know how to write a.

I write each letter in my name and connect them together, Ky’s hand near mine to guide me. We don’t quite touch, but I feel the warmth of his hand, the length of his body crouched behind me as I write. Cassia.

“My name,” I say, leaning back and looking at the letters. They are wavery, less sure than the letters Ky writes. Someone passing by might not even recognize mine as letters at al . Stil , I can tel what they say. “What next?”

“Now,” Ky says, “we go back to the beginning. You know a. Tomorrow we’l do b. Once you know them al , you can write your own poems.”

“But who would read them?” I ask, laughing.

“I would,” he says. He gives me another folded napkin. There, between greasy thumbprints and traces of food, is more of Ky for me to see.

I put the napkin in my pocket and I think of Ky writing out his story with his red hands, seared from the heat of the job he does. I think of him risking everything each time he slips one napkin into his pocket. Al these years he’s been so careful, but now he’s wil ing to take a chance. Because he’s found someone who wants to know. Someone he wants to tel .

“Thank you,” I say. “For teaching me how to write.”