“Almost ninety-three percent of those attending their Match Banquet exhibit some signs of nervousness.” “It doesn’t matter if you’re nervous, Cassia,” he says, gentle now. Xander is the kind of person who is sure about what he wants. I’m ready.” He says it without hesitation, and I believe him. It won’t be long now until Xander and I have our own stories to tel. Perhaps Xander can hear my heart pounding, too, because he asks, “Are you nervous?” In the seat next to him, Xander’s older brother begins to tel my mother the story of his Match Banquet. It hushes through the night, its sound a background for the low rain of our parents’ voices, the lightning-quick beats of my heart.

As quickly as the air train moves, it stil isn’t fast enough. It wil be the first time I hear his name. Where I’l see, for the first time, the face of the boy who wil be my Match. I’ve waited so long for this: for my Match Banquet. “What are you smiling about?” Xander wonders as I smooth the folds of my green silk dress down neat. The air train glides through the starry night so smoothly and my heart pounds so quickly that it feels as though I could soar into the sky at any moment. White wings, blue sky, gold circles above their heads, eyes turned up in surprise as though they couldn’t believe what the artist had painted them doing, couldn’t believe that their feet didn’t touch the ground. People cannot fly, though before the Society, there were myths about those who could. I smile at myself, at the foolishness of my imagination. The black behind me doesn’t worry me neither do the stars ahead. Now that I’ve found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night? My wings aren’t white or feathered they’re green, made of green silk, which shudders in the wind and bends when I move-first in a circle, then in a line, finally in a shape of my own invention.

Matched by ally condie