Matched by Ally Condie Page B

they’re here.” For a moment, curiosity overrides his panic. “Why’d you have to change your clothes so fast? You weren’t that dirty.”
    “I was dirty,” I whisper back. “Shh. Listen.” I hear murmurs of voices in my parents’ room, and then my mother’s voice, raised. And I can’t believe what Bram told me. My father lost Grandfather’s sample?
    Sorrow cuts through the fear inside me. This is bad, very bad, that my father has made such an enormous mistake. But not only because it might mean trouble for him, and for us. Because it means that Grandfather is really gone. They can’t bring him back without the sample.
    Suddenly I hope the Officials find something in our house after all.
    “Wait here,” I tell Bram, and I go into the kitchen. A Biomedical Official stands near the waste receptacle waving a device up and down, back and forth, over and over. He takes a step and begins the motions again in a new spot in the kitchen. I see the words printed along the side of the object he holds. Biological Detection Instrument.
    I relax slightly. Of course. They have something to detect the bar code engraved on the tube Grandfather used. They don’t need to tear the house apart. Perhaps they won’t find the paper after all. And perhaps they will find the sample.
    How could Papa lose something so important? How could he lose his own father?
    In spite of my instructions, Bram follows me into the kitchen. He touches my arm and we turn back toward the hallway. “Mama’s still arguing in there,” he says, gesturing to our parents’ room. I grab Bram’s hand and hold it tight. The Officials don’t need to search my father; they have the Detection Instruments to tell them where to look. But I guess they have to make their point: My father should have been more careful with something so important.
    “Are they searching Mama, too?” I ask Bram. Are we all going to share in our father’s humiliation?
    “I don’t think so,” Bram says. “She just wanted to be in there with Papa.”
    The bedroom door opens and Bram and I jump back out of the way of the Officials. Their white lab coats make them seem tall and pure. One of them can tell we are frightened, and he gives us a small smile intended to reassure. It doesn’t work. He can’t give back the lost sample or my father’s dignity. The damage is done.
    My father walks behind the Officials, pale and unhappy. In contrast, my mother looks flushed and angry. She follows my father and the Officials into the front room, and Bram and I stand in the doorway to watch what happens.
    They didn’t find the sample. My heart sinks. My father stands in the middle of the room while the Biomedical Team berates him. “How could you do this?”
    He shakes his head. “I don’t know. It’s inexcusable.” His words sound flat, as if he has repeated them so many times that he has given up any hope of the Officials believing him. He stands up straight, the way he always does, but his face looks tired and old.
    “You recognize that there is no way to bring him back now,” they say.
    My father nods, his face full of misery. Even though I am angry with him for losing the sample, I can tell that he feels awful. Of course he does. This is Grandfather . In spite of my anger, I wish I could take Papa’s hand but there are too many Officials around him.
    And I’m full of hypocrisy. I did something against the rules today, too, and what I did was intentional.
    “This may result in some sanctions for you at work,” one of the Officials says to my father, in a tone so mean I wonder if she will get cited herself. No one is supposed to speak this way. Even when an error occurs, things aren’t supposed to get personal. “How can they expect you to handle the restoration and disposal of artifacts if you can’t even keep track of one tissue sample? Especially knowing how important it was?”
    One of the other Officials says quietly, “You ruined the sample belonging to your own