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Matching Day: Part 1

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Matching Day: Part 1
To love risks more than just her heart.

Based on a post by SmallTownPrincess, in 2 parts. Listen to the

Podcast at Connected.



Girls spend their entire lives looking forward to the

fateful Matching Day - and whether or not they will admit it, boys, too, have
at least a healthy curiosity. It's so reassuring, knowing that in your eighteenth
year, you and your age-mates will be paired off, brought together with another
from their own community or a surrounding one that match them perfectly. No
song-and-dance dating rituals, like the ones in the books Livia liked to read,
no old maids, no riotous bachelors; just simple, comforting compatibility.

"Have you heard?" The hushed, conspiratorial tones

issued from the pink-lacquered lips of Livia's best friend, Mara.

"What?" Livia's low-pitched voice always made her

sound disinterested, but she paid close attention to Mara when her friend
sounded this urgent.

"There was a big accident over in Micrague. One guy died!"

"Oh, that's terrible," Livia murmured, letting her

eyelashes drop and rise again to half-mast in a brief show of empathy. It was
all she had time for, as Mara leaned suddenly, ever more urgently forward,
gripping Livia's arm in both hands.

"That's not the worst thing," she rolled on.

"The guy who was killed? He just turned eighteen. That makes the
numbers for tomorrow's Matching uneven!"

Two full breaths, painful to the impatient Mara, passed

before Livia spoke in response. "So, what, someone won't be paired? A girl
will be left without her match?"

"Whoever matched with him will have no pair on Matching

Day," Mara proclaimed ominously. Her eyes were wide and glittering with
morbid excitement.

"What do they do about that?" It was unheard of,

as far as Livia knew; there were always even numbers, always a perfect
match for everyone.

Mara gave an exaggerated shrug. "Maybe she'll never be

matched."

Livia was surprised into laughter. "They can't leave

her without a match forever," she said with certainty. "Maybe
they'll search out another community for someone that fits even better than
that poor boy who died."

Her reassuring confidence sent Mara, humming, away to

terrify someone else with proclamations of an eternity alone for some poor
girl. The thought nagged at Livia for the rest of the afternoon, though. What
if he was matched with me?

"Verin Massada," the stern voice called from the

central platform, and a stick-thin brunette drifted toward the three steps that
lifted her above the circle of impatient teenagers.

"Philip Pressia." The broad-shouldered redhead

that stepped up to take Verin's hand smirked and bowed at the polite smattering
of applause that ushered the happy new couple off the stage. Livia smiled
approvingly; Verin needed a little more humor in her life.

Livia watched each girl she'd grown up with walk back into

the circle, shyly clutching the hand of her new mate, and twisted her skirt
nervously in her fingers. It seemed forever before the 'R's were called, and
the wad of boys brought in from all the different communities steadily shrank.
She met the clear grey eyes of one of the remaining boys as Clanley Ritchell
was met by a generic-looking, dark-haired boy, and she thought fleetingly, I
hope I'm matched with him. He seemed to be thinking the same thing; his
face fell a little when he was called up to greet a willowy blond on the dais.

"Danica Soress," the voice demanded, and Livia

stood a little straighter with a sharp intake of breath. Had she been skipped?

All the vague, incoherent fears that had accompanied Mara's

morbid pronouncement coursed through Livia, charged with shame as some girls
recognized the omission and turned to look at her with expressions of varying
pity. Livia felt on the edge of tears.

She saw the blond - that wretched Salvia - pull the

grey-eyed boy down to whisper cruelly in his ear and point in Livia's
direction, and she contemplated melting into the dirt.

With the blood roaring loudly in her ears, she heard no

other names called, and stared fixedly at a nondescript blade of grass in front
of her to avoid the glances that were flickering toward her. How can this
be? she thought frantically. How can I not have a match?

"Livia, what's going on?" Mara's face held

ghoulish curiosity with only an edge of concern for her friend, and Livia
couldn't deal with her. She turned without a word and marched to the fountain a
good distance away from the platform. People were breaking off now, finding
secluded spots to get to know this person with whom they'd be partnered
forever. Livia, wrapping her arms tightly around her gut, had never felt so
alone.

How could she have lost a lifetime of companionship without

ever tasting it? It was too, too cruel. What right did that boy have to take
away everything in one fell swoop? How could he die? She wanted to shake her
fist at the heavens, demand an explanation, but she just trailed her fingers
through the rippling water in the fountain basin, swallowing hard against the
wave of emotions that threatened to show itself grotesquely in her features.

"His name was Bracken, if that helps," said a

voice behind her, and she jumped, throwing water onto her dress. She turned to
see that grey-eyed boy approaching, and she prepared herself for the
humiliation she was sure to experience at his hands; he had, after all, been
matched like everyone else, and she was alone - possibly forever.

He did not mock her, though; his eyes held the soft,

cautious understanding of someone who pitied another, but was not sure whether
that person desired sympathy or not. When she said nothing, he shrugged
self-consciously. "Sorry, I realize you might not have wanted to know. I
just, he was my best friend. I thought if you did want to know about him,
I'd at least let you know who you could ask."

A flood of gratitude made it temporarily impossible for her

to speak, and then she forced a smile. "I think I'd like to know,"
she said hesitantly. She wasn't sure; would it be better to know nothing about
what she'd never have, or to at least have pleasant thoughts about what
could've been? "Can I ask you something now?"

"Absolutely."

"Would I have liked him?"

The boy nodded. "I think so. He was quiet at first, it

took a while to get to know him. But once you did, there was no one you trusted
more." He added, with the hesitation of an afterthought but the
seriousness of something he'd intended to say all along, "Seeing you here,
there's no doubt that he would have liked you."

He gave Livia one last smile and lay his hand over hers for

a moment, ignoring the water droplets that sat on it like dew. For a warm
second, she felt a rush of what it might have been like to have someone get to
know her intimately over a lifetime, to love and understand her and for her to
love back, and then the grey-eyed boy was walking with wide strides back to
Salvia, and nothing but a hollow sadness remained beneath her breastbone.

Livia hated them. All of them.

The girls with their softly rolling curls, teased and

coached for hours in order to look casually delicate when the boys, their
shirts tucked in and their shoes shined, arrived at their doorsteps carrying
one or two or twenty flowers in one hand and a shining invitation in the other.
They walked with springing steps the short distance to the gathering hall in
the center of town, hand in hand or arm in arm, and Livia wanted to throw rocks
at the whole lot of them.

She had been invited, sort of, to join in on the festivities.

The community officials, not sure what to do with the first single person over
eighteen in a century, had hesitantly allowed for her participation in all the
new couples' activities; so far, she had partaken in none of them.

Desperately, she wanted to be a part of the revelry, but she

could not force herself to walk into the rooms full of happy girls and their
happy boys, and have nothing herself. Her mother, unable to comfort her, had
begged her to go to the dance. It was the last night before all the boys would
be returning to their own communities, taking their matches with them. It was
the last night she would seek Mara, who had paired with a boy from Onek.

And she'd tried: she'd gotten dressed, piled her hair up on

top of her head and pulled her elbow-length gloves on, but nothing could
motivate her to step outside her house as streams of giggling lovebirds
trickled by on the way to the hall.

"Go, Livia," her mother said, coming up behind her

with a basket of laundry on her hip. "You should at least go long enough
to say goodbye to Mara."

"I can't, Mama. Think of how they'll look at me!"

Her mother bent Livia's head down to kiss her on the

forehead. "It's not your fault, Neinei, and they know that. They feel bad
for you. They all want to see you. The world didn't end when that poor boy
died."

"Bracken," Livia said defiantly. Her mother had

refused to say his name, insisting that it was better for Livia to know nothing
about what she had lost.

Patting her daughter's shoulder, she adjusted her basket and

turned to leave. "Go."

Livia had retreated around the side of the gathering hall,

standing just outside the golden pool of light that poured like honey from the
windows. Sobs caught in her throat and were choked down, unvoiced, as she
watched Mara and Verin and Danica and dozens of others receive chaste pecks
from shy boys as they spun by in their brightly-colored dresses, waving fluted,
bubbling glasses and laughing with abandon.

And there, the grey-eyed boy, Bracken's best friend, was

seated quietly with his hands folded in his lap, listening politely to an
enthusiastic rendition of some trivial event or another by Salvia. It was
always easy to tell when she was excited about something, as her arms
pinwheeled and hands fluttered with no thought to how the gestures went along
with the story.

He glanced up, and his eyes met, for a moment, Livia's. He

looked surprised to see her there, and then a bit sad, and then his gaze
drifted back to Salvia, who had grabbed his knee in her earnestness.

This infinitesimal rejection, the refusal to even meet her

eyes for more than a moment, pushed Livia over the edge. Tears, burning like
acid, washed over her face, and she stumbled away from the window, crying with
pitiful lack of restraint.

She staggered into the sparse forest, the trees providing

scattered shelter from curious eyes, if any should choose to drift away from
the golden party, and the darkness of the night fit her mood, a strangely
soothing thought.

"Are you alright?" For the second time, the

grey-eyed boy's voice jolted her out of her own misery. She would not face him;
not now, when her eyes were puffy and irritated, her nose red and her face
streaked with dirty tear tracks. He would see her and compare her to Salvia,
and she would fall short; she could not handle right now seeing him weigh her
that way and find her lacking.

His hand on her back was another surprise, and then both his

hands weighing down on her shoulders as he stepped closer behind her.
"Hey," he said gently. "Everything will turn out fine. Maybe, maybe
you'll find someone better than Bracken could have been for you."

She forgot her resolution not to face him then, turning

toward him with her eyes narrowed to angry slits. "How could I, when
everyone is paired already? Besides, I had my chance - he just managed to get
himself killed before I could even meet him!" The words came out much
harsher than she intended, and the young man in front of her actually took a
step back from her ferocity, hunching like she'd landed a blow to his gut.
"I'm sorry," she said immediately, automatically. "I shouldn't
have said that. He was your friend, "

"It's alright," he said, giving her a ghost of a

smile and waving his hand with a nonchalance that didn't show in his eyes. He
had that gentle look of quiet appreciation of life that came to some people who
lost loved ones, but knew that lost friend would be offended if they did not
continue to smile. "I know it's probably really hard on you, seeing
everyone so, happy." He trailed off, not looking happy in the least.

"Speaking of happy people, shouldn't you be in there

with Salvia?"

His face took on the contemplative expression of someone

deciding how to phrase something delicately. "Salvia, she's not quite what
I expected to find, on my Matching Day. She's, "

"Lively?" Livia suggested. "Brazen?

Exuberant?"

obnoxious," the grey-eyed boy said decisively. "I

don't like her at all."

Livia smirked. "Well, you have to like her.

She's your match. You love her."

He shook his head. "No," he said quietly. "I

don't."

"But she's your perfect match," Livia

insisted.

"But what if she's not?"

Livia heard her heart beat twice before she asked,

"What?"

"What if Salvia is not the perfect girl for me?

What if the girl that I would love more than anyone else in the world couldn't
be matched with me because, there was someone else our age who she would
like a little bit better?"

"That doesn't even make sense," Livia said,

shaking her head. "The matches have always been perfect: even numbers,
complete compatibility;”

"But this time they messed up, right? I mean, you

should know. You're the person who's affected more than anyone else."

"Well, yes, but;”

"So why isn't it possible that they aren't right on

everything else? What if they didn't match this girl with me because she would
love this other guy more?"

"Well, so, maybe they did. But if you would love her so

much, surely you would want to see her happy, with the man she was meant to be
with, right?"

"Yes," he said, very seriously. "I would want

to see her happy."

"Then you should leave her in peace with the person she

was matched with, and focus on learning to love the girl you were paired
with."

The interminable silence stretched between them as the

grey-eyed boy stared down at the leafy ground and Livia watched the way his
hair blew across his forehead in the breeze. At last he said, "What if she
wasn't matched with anyone?"

Livia's heart sped up, beating double time as she realized

what he'd been saying all along, what she'd been too dim to put together until
he'd spelled it out. "But you are matched," she said numbly.
"Salvia has you."

He leaned dangerously far forward, his lips brushing her ear

as he whispered into it, "I don't want Salvia."

Livia shrank back, confused. These were dangerous words he

uttered, dangerous thoughts. People were matched with the people they were meant
to be with. How could there be any other way? They couldn't be wrong; there'd
been no divorce, no infidelity, no broken hearts in the decades people had been
paired this way. Surely it was the right way. It had to be.

"I don't even know your name," Livia said

resolutely, as though that settled the matter and proved him wrong. She pushed
against his chest to force him back, feeling the blazing heat of his heart
under her palm.

"It's Mason," he said quietly, and his words had

the sound of discussion-ending power to them too. Livia was conscious of the
fact that she had not moved her hand from his chest; her fingers curled
slightly, enjoying the silky feeling of his shirt over his skin, and the warmth
that radiated from his flesh.

"Go back to Salvia, Mason," she whispered. She

realized she was shaking from head to toe, and not from cold. Here was
everything she had ever wanted, everything she had imagined when she thought of
her Matching Day, but he was not hers. "Please, go back to the
party."

With a sigh, Mason touched her cheek briefly, the lightest

of butterfly wing contacts, and then he turned and vanished into the night, not
toward the party, but deeper into the forest. Livia stood for a long time
without moving, her mind racing and her heart pounding like a runner's feet,
and then she walked, slowly, directly away from Mason.

"You didn't come to the party last night," Mara

said, breaking the silence that stood like frosted glass between her and Livia.

"No." Livia had gotten no sleep the night before;

lying in bed, replaying continually the frightening moments with Mason, her
heart had never slowed.

"Well, I just wanted to say goodbye, " Mara

twisted her hands for a moment before wrapping Livia up in a warm and desperate
hug. "I'm sorry, Lenny. I'm going to miss you so much."

The tension between them melted, and Livia returned the hug

tightly, sighing. "It's hard to believe I'll never see any of you again -
all the girls I've known all my life! Except for Maize and Crista, they're the
only ones who matched with boys from here, right? And I don't really even know
them."

"Well, you'll see Salvia too, for a little while."

Breathe in. Breathe out. "Why's that?"

"Oh, that fellow she paired with - Mason, isn't it? -

his parents have some sort of huge wedding ceremony planned, and they've got a
house mostly built for the two of them. They told him to stay here a while, get
to know his partner's family for a bit, let her spend some more time with them,
and then head back once the house and all the plans were done."

Wedding were an extravagance, a luxury that most people went

without, especially if they didn't have the means to make it a massive event.
The fact that Mason's family was going to such lengths meant they must be well
off indeed.

"So Mason, and Salvia, will be around for a

while?"

"Yeah, at least a month, I'd say."

A buzzing numbness in her extremities made it difficult for Livia

to respond. She had thought Mason would be gone today, that she'd never have to
see him and Salvia together again. But they would be here for a month,

"Speak of the devil," Mara said cheerfully,

skipping over to greet Salvia as she pranced up the path with Mason's hand
gripped in her own vice-like claw. The dark circles under his eyes said that
he, too, had had a night with little sleep.

"Good morning, Mara, Livia," he said politely,

giving each of them a little nod. His eyes lingered on Livia, though, and she
found herself blushing and rushing to hug Mara goodbye again and begging for
many letters describing life in Onek in great detail.

But then Mara left, and Salvia, Mason and Livia were left

standing in an awkwardly isosceles triangle. "So, " Livia said at
length, rocking back and forth in her slippers. "How was the party last
night?"

...more
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