Crossed

Vick serves as a decoy with Ky in the Outer Provinces before he becomes Ky’s traveling companion. For reasons Vick can’t understand, other people tend to turn to him as a leader. He begrudgingly accepts this responsibility among the decoys, though he regularly reminds them that he has no authority. Despite his reluctance, Vick has a certain “bearing” and “natural ability to command” (171). He carries the group’s miniport and effectively relays all communications. He’s honest with his fellow decoys, and he gives them advice on how to survive. Vick is happy to share his expertise, as demonstrated by his excitement when teaching Ky and Eli how to fish.

Vick connects with Ky in the village, then truly opens up in the Carving. He believes in the Rising and the Pilot who will lead them to victory over the Society. He wants to protect the things he loves, as shown in his story about the rainbow trout. Vick once caught a rainbow trout but threw it back, unable to bear the thought of eating “the last one left” (169). As for his background, his father is a high-ranking Officer in the Army, and he grew up on military bases. He loves an Anomaly girl named Laney; the couple celebrated their own Contract in defiance of the Society’s rules about Matching, which led to Vick’s Reclassification and Laney’s disappearance. This story surprises Ky, reframing how he sees Vick. Vick carves notches into his boot after he and Ky leave the village, and Ky interprets these as “days lived without her” (177). Vick’s story and death leave a lasting impact on Ky, who continues to view the rainbow trout as a symbol of hope and persistence.

Cassia is the 17-year-old protagonist of the Matched trilogy. She is the co-protagonist of Crossed and provides one of the first-person perspectives from which the story is told. Cassia has long dark hair and green eyes. Her deceased Grandfather was a major influence in her life, teaching her to appreciate beauty and giving her the poems that would eventually lead her to the Rising. She has a poetic narrative voice, describing the things around her in lush, careful language, whether they be a mundane piece of soap “the color…of November” (6) or Ky’s warming “smile, the sun” (204). Cassia writes poetry in her head throughout Crossed, usually describing her journey to Ky or her feelings about him. Still, she misses her younger brother, Bram, and childhood friend-official Match Xander, and thinks about them often.

Cassia tends to see the good in others and trust them. She trusts Indie, despite the latter being calculating. As such, Cassia knows she’s become ill when she starts to think cruel thoughts about Indie, such thoughts being out of character. She’s slow to accuse, preferring to assume the best instead. For example, she assumes Indie is careful with her pack because she’s been carrying a wasp’s nest, but it turns out Indie stole her microcard. Cassia tends to recoil rather than lash out when she’s hurt. When she uncovers Ky’s lies, her gaze is “somehow…even worse” for its kindness (296).

Cassia’s childhood in the Society and desire to break free from it inform her time in the Carving. Back in the Society, she was training to become a professional sorter, and still finds herself sorting others in her head. Sorting is one of the Society’s best techniques for controlling others, and Ky is still hurt by her sorting him in the Borough. As she grows more determined to find the Rising, Cassia learns to sort for herself, and to see her skill as a strength: “They’re going to sort me, but I can do the same” (353).

Xander is the 17-year-old love interest of Cassia, her official Match, and the foil to Ky. He has blond hair and blue eyes. He grew up on the same street as Cassia and Ky, and is childhood friends with both of them. Unlike Ky, Xander is confident, successful, and popular. His notes in Cassia’s blue tablet packet quantify his more admirable qualities. For example, his peers ranked him as their most admired classmate “87.6% of the time” (161). Xander is an active medic, and remains a loyal friend to Cassia even as she pursues Ky.

Xander exits the narrative after his outing with Cassia in Chapter 4, but continues to be an influential character. He stole a packet of blue tablets to help Cassia survive in the Outer Provinces. He hid notes in the packet—specifically, pieces of his Match information. Cassia interprets Xander’s notes as him saying “look at me again,” a prompt for her to seriously consider him as a romantic prospect (161). When Indie deduces that the blue tablets are poisoned, Cassia insists that Xander didn’t know. On the other hand, the Xander of Ky’s memories has a rebellious streak. Unlike Ky, he signed up to join the Rising as soon as he was recruited. He pursues his medic career in the Society as a double agent for the Rising.

Cassia’s hypothetical life with Xander would be the opposite of that with Ky: She would have a job, a family, and the house she always wanted, living in peace and doing “the things I always thought I would” (304). Cassia never finds out Xander’s secret, that he is already part of the Rising, but knows he’s willing to break the Society’s rules to help her escape if it means she’ll be happy.

Indie is a teenage Aberration, Ky’s potential love interest, and a foil to Cassia. She is tall with red hair and blue eyes. She grew up somewhere near the sea, and has known about the Pilot since she was a child. Indie has a fiery, rebellious attitude, and is unafraid to break the rules or speak up. In the work camps, she singles out Cassia as someone who doesn’t belong, and follows her into the Carving in the hopes of finding the Pilot.

For the sake of survival, Indie lies and withholds information throughout Crossed. Her lies have layers: She prompts Cassia to hide each other’s precious things in the airship, but later tells her that she didn’t have anything to hide; later, she reveals that she actually had Cassia hide her own stolen microcard. There are hints throughout the story that Indie harbors secrets. She guards her pack and lashes out when Ky almost catches her looking at something in it. Cassia, too ill to pay attention to Indie’s story, catches cryptic lines like, “I don’t know how much longer I can believe” (189). Indie hides the map to the Rising from everyone but Ky, whom she believes to be the Pilot. Reaching the Rising is her goal, and she will do anything to get there. She desperately wants to be special, not the outcast Aberration she has been since her boat incident. However, Ky helps her confront the fact that she herself caused her own Reclassification, not her mother.

Ky and Indie have chemistry that threatens the former’s relationship with Cassia. When things between Cassia and Ky are intense, Cassia notices the hungry way Indie looks at Ky. Ky notices how beautiful Indie is when they sit close to each other in the dark and discuss the Rising. Moreover, Ky and Indie share similar backstories and survival instincts. However, they are simply friends by the end of the novel.

Eli is the young decoy who escapes the village with Ky and Vick. He is about 13 years old, and has dark, curly hair like Cassia’s younger brother, Bram. He grew up in Central in the Society; his parents died of a mysterious illness. Eli “has been an Aberration for as long as [he] can remember” and is therefore ineligible for adoption, so the authorities sent him to the villages (171). Eli’s story suggests there’s more wrong with the Society than the other characters know, as it’s unusual for people to get sick in the Society, much less die from illness.

Eli is the youngest of the traveling group, and thus becomes a younger brother figure to the older characters. He is spirited and naive, asking many questions when he arrives at the village and begging Ky and Vick to help the other decoys during their escape to the Carving. He is the most openly sensitive character in the novel, crying several times and taking paper and paintbrushes from the storage caves instead of food. Eli is generally optimistic about the state of the world and believes everyone should do their best to help others. As such, he is frustrated by the difficult choices Ky and Vick have had to make to survive.

Eli becomes a more active character as the story progresses. He advocates for his own needs in small ways, like refusing to give up the tracking disk in his jacket. He helps Ky perform tasks like pulling the poison spheres from the stream, and participates in the climbs and hikes into the Cavern. At the end of the novel, Eli surprises everyone by joining Hunter’s journey to find the other farmers instead of pursuing the Rising. To Cassia, leaving Eli feels like leaving her brother Bram all over again—but unlike Bram, Eli makes the active choice to pursue his own destiny.