Match: Prologue

The day Hannah received her Match, I wanted to lock myself in my bedroom and never come out.  Samuel Joseph Cannon.  She’d repeated the name over and over again until a big ball of something had formed in my stomach and I wanted to puke.  No, it wasn’t jealousy.  Plain old disgust. 

Though Hannah is my older sister, you’d never be able to tell.  She's so dramatic, had not a single shred of independence and never looked at me as something she should protect.  Hannah was busy in her little world, awaiting her eighteenth birthday so that she could receive her Match – the name of the man she was destined to spend the rest of her life with.

It took her three hours to gush about who this Samuel guy could be before she actually reached for the phone book to start searching.  That’s where everyone began – the phone book.  There was always this glimmer of hope that one’s Match was in the tristate area; the wish that one wouldn’t end up like Old Man Thomason who searched for his Match for sixty-three years before they found each other.  He grew up in Boise, Idaho and his Match, Grace, had retired in Sydney, Australia.  Apparently, once she turned fifty, she gave up, but the old man never did.

I never understood this.  When you turn eighteen, a small box mysteriously appears on your front porch step, like something left by a Tooth Fairy.  It contains a silver ring, with the name of your spouse, or Match, engraved on the outside.  This name sparks the motivation to go search for this person.  You might find your Match, you might not, but you’re always searching…

Why should I be looking for a person picked for me by the government?  Where was the freedom in that?  I could seriously get shot for saying things like this out loud.  When I was six, I asked my parents why I couldn’t have a little brother and they scolded me.  Only two children per family, that was the rule.  Don’t question things that are.  When I was twelve, I said that I didn’t want to be Matched and my mother grounded me for twelve hours. 

There were people who spoke thoughts like mine out loud.  On the news, you saw them arrested – The Resistance, they called themselves.  Completely unoriginal, as there have been multiple resistances against multiple things throughout history.  This particular Resistance was against the Match – they were pretty much against anything the government established.

Every time something popped up on the news about the Resistance, my father would mutter, “Damn anarchists,” and switch the channel.  In all honesty, I thought what they were doing was amazing, but I would never say that out loud.  I was sure to be hanged by the gallows.  I thought that it was such an incredible display of courage, to publicly go against everything that is established, to refuse to be Matched, to refuse to follow any governmental regulation… it frightened me just thinking about it, sending chills down my spine. 

I dreaded the day I would turn eighteen.

This is just the beginning of a story I hope to continue writing.  I appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.