ARQs #5 •-Dystopian Style: Matched-•

ARQs: Advance Reading Quotes;

quotes from an advance reading copy.

Rules:

1. Take an Advance Reading Copy and open to a random page.

2. Go nuts.

Summary:

In the Society, Officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die. 

Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s barely any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one . . . until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared follow—between perfection and passion. 

Matched is a story for right now and storytelling with the resonance of a classic. 

"Now that I've found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night? My wings aren't white or feathery; 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. The black behind me doesn't worry me; neither do the stars ahead.

I smile at myself, at the foolishness of my imagination."

•-♥-• 

"Cassia Maria Reyes."

It is my turn.

I stand up, letting go of my mother's hand, and turn towards the screen. I feel my heart pounding and I am tempted to twist my hands the way Lea did, but I fold perfectly still with my chin up and my eyes on the screen. I watch and wait, determined that the girl my match will see on the screen in his City Hall somewhere out there in Society will be poised and calm and lovely, the very best image of Cassia Maria Reyes that I can present.

But nothing happens.

I stand and look at the screen, and, as the seconds go by, it is all I can do to stay still, all I can do to keep smiling.

Whispers start around me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mother move her hand as if to take mine again, but then she pulls it back.

A girl in a green dress stands waiting, her heart pounding.

Me.

The screen is dark, and it stays dark.

That can only mean one thing."

•-♥-• 

"Feeling bad that I've ignored Ky for so long, I turn to him to share the joke.

He is crying. Without a sound.

A tear slips down his cheek and he brushes it away so quickly I almost don't know if it was there, but it was. It was. And now another tear, gone as quickly as the first. His eyes are so full that I wonder how he can see. But he does not look away from the screen.

I am not used to seeing someone suffer. I turn away."

•-♥-• 

"He holds on for a long time. It is an hour before midnight in a deep blue night when Grandfather looks at us and says the best words of all with which to end a life. "I love you. I love you. I love you."

We all say it back to him. Each of us means it and he smiles. He leans back on his pillows and closes his eyes.

Everything inside him has worked perfectly. He has lived a good life. It ends as it is supposed to end, at exactly the right time. I am holding his hand when he dies."

This is my next read, and while flipping pages for these few quotes I already got stuck inside some pages reading the story. I already know that I love the writing, the first ARQ is the first paragraph of the entire novel -though the novel could change a bit since it's an ARC. It's a great idea for a novel, it reminds me a bit of the Scott Westerfeld series Uglies.