100% (Part 2)

The park was quiet, with only one or two people passing Lana on occasion as she sat on a small wooden bench and re-read her favourite book for the fifteenth time. Sometimes she looked up as something in the book made her want to stop and think, idly staring without seeing at the gravel path, dewy grass or sparsely-grown birch trees in front of her. The only sound came from the courting song thrushes singing their sweet tunes high up in the branches of the trees, and the soft thump of footsteps of people enjoying a leisurely walk in the thoughtful spring air.

Lana had just turned the first page of Chapter 4 when the previously silent List in her pocket – Dorro had named it Pepper – began chirping in a far less melodious tone than the song thrushes had. It vibrated vigorously in Lana's pocket, its voice muffled by the fabric of her jeans.

Lazily, Lana pulled it out of her pocket and held it up to her face so she could hear what it was saying. Once released, Pepper's voice was loud enough to send the birds flying off. So it isn't only me who can hear it, Lana mused, before turning her attention to her List.

“100%! 100%!” it screamed. Lana's drowsy head snapped up, and she whirled around, clutching Pepper tightly. Seeing nothing, she turned forward again, and realised there was a man walking along the path towards her. The first thing she noticed about him was his height – he would've about eight feet tall if he wasn't stooping. The second was his incredibly vibrant blond hair, short and shaggy, as if he spent most of his time running his fingers through it.

For a moment, all Lana did was stare. She hadn't expected to find her 100% in years, or maybe never – she recalled Maggie, who'd settled for her 72 at the age of 40 because she'd given up looking, and Tallulah, who'd married her 56 out of sheer exhaustion from spending a wasted 50 years looking for her perfect match. She'd expected to end up like them, or to simply never marry. There were worst things than being a Single – like marrying under your 50% match. And, according to Pepper, she'd found him in a week.

The man was in front of her before she realised he was still moving. Without thinking, she reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his grey coat.

He froze, and turned to her with a puzzled, shy expression. She dropped his coat like a hot coal, and couldn't stop herself going volcano-red. “Um – uh – em... You – I –,” she babbled, before giving up and resorting to giving him an awkward smile.

The man smiled sheepishly. “Do... do I... do I know you?” he asked.

It didn't make it any better that he obviously wasn't carrying his List – a new idea struck Lana, and she coloured further. What if he wasn't eighteen yet? If he didn't have a List, he might not know how it worked, and he might just think she was simply being... odd.

The idea of the man – boy, she couldn't help thinking of him as, despite the fact that their ages were probably less than a year apart – thinking she was odd, or worse, completely insane, drove her to coherence.

“You're my 100%,” she blurted.

The boy's face twisted for a second in an expression of disbelief, then straightened into a lopsided grin. He faced her fully and shoved his hands into his large coat pockets. Lana blinked hard. She hadn't expected a reaction this enthusiastic... and what was he trying to find in his pockets?

His hands came out, and she gasped. Between his fingers, he held a beautiful pink sapphire ring. He must be eighteen. He wouldn't carry that around...

He thrust his hand towards her with an awkward smile. “Will... will you marry me?” he asked sheepishly.

百

Two weeks later...

“Left his books all over the sofa again,” Lana muttered to herself as she picked them up, examining the titles and blurbs of each one before slapping herself in the face and continuing. “Don't get distracted, don't get distracted,” she repeated over and over. Each new blurb peaked her interest and made it harder to just continue tidying without giving up, sitting down, and opening one. She dwelt for a moment on the idea, then shoved it away.

“Ren,” she shouted. A minute later, her fiancé hurried down the stairs, stooping to avoid knocking his head on the low ceiling.

She gestured to the open books littering the sofa and floor. “Do you have an allergy to tidying?”

Ren ran an anxious hand through his ruffled hair. “Um... no?”

“Then help me, for goodness sake.” She softened. “Please. I know I do it too... shouldn't we help each other?”

Ren crouched down beside her and began picking up the books. After a silent minute of this, he stopped, a plain, maroon novel in his hand. He smiled, and handed it to Lana, nodding towards it. “Open it,” he said.

Lana glanced at him. She turned the first page, and smiled. Her stress evaporated. Inside, under the simple title of Spring Poems, was Ren's handwriting. To my beautiful Instant-Fiancé.

Ren shuffled closer to Lana with a grin. “Exactly two weeks before this day, I picked a 'Find a Fiancé' card in the Game of Life. What a blessing it was.”

She smiled up him, then nudged him away. “You purposefully picked that out so you could stop tidying,” she said playfully.

Ten minutes later, the books were back on their shelves, Ren had left to go job-hunting again – underage though he was, he'd decided he didn't want to wait the month and a half until his eighteenth birthday before he tried for a job – and Lana was upstairs in her bedroom, tidying the books and clothes off the floor of that room.

On the many occasions in the last few weeks she had worked at tidying the clutter that was their house, she'd found herself wishing they hadn't refused the government's offer of the largest house in the district – a 'reward' for being the first 100% match in their area that generation. Lana and Ren had given multiple good reasons for refusing – they preferred smaller spaces, they didn't want their friends to think the couple thought they were above them just because of their match, they didn't want to feel 'more important' than other people due to lucky circumstances – but Lana somehow stiff found herself regretting their choice. She wondered if she might be able to convince Ren to change his mind.

A knock on the door startled her into dropping the pile of clothes she'd been carrying to a drawer, and she ran down the stairs to see who it was. She opened the door.

“Lana what if it doesn't go well what if I don't have a 100 what if I get the same thing that happened to Morrina,” came the rapid, distressed voice of Dorro, her best-friend and ex-roommate.

Lana stared blankly at her friend for a few seconds before forcing a sympathetic smile on her face and letting Dorro inside. After shutting the door behind her and seating Dorro on the comfiest part of the sofa, Lana sat down beside her.

“Calm down. Calm down,” she said, with no idea of how to continue. She couldn't piece together even two words of what Dorro had spurted. “It's okay. Whatever you just said, I'm sure it's okay.”

Dorro's breathing was fast and shallow, her face red. Her words shot out like bullets. “I don't know what to do my Interview's tomorrow and I can't stop thinking about it what if everything goes wrong?”

Lana stroked her friend's hand soothingly. “It's okay. Slow down. Tell me everything from the beginning.” Inside, her mind was whirring. She'd caught a name she thought she recognised. Morrina? Wasn't that the girl who'd spoken to her in the waiting room before her Interview?

Dorro put her hand against her heart and tried to slow her breathing. Eventually, her face returned to its usual colour, and she sighed. “Sorry, Lan.” She grinned weakly. “I'm just... I was going through things that could happen, and there were so many bad possibilities. Do you really want to hear all of it?”

Because it was her best friend, Lana told the truth. “Not really, Dor. At least, not yet. You mentioned Morrina?”

“You know her?” Dorro asked, not in the least resentful. Probably, Lana thought, she was glad she didn't have to go through her worries again.

“I met her once. While I was... I met her once,” Lana corrected, unsure of how her friend would react if she mentioned the Interview.

“Well, she's one of my friends.”

Lana smiled. She should've expected it, given how similar they were, but Dorro had spent most of their time as roommates around her, and Lana had presumed she didn't have any other friends. She realised now, how irrational the idea was.

“She had her Interview the same time you did – that's where you met her, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Lana said, anxious to hear what had happened to Morrina. She didn't know the girl, but that didn't stop her anxiety that something bad had happened. If it had, she wanted to help somehow.

Dorro paused for such a long time that Lana thought she wasn't going to continue, but at last she blurted it out. “She got paired with a girl.”

Lana recoiled. Paired with a girl? “What?”

“She got paired with a girl, and she didn't ask for it,” Dorro said, growing more stressed at every new word. “What if I do too? What if–”

“–what if you stop what iffing? It's okay, Dor. It'll be fine. My matching worked, didn't it?” Lana turned her face away and frowned. Where had that last sentence come from?

She turned back to Dorro, who was looking at her seriously. “Lan.”

Lana waved her hands around in a baffled manner, trying to think of an argument. She and Ren had hadn't argued – she could use that. They spent most of the day together – that one too. And she enjoyed his- she stopped herself. No, she didn't want to reason it out that way.

She resorted to childishness. “It did!” Dorro always made her feel immature; their arguments were usually full of tongues being stuck out, and fruitless 'did's and 'didn't's.

“I'm not convinced.”

Lana felt her anger rising, even as she tried to push it down. Why am I angry at Dorro? I don't want to be angry at Dorro. She pushed away as well her conscience that was saying You want to be angry at yourself.

“Go away,” she said, more to uncomfortable thoughts than her friend, but Dorro heard them and bristled.

“I came because I wanted support,” she said stiffly. “If I'm not going to get any, I will leave.” She stood up.

“Dorro, you know I didn't mean it like that. Sit down, I can help you,” Lana pleaded. She wanted Dorro to help – no. She stifled the thought. She wanted to help Dorro.

Dorro, unfortunately, knew her too well. “I'm not going to help you if that's all you want. Don't you have Ren to talk to?”

Lana retorted before she could stop herself. “You're jealous that I do have him! Go and live your own life instead of feeding off mine.”

“I-” Dorro stared at her in shock. Her face froze. She turned. The door banged behind her, and Lana put her head in her hands.