One

“And over there is where our matches will meet for the first time once we pair them.” Doctor Green explains to the group of students he leads through the institute. Leaning against the cold metal railing a floor above them, I have a perfect view of all the little seventeen year olds on the tour and even though I can barely hear the doctor when he specks, I don’t need to hear him to know what he is saying. The speech we give these teens hasn’t changed since I was on that tour and I have heard it so many times since then that I have it memorized. The cardboard cup in my hand warms them as the heat from the dark liquid it holds leaks through and battles with the chill in the air inside the facility. Always cold.

“Are there any questions?” The doctor asks the scared looking children. The crowd is still while everyone fails to work up the courage to raise their hands and ask what is on their minds. I know they have questions, the tour is rather vague, but just like me; they won’t ask them. I sip my coffee as I wait for the brave ones to step forward, my brake is never long enough to watch the whole tour but I catch bits and pieces of it every day. One short pale boy in the front of the group actually succeeds in raising a very shaky hand and waiting for the doctor to call on him.

“Does it hurt?” He squeaks out as his class mates roll their eyes. A smile creeps onto my lips as I hear those words, they are asked at least once a year from the new candidates.

“Not at all my boy, the development is near painless.” Doctor Green lies every time. The truth is it does hurt. The moment the mark appears on your wrist is almost blindingly painful, and what’s worse is that you never really know when it is going to happen. Mine developed like everyone else’s, on my eighteenth birthday. I was walking home when it happened and it knocked me to my knees in the middle of the street. Gasping my left wrist and letting a few choice words slip past my lips as the white design burned its way into my skin. But really, what’s the point of telling the kids that? It would just have them worried sick on their birthday about when it would happen. No one told me that it would feel like I was being branded like an animal, and I turned out just fine. “Any other questions?”

“When can we sign up for matching?” Another boy asks, a little too eager to find his match in my humble opinion. 

“The second your mark turns black if you so choose.” Green explains happily and with an encouraging smile. “Although not everyone submits themselves for matching it is the suggested choice. The sooner the better because the sooner you sign up the sooner we can find that perfect person for you. And therefor, the sooner your life can begin.” This makes even my eyes roll; I personally have never seen the value in matching. Most people ask why I work here if I don’t believe in what they do, but I really do. I have seen the way the matches go from half dead to fully alive when they see their “soul mate” as some people call them. And if this is the way someone wants to meet their match, by having a computer scan your mark and find the person out there in the world that has the identical one, then by all means do it. But even after my mark turned from white to black, I didn’t sign up. Even though my body told me that my match was out there somewhere and was eighteen now, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The next question people ask is if I find it weird that there is a person in this world that is perfect for me and yet I don’t know them. I answer no.

 

The day wears on as the clock ticks until I finally find myself sitting on the hard plastic seats of the bus home. The smell of cleaner, bleach maybe, fills my nose as it always does. Everything is clean in the city, clean and tidy with no room for error. They tell us there are places out of the urban areas where things are more relaxed, less scheduled, but that just seems like hell to me, there is beauty in routine. But still, the smell is insulting. My friend Meg always jokes that they must dip the buses in bleach at the end of the day, I always laugh as if she is joking but we both know that just might be the truth. I know the scenery I pass well. It seems sometimes like I spend all my time on these buses, coming and going, back and forth, to work from home, to home from work. Meg is waiting for me on the steps of my home when I walk up, her head buried in a book as always. She looks up as the sound of my footfalls cut through her reading haze and reached her ears.

“Hey sis.” Her blue eyes shone in the diming sun as she used her inside joke to address me. Neither of us had any sisters and both always craved them so we decided we would be each other’s. People wonder why we are friends sometimes, seeing as we couldn’t really be more different when you look at us. My long dark hair was a wonderful contrast to her short curly and the differences continued with our skin. My pale complexion seems dull next to her dark, tan face. Dull grey eyes don’t compare to her bright green.

“Hi, you know you could use your key instead of waiting out here.” I smiled as I offered her my hand to pull her from the steps. Oh ya, that reminds me of another thing we don’t have in common, I am tall and she’s…not. She stands almost five inches shorter than me. I let her into my standard housing unit. My street looks like any of the others, lined with small white buildings, all one story with a peaked roof. We each get one when we turn eighteen, along with a job of our choice, and a bigger home when we marry, one on a nicer street. This means Meg and her husband Luka live over near the center of town, but you wouldn’t know Meg has a huge house to go home to with the amount of time she spend at my place. But I am fine with my one bedroom for now.

“Just letting myself in makes me feel creepy. Anyway, this way I have time to read.” She counters as we flop onto the couch, both tired from a long day.  “How are you? You know, with everything.”

“Fine.” I lie, like always.

“Tours were today right?” She presses even though she knows the answer. I nod in response, afraid my voice would betray me. “And it’s the tenth.”

Another nod…

March 10th, the day my mark turned black instead of white signalling me that my match had turned eighteen and was now looking for me. That was a year ago today.