Ally Condie

Ky gives me three gifts for my birthday. A poem, a kiss, and the hopeless, beautiful belief that things might work.

For one entire day I let his kiss burn on my cheek and into my blood, and I don’t push the memory away. I have kissed and been kissed before. This is different. This, more than my real birthday the day of the Match Banquet, feels like a day to mark time by. This kiss, these words, they feel like beginning.
I let myself imagine futures that can never be, the two of us together. Even when I sort later that day, I keep my mind on the task at hand by pretending each number sorted is a code, a message to Ky that I will keep our secret. I will keep us safe; I won’t reveal a thing. Each sort I perform correctly keeps attention away from us.

“So you can go off and be happy with him? Where does that leave me? What does that leave me?”
“Don’t say that,” I tell him. “You gave me the blue tablets so I could find him, right? If I’m gone, and we can change things, maybe you can choose someone, too.”
“I did,” he says, looking at me.
I don’t know what to say.