Crossed

Ky, Vick, and Eli travel through the frosty canyon. Ky wonders where the village patrols are, surprised that they haven’t encountered any people yet. Walking along the frozen edge of the river reminds him of time spent with his father.

One morning, Eli expresses gratitude to the Society for their electrified coats. Suspicious, Ky cuts into his own coat and finds a small silver disk. He explains his reasoning: The Society doesn’t care about Aberrations, but they do want their biological data. Designers give the coats a heating feature, so Aberrations will actually wear them; they later collect the silver disks when the wearers die. Vick makes a connection to the dead boy’s coat (mentioned in Chapter 1). Ky disconnects Vick’s disk without disrupting the heating feature. Eli refuses Ky’s help, and Ky respects his decision. Reflecting on stories that live forever, Ky considers why he never told Cassia about the Rising and the Pilot, as he’s known about them “for as long as I can remember” (106). He realizes that he wanted to keep the poems private, and that the Rising, like the Society, posed a threat to their budding romance.

Ky finally sees signs of Anomaly activity: berries recently crushed by a climber as they made their way up a cliff wall.

Cassia looks for signs of Ky in the canyon, but doesn’t find any. She asks Indie if they might be in the wrong canyon, but the latter doesn’t hear her. She’s distracted by an old wasp nest, struck by how it resembles a seashell. She puts the nest in her bag, and the girls continue. They run out of food by nightfall. Cassia offers Indie a blue tablet, and the latter gives her “a sharp, puzzled look” (111). Recalling her mother’s teachings about poisonous plants, Cassia finds a fleshy green-and-purple plant for her and Indie to eat.

Indie sees Cassia writing a poem, and Cassia tells her that the boy she’s looking for taught her how to write. She also tells Indie that she caused her own Reclassification—which is not a complete lie, as she would become an Aberration if she ever returned to the Society. Indie tells Cassia that her mother caused her family’s Reclassification when she built a boat and tried to sail away. They then share what they know about the Rising. Indie recites the song her mother used to sing about the Pilot, describing the figure as a woman coming across the water by boat. She also seems pleased that Cassia isn’t simply looking for a boy: “You’re looking for something else, too” (117). They resolve to change tactics and try climbing up and out of the canyon in the morning.

Ky explains to Eli that the first Anomalies weren’t trapped in the canyon; the farmers, as they prefer to be called, “chose to be Anomalies, back when the Society came to be” (120). The farmers live in townships and evade Society capture using their knowledge of the Carving. Ky wants to trade with the farmers. He needs a map to get to a Border Province, and from there, he can send a message to Cassia with his location. The boys come across a township soon after, only to realize that the farmers are gone. Ky pauses to carve Cassia’s name into a tree.

Ky, Vick, and Eli explore the township. The walls of the houses and nearby caves are covered in the farmers’ paintings. Eli whispers to Ky that a half-erased picture of a woman resembles his mother. Ky thinks back to when he was about Eli’s age. Once, he had been wandering lost in the Borough, using his compass to find his way home, when Xander caught him with the Artifact. He told Ky that he would turn him in to the authorities unless he stole some red tablets.

Back in the present, the boys climb to find the township’s storage caves. They search each room, taking apples and bread but leaving the Society-issue technology and plastic boats. They find writing utensils in a cave full of documents, prompting Ky to recount how his mother used to paint on rocks with water. Her pictures were beautiful, and then they “vanished into the air” (134). Ky and Vick consult a map of the area and decide to head to the Border Provinces by way of a stream and a settlement. They spend the night in the caves. Ky wakes before dawn, looks down at the township, and sees a flickering light in a window.

Out in the Carving, away from the Society, Cassia feels strangely alone. She’s used to being constantly watched by the authorities and other Citizens, though her family does “a different kind of watching” (137). Indie wakes, and the girls start their climb out of the canyon. They remember their mutual trust on the airship as they consolidate their belongings into one pack, and Indie reveals that she didn’t give Cassia anything to hide. She went through the motions of an exchange so Cassia would think she “had something to lose too” (139). Guilty, Cassia tells Indie to take some blue tablets after their climb, and the latter cautiously accepts.

Indie leads the slow climb. A ledge crumbles halfway up and she slips, scraping her legs. Cassia gives her a boost, and they finish the climb successfully. Hauling herself to the top, Cassia admires the view, considering how this experience has brought her closer to Ky. Her good mood quickly shifts when she sees what’s on top of the cliff: ash, debris, and the charred remains of Anomalies, at least a week old. Cassia hesitates, not wanting to leave the bodies. She contemplates the blue markings on some of the bodies. Indie takes a length of rope and coldly points out that this is what happens to Anomalies. The girls run, away from the bodies and over the top of the Carving.

Ky, Vick, and Eli take the township map and run from the town’s unseen presence, heading deeper into the Carving. Vick prompts Ky into an open conversation about the Rising and the Pilot. Hearing these stories for the first time, Eli becomes frustrated that Ky and Vick didn’t tell the other decoys about them before leaving. Ky doesn’t trust the Rising, telling his companions that it was how his family died: His father cut contact between their village and the Society, and then the Enemy burned the village to the ground (which was accidentally enabled by his father wanting to follow the Rising). Ky only survived because he’d gone out of town to watch the rain. The boys camp in a new painted cave with different figures; Ky estimates these paintings predate the farmers by a few thousand years. He remembers the night Officials beat him and took him from the Borough, how Cassia ran outside and yelled his name.

Ky and Vick compare the papers they took from the library cave. Vick has several copies of the same pamphlet—a history of the Rising. According to the pamphlet, the Rising began at the same time the Society’s most oppressive laws went into effect. These laws included culling excess media, making Society membership non-optional, and separating Anomalies and Aberrations from the rest of the population. The Rising picked Tennyson’s poem, “Crossing the Bar,” to spread their message. Ky disappoints Vick by telling him that despite knowing the poem, he was never part of the Rising, and he only came to the Carving to find Cassia. Ky carves a round rock into a compass as the others fall asleep. That night, he has a nightmare about Xander comforting Cassia in his absence.

Cassia dreams about Xander standing in front of a bright light, telling her to open her eyes. She cries as she and Indie travel, upset that Xander isn’t present and afraid that Ky was killed in a firing. She starts to have paranoid thoughts about Indie, and realizes she’s ill. She takes a blue tablet—“the first time I’ve ever taken a tablet” (160). A scrap of paper falls out of the foil packet along with the tablet—a bit of information from Xander’s official Match profile. Cassia pops out more tablets from the packet, eager for more notes.

Cassia wonders if she and Indie have come across Society territory, as the land is too perfect, too smooth, and she notices a camouflaged doorway in the cliff face. She finds a recently deceased boy and realizes he’s the boy who ran with them to the Carving. She and Indie decide to climb down the other side of the cliff using Indie’s length of rope. For a moment, Cassia fixates on a footprint, convinced it’s Ky’s.

Ky, Vick, and Eli navigate the Carving. Vick teaches Ky and Eli how to catch the spawning fish in the shallows with their hands by flipping them out of the water. They smoke the day’s catch for the journey ahead. Vick tells the two about the time he caught a rainbow trout in his home province, Camas. The species almost went extinct in “the Warming” (170); knowing how few there were left, Vick decided to let his catch go. The boys talk about their parents: Vick’s father was an Officer, and Eli’s parents died from a mysterious illness. Changing the subject, Eli shows Ky and Vick the picture books he took from the cave. Vick then opens up about Laney, the Anomaly girl he loved in Camas—and whom he formed a relationship with, leading to his Reclassification. Ky carves Laney’s name on a piece of wood and gives it to Vick. Vick thanks Ky for leading them, but the latter protests, insisting that their journey has been a group effort.

Cassia knows her illness is getting worse because she “finds signs in everything,” even cracks in the dirt (178). She and Indie find a settlement and an orchard, and when she sees her name carved into a tree, Indie confirms that it’s truly there. Cassia tells Indie that she’s been taking the blue tablets, and Indie panics. She forces Cassia to eat an apple and tells her “the blue tablets are poisoned,” repeating herself as Cassia keeps denying it (180). Cassia suspects someone is following them, and Indie tells her that she needs to rest. She pops out another blue tablet and it falls from her shaking hands, along with its accompanying note; she decides to let it blow away.

Ky wakes up late to the sound of machines flying overhead and heavy projectiles hitting the ground. Eli tells him that Vick left to catch more fish for their journey. The pair runs to the stream, past exploded spheres and impact craters, but they’re too late: Vick’s body lies sprawled on the ground. Ky notices a rainbow trout in the water, recognizing it from Vick’s description. The fish dies as he watches, killed by the slow leak of poison from the spheres into the water. Ky acts quickly, hauling spheres out of the water one by one; Eli helps. Ky and Eli bury Vick with his coat on, placing one of the rainbow trout in the grave with him. Ky hears Vick’s voice in his head for the rest of the day, telling his love story and insisting he isn’t truly dead “as long as the fish are still around” (187).

Cassia’s breathing becomes shallow and labored. She listens as Indie speaks, but only catches a few broken phrases; Indie’s speech “almost sounds like poetry” (189). Cassia wants another blue tablet, but remembers Grandfather telling her that she’s strong enough to go without them. With surprising clarity, she wonders if Grandfather was ever the Pilot, then resolves to never take another blue tablet. She notices a stone carved to look like a compass and takes it with her.

Eli begs Ky to recite the Tennyson poem over Vick’s grave. Ky, shaking from working all day, can’t say the words. He marks Vick’s grave with a fish carved from sandstone, and the pair go back to camp to pack up the smoked fish and one of Vick’s pamphlets. They set off to cover some ground before dark. Eli prods Ky to turn around, and when he finally does, he sees Cassia in the distance, pointing to the sky.

Cassia feels braver and stronger than she did a few hours ago. She ignores Indie’s warnings and climbs a rocky outcropping to look for Ky. She sees “two little dark figures” from her vantage point (193). She points to the sky to see if one of them is Ky. The figure runs, and Cassia runs to meet him. The couple meets with a kiss on the plain.