Cassia Reyes

From The-Society.NET | THE LEXICON

Cassia Reyes is the seventeen year old narrator in Matched. She thinks her favorite smell is rain. Her name is derived from a plant. It's bark is used as a spice to the people in the Stone Villages.

Appearance

Cassia has coppery brown hair, green eyes, and has a chin like Grandfather's with the trace of a dimple. She is skinny and short, which is a trait inherited from her fathers side of the family. Sometimes her hair curls in the summer humidity. Cassia has the red mark on her back showing that she is immune from the mutation of the plague.

Quick Facts

Anna refers to Cassia as the Poet.

Biography

Cassia Maria Reyes is the oldest daughter to Abran Reyes and Molly Reyes. She lives with her parents and younger brother Bram in a house with blue shutters in the Mapletree Burough. Her least favorite exercise option is cycling. She prefers to run on a machine they call a tracker. Her favorite smell is the forest on the Hill. Ky says she smells like flowers and paper.

On her 17th birthday, June 15, she has her Match Banquet. She chose dress number seventy-three, a green silk dress, to wear to her Match Banquet. Cassia discovers she is matched with Xander Carrow who lives on her street. When she views the microcard the next day, she sees a photograph of Xander first, but it is then replaced with a photograph of Ky Markham before the screen goes blank. She isn't sure of what this means and wonders if it is possible to have two matches.

Her summer leisure activity is hiking, which is where she grew closer to Ky. He later becomes her hiking partner after the data shows their hiking abilities match one another.

Cassia's work activity is information sorting and is one of the best sorters. Her favorites are word association, picture and sentence sorts. Her father, grandfather and great-grandmother all had a work activity of information sorting.

Although she has been kissed before her matching, her first kiss with Xander was the day of the special Saturday activity, after they planted newroses and enjoyed their ice cream treat. While most of the other matched citizens had their first meeting via port-to-port communication, Cassia and Xander were allowed to have a supervised outing together instead.

Ky taught Cassia how to write in cursive in the dirt over multiple hiking sessions with Ky.

As a belated birthday gift, Ky presents Cassia with a stanza of "Poem in October" by Dylan Thomas. She receives her first kiss from Ky that same day, on her cheek. They know that they cannot keep it, so Cassia rips apart the line about the birds and tosses them into the wind. The rest of the poem is buried on the hill.

The following day, while on the Hill, Cassia writes 'I Love You' in the dirt to Ky. Rather than write the words in response to her, Ky says them aloud.

When she finally confesses to Xander that she saw both Xander and Ky's picture on her microcard, he is upset and accuses her of choosing Ky as her Match. That night she pulls out the frame holding the piece of dress from her Match Banquet and breaks the glass.

On the final day of their hiking group, Cassia and Ky make it to the top of the Hill rather than taking down the red flags and the cairns. At the top they exchange gifts with one another. Ky gives Cassia his artifact again and tells her that Xander could teach her how to use it. Cassia gives him the piece of her green dress from the Match Banquet. The final thing they exchange is a kiss.

Once her family moves to their new village, her parents requested that the Officials send her on a three month work detail to help with her signs of rebellion. Her data agreed with her parents and they assigned her to a new work detail in one of the Western Provinces. The work detail involves hard labor; planting an experimental winter crop.

After Cassia makes it to the Rising, she is told she will be sent to Central. The story she tells is that Officers found her in the forest in Tana. She is told that she does not remember anything. An Officer agrees to corroborate this story.

Cassia's job with the Society is a sorter in Central. She lives on the seventeenth floor of an apartment building. Her position within the Society is used by the Rising to manipulate Match sorts.

The Head Archivist of Central has arranged travel for her to Camas through the Rising. She is picked up at the Gallery by Indie.

The Endstone village council voted to allow Cassia one stone to vote for which cure to test.

See also: Red Garden Day