Blue After Sunset

By Laura Schiller

Based on the Matched Trilogy

Copyright: Ally Condie

I wasn't expecting a present for Winter Holiday at all. Sonoma was a Border Province; they never bothered to send us anything more fancy than hot chocolate and electric candles. Not even that for me, once I became an Aberration. The Rising was going to do away with holidays altogether; a waste of resources, they said. But since Anna won the election – mostly because she was the only one willing to tell the truth and admit that Cassia and Xander saved our collective bacon – people have been breaking out in the most unexpected ways.

But here is Ky in front of my apartment door, and he's holding a package.

I press the button and let him in, my hand shaking a little. A gift – for me? When I don't have even the smallest thing for him?

"What's that?" It looks big, wider across than his chest. What did he trade for it? "If you traded our airship away, I swear - "

"You're welcome," he says wryly. "And your guess is close. Someone whose family I flew in to get the cure wanted to pay me back. I told her it was my job, but she insisted. She works at a garment factory. I thought … since there won't be any more Match Banquets … just open it."

He ducks his head as he holds out the package.

It's lighter than it looks. I rip into the tape and cardboard, brush aside some plastic, and –

I gasp.

It's a Banquet gown. The silk is water flowing through my fingers, blue as the sky just after sunset, in that hour when all the lights flicker on in the city, looking like a swarm of fireflies as you pass above them. Blue as Ky's eyes when he's at peace.

I never wanted a Contract. Even now I don't; I need my freedom too much. But in my secret heart, I always longed for a Match.

"How did you know … ?"

I told Cassia once that I would have chosen blue for my dress. Even then, I never told her the exact shade of blue I dreamed about. Did Cassia tell him? The four of us go out together sometimes and it's good, but the two of them alone?

"I saw you looking at the paintings in Carving Village." Ky's voice is soft as a breeze over quiet water. "You looked like you wanted to step right into them and dance."

He's right. I did.

And I'm an idiot. Cassia wouldn't go behind my back with Ky. She's always been more pure-minded than I am, even if she weren't so happy with Xander. As for Ky, he could never do that and then look at me like this. I can read him like one of his ancient papers, and every line is clear.

When we came down with the Plague, I thought I was drowning. I wanted to drown, if it meant I could escape this life – a Pilot who used me against my friends; talents that earned me nothing but envy from idiots like Connor; loving a man whose first and greatest love was someone else.

But Ky wouldn't let me go. He caught my arm before I could slip out of the Pilot's airship. In my dream, he dived down after me. He breathed air into my lungs, and I did the same for him.

He saved me then.

He saves me now.

I take a deep breath, step out of my plainclothes right in front of him, and slip the dress over my head. It's as cool and gentle as his hands on me, coming home on a winter evening.

I spin, and the skirt flares. When I look up, Ky's subtle smile has widened into an outright grin.

"What? I am a girl, you know."

"Oh, I noticed."

He steps closer, and it's his turn to feel the silk: along my sleeves, around my waist and over the curve of my hips.

"You look," he murmurs, turning me around to face the window, "Like sunset over the ocean. That blue should have been made for you."

It's dark outside, and the light shows our reflections: my orange curls above the blue, his tanned face and black plainclothes framing me like a painting. Against the white walls, the white-tiled kitchenette and the gray standard-issue sofa, we seem to glow. I'd never have thought it, but I see now what he means.

That's poetry, I suppose.