Ally Condie

If you stay here, you become lost. And no one can find you. I like lost.

Writing, painting, singing- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death__ footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.

Thank you," I tell Xander. "I didn't get anything for you -""It's all right," he says, "but maybe - you could -"He looks into my eyes and I know what he wants. A kiss. Even thought he knows about Ky. Xander and I are still connected; this is still good-bye. I know already that that kiss would be sweet. It would be what he would hold on to, as I hold on to Ky's.But that's something I don't think I can give. "Xander -""It's all right," he was, and then he stands up. I do too, and he reaches for me, pulls me close.

For one entire day I let his kiss burn on my cheek and into my blood and I don't push the memory away... This kiss, these words, they feel like beginning.

...there's a difference between knowledge and technology. Knowledge don't fail us.

The earth reflects the sky and the sky meets the earth and, every now and then, if we're lucky, we have a moment to see how small we are.

It was a little thing, a baby tree, but still it tangled with things around it and required care to move. And when she pulled it out, it's roots still clung to Earth from it's old home.

I never needed the Society," she says, "to Match me." (-Lei)

It strikes me that perhaps this is part of what we are fighting to choose. Which pain to feel.

They were too much to carryso i left them behindfor a new life, in a new placebut no one forgot who i wasi didn'tand neither did the people who watchthey watched for yearsthey watch now

Did you know Grandfather would give the poems to me?_ I ask.__e thought he might,_ my mother says.__hy didn__ you stop him?___e didn__ want to take away your choices,_ my mother says.__ut Grandfather never did tell me about the Rising,_ I say.__ think he wanted you to find your own way,_ my mother says. She smiles. __n that way, he was a true rebel. I think that__ why he chose that argument with your father as his favorite memory. Though he was upset when the fight happened, later he came to see that your father was strong in choosing his own path, and he admired him for it.

Good-bye,_ I say to Grandfather, and to my father, and I hold the tube in the river and pause a moment. We hold the choices of our fathers and mothers in our hands and when we cling on or let them slip between our fingers, those choices become our own.

No,' she says, as if the suggestion is ridiculous. 'I wouldn't go back to where I'm from. I'd go someplace I've never been.

Until now, I've never been able to see while I fly, and I feel a dizzying lightness as I look out at the land bel

This is a difficult balance, telling the truth: how much to share, how much to keep, which truths will wound but not ruin, which will cut too deep to heal.

But if you were matched," I say softly, "What do you think she'd be like?""You," he says, almost before I've finished. "You,

It's been so long since I've let myself feel anger that I don't just feel it. It covers my mouth and I swallow it down, the taste sharp and metal as though I'm gnawing through foilware.

What did you think about?" I wish I could tell him that I thought about him, but I lied to him once and I won't do it again. And besides, I wasn't thinking about Xander either. "I thought about angels," I say."Angels?""You know. The ones in the old stories. How they can fly to heaven." "Do you think anyone believes in them anymore?" He asks."I don't know. No. Do you?""I believe in you," he says, his voice hushed and almost reverent. "That's more faith than I ever thought I'd have.