That’s not what happened.
That’s not how I remember it.
The threat neutralized. No.
Genevieve is dead. I try the phrase on, watch my memory shift as it does. The van rolls and I am screaming, but I’m the only one screaming. They use a crowbar to pry me out with an urgency I don’t understand, because I’m fine. Genevieve doesn’t try to stop them, she doesn’t resist, she doesn’t run. The threat has been neutralized.
She is dead.
She’s in the front seat, crushed, and she is dead.
I feel the nausea roll through me, like I’m trapped in the container again. Like I’m being tossed about, and when the motion stops I’m completely disoriented.
There was never any further story about this. It was dealt with by security on the island. I never knew her last name, so I couldn’t find her even if I wanted to. There was never anything about her punishment, or a trial, because she was dead. Neutralized.
I don’t like the fact that they lied in their omission, in their word choice.
I don’t like the fact that my mind created a story that was wrong, that missed something, that was a single camera angle.
I feel even smaller. I didn’t even understand everything about my island.
“I was ten,” I say as an excuse once again. And I shrug like it’s not a huge deal. Like my universe isn’t shifting as we speak. Like I don’t feel myself losing a grip on something, on myself.
“I bet her name wasn’t even Genevieve,” Casey says, which makes me feel even worse. I am responsible for another person’s death, and I don’t even know who she truly is.
“Duérmete,” Dom mumbles. “Go to sleep? Seriously? Are you sure she wasn’t trying to kill you both?”
That’s what people thought at first, I think. Because they raised the bridge to stop her, and she didn’t stop. What did she really believe was going to happen?
“You’re contained because you can find the shadow-database, or you can figure out how to hack the original again,” Dominic says. I kind of like that he believes the status quo statement is crap, but I don’t like this alternative. “June left you clues,” he says. “There are clues, Alina. There have to be.”
“Why?” I ask. “Because otherwise I’ve been contained for some other reason, right? Because this is all some huge mistake, and I’m the only one who has to pay for it!”
“There are clues. There is money. I’ve staked my life on it, that’s how much I believe.”
I can’t imagine believing something so strongly that I would stake my life upon it. I can’t imagine trusting in an idea that much. I think of what June believed and where it got her. Where it got me.
“It’s an urban legend,” I say. “There are no clues.”
I don’t want there to be clues. I don’t want to think of June using me. I don’t want to think of me and June in the same sentence ever again.
But I see her mouth, and it’s pressing closer to my ear.
35.31 –83.65, she says. And I wonder if this is the start.
They question me for hours. Mostly it’s Dominic. But every once in a while, Casey will pick up on something I say and dig and dig at the sentence until it’s completely dissected and we’re all sure it’s useless.
They want to know about maintenance workers, but if they came, I never saw them. They ask what happened in the hurricane. Where did I go? An underground bunker. Who talked to me? Nobody.
They ask about my tutors, but that conversation quickly goes nowhere when I explain that I take distance-education courses that have been taped years in advance. They know how the homework thing works, since they were able to hack it.
They want to know if the doctor is the same every year—she is—and what she says. Exactly. She’s someone who’s allowed to be alone with me, who has the opportunity. But I can’t take their concern seriously. This is how my doctor visits go: Any complaints? Let me list them. Any questions? Many.
It had become a game for me, to try to make the doctor uncomfortable. And I do. I make things up, and she knows I do it, but she has to take them seriously, just in case. I see only the color red. My left arm acts on its own accord. I think there’s something living inside my right lung. I can feel my heart throwing off extra beats. I can’t feel my toes. I say ridiculous things in the hope she will have to take me to a medical facility, but she never does. They bring it to me instead, in a medical transport vehicle. So I gave up on that and started asking her ridiculous questions instead, which she insists on answering, just in case. But I make her uncomfortable, I can tell. It is not the doctor.
Dom asks about the humanitarian group—but I’m never present for their assessments—and about the media in years past. Do they shout things? Pass on information? Anything they say could mean something.
They exhaust every facet of my life, any contact I might have with the outside. They have run through the list, when Casey says, “What about your parents?”
“What about them?” I snap. She jerks back, and I try to play it off that I snapped because they’ve been questioning me for hours.
“Your mom was released ten years ago, and your dad was released five years ago, before being recommitted for breaking parole. Have they ever tried to make contact?”
“Never.”
“Are you sure—”
“Don’t you think I would know if the only people I want in the world had come back into my life? There’s nothing. There’s nobody else.”
And then, at least, the questions stop.
Casey paces back and forth across the room, and Dominic follows with his eyes. “Hey,” he says, but she’s still pacing. “There’s always the money. And that price? I guarantee it’ll go up. I’ll give you your share, enough to get out of here, go anywhere you want.”
Casey stops and spins to face him. “I don’t want the freaking money. You promised me.”
“What do you want me to do? Shake it out of her?”
They’re talking about me, right in front of me, as if I were a thing to extract information from. I think of Casey doing my hair, running with me, holding my hand. Casey protecting me and sticking up for me, and then all those moments are replaced with a bitter swipe. Her, using me. Of course she was using me. What did I expect?
Cameron clears his throat, and Casey looks over at him. He makes some slight expression, something so slight only someone who knew him intimately would be able to decipher it. I have no idea what it means, but Casey seems to relax, or at least she pretends to relax.
Dominic faces me again. “Don’t you want the money?”
“No, I don’t want June’s money.”
“Your money,” he corrects.
“June’s money.”
“She said she doesn’t,” Cameron says. “So she doesn’t. Why is that so hard to believe?”
Dom shakes his head, leans closer. “Want to know why people believe you’re still the same person? Why they think you’re June?” he says. “This is why. I see what you’re doing. It’s been two days, and already they listen to you.” He gestures at Cameron and Casey. “They wait to hear what you’re going to say, and they believe you. They don’t see what you’re doing.”
“I’m not doing anything,” I say, but Dominic keeps going like I haven’t spoken at all.
“But they don’t know you like I do. They don’t know what you’ll do next. Do you want to tell them about the night in your room, or should I?”
My jaw drops, and I shove a finger in his chest. “You betrayed me,” I say. “That’s what happened. You were spying on me, trying to find out about June. You were trying to extract information from me. You wanted June’s money. You were using me.”
“Really?” he says, but he’s leering. “Then how come I’m the one without a job now? How come you’re the one who had to be physically restrained? How come everyone is scared of you there?” Cameron is watching, and I want him to stop. But he keeps going. “The kiss of death, that’s what you are.”
<
br /> I flinch.
I was screaming and the stun gun was still in my hand and the entire island went on lockdown …
Because he couldn’t balance me. Couldn’t hold me on the tightrope. Because he failed the test. It wasn’t my fault.
“It’s your first instinct, Alina. It’s who you are. You come first. Your ideals, at the expense of everyone else. That’s the soul, right? It’s who you are. Who you’ll always be.”
I’m shaking my head. I’ve been shaking my head, and I’m still shaking it. But I have no words, only rage, fighting its way to the surface, inch by inch, and I can’t shake it off.
“Yes, I wanted out,” I say, my voice firm and practiced. “I always wanted out. Because I was being held, inhumanely and unconstitutionally.” The speech I’d come up with last year pours out of me. “Because my soul is my own, and the world is punishing me for something that no longer exists. The world is the only one with a memory. Not my soul. June is dead. I am the only one here. My name is Alina Chase.”
He starts to smile then, as I catch my breath. He looks back at Cameron and Casey with his eyebrows raised. “Well,” he says. “If this isn’t proof that the girl before us is June Calahan, I don’t know what is. You sound just like her.”
And then I have no more words. Only anger. I throw the closest thing I can find. It’s that battery-powered lantern, and I hurl it at his head. He ducks just in time, and it hits the wall behind him. He rushes toward me, and I throw the second lantern, nailing him in the side of the skull. “A little help?” he yells, as he sinks to the floor clutching the side of his face.
Cameron rushes me from the side. He doesn’t knock me over like I think he will. But he does restrain me. He wraps his arms around me, and I can’t move. But his hand is rubbing my upper back, like I’m an animal he’s trying to calm. It feels like it did back in the trunk …
On the island, this would be the point where someone would give me a shot and my emotions would fall to nothing. When I’d become complacent and malleable. I wait, with his arms wrapped around me. I wait for the emotion to fade, but it doesn’t. Instead, it shifts.
Against all reason, I don’t fight back. Against all reason, I begin to cry instead.
And this makes me even angrier. With my hands at my side, I reach one to the outside of my pocket, and I find the sharp edges of the broken glass. I reach inside and a shard scrapes against my knuckle, drawing blood. I feel for it between my fingers and position it in my fist. I give Cameron a warning, “Get your hands off me,” as I prepare to slice at his arm. And surprisingly, he does. He listens. And I’m left there holding a handful of glass and nobody to use it on.
Dominic rises from the ground, still holding the side of his head. “There you are,” he says, and he smiles. He turns to Cameron with the same expression. “See? There she is.”
And then I realize they’re talking about June Calahan, like a ghost, rising from the ashes.
I fall onto the couch, tears gone, something much worse in their place.
And just like I understood in the trunk of the car why everyone leaves a piece of themselves behind, I also understand completely why people rarely go check for results. It’s not just the past-life message boards full of con artists, pretending to be long-lost loves. It’s not just the people who seek you out with questionable motivations. It’s because as I lie on the couch with Casey watching me with wide eyes, with Cameron looking anywhere but at me, and with Dominic holding a shirt to the side of his head, I lose the one thing I’ve always held on to.
I believe him. I believe that maybe the person I was is the person I am.
Because I feel it in me, that thing he’s talking about. I used to believe this impulsiveness, this rage, was a product of my incarceration. Justifiable. Expected, even.
It’s inside me, this instinct, and I’m constantly pushing it down. I’m constantly trying to hide it, along with my emotions, my intentions. But it’s there, and he knows it.
But what if it runs deeper than the circumstances of my life?
If I believe that maybe I am nothing more than the soul of June Calahan, and if I believe that maybe she was capable of betrayal and selfishness and ruining lives …
Then I must believe that maybe I am capable of these things, too.
I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to be anything like her.
Dominic keeps talking, with the shirt still pressed to the cut on his head. “I get that, right now, you’re holding on to information until you can use it for something. And you’re not thinking of me, or Cameron, or Casey, who have risked our lives and given up our identities to free you. I get that your soul is unbearably selfish. I get that you’ll trade it only for something worthwhile. So tell me what you want, and I’ll trade you for it.”
Isn’t it obvious?
“I want to get away from you. I want to be free,” I say, and even to myself, I sound like a child, throwing pennies into a fountain and wishing for fairies and ponies and magic. I guess while I’m feeling particularly tragic, I’ll be completely honest with myself: I want my mother to come for me, and I want to wipe June Calahan from existence, and then I want to undo the last seventeen years and start again. But getting away from here with a fresh start is coming in a very close second.
Dom nods. We all want something; why should I be any different? Why should I not trade part of my soul for what I want? They’re all doing it. Dominic wants my money. Casey wants something. Something she was willing to trade her identity for. I have no idea why Cameron is here still, but I’m sure it’s not for me.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay. Do this with us, help us, and you’ll get a share of the money one way or the other, and Casey can work you up a new identity.”
Cameron scoffs, and we all turn to look at him. “Everyone knows her face. She’ll never be free.” It’s like he doesn’t want me to agree. Doesn’t want me to tell them what the numbers of my inheritance mean.
Dominic shakes his head. “The world is big, Alina.”
It’s just me. I am alone, like always. They want something from me, and now I want something from them.
Like the terrifying ocean, the only way to get past it is to go through it.
“The deposits,” I say. “They’re coordinates.”
And just like that, I trade everything I have to bargain with for the tiniest sliver of hope.
Chapter 11
Dominic tears through his things like a kid on Christmas, desperately searching for his GPS. I recite the coordinates for him from memory, and he plugs them in. “This is nearby,” he says. Of course it is. This is where June disappeared for so long. “A day’s hike. We go tomorrow. Bring food and a tent, we may need to stay the night.”
I’m still clutching the glass, but only Cameron seems to notice. He waits for Dominic and Casey to disappear into the computer room, on some mission to look into different variations of a place that may be called Duérmete, or something similar. They won’t find anything. It doesn’t exist. I’ve looked.
I stand, spinning away from his gaze, from what I might see in it.
“What were you planning to do?” he asks.
I take a deep breath and turn to face him, but he’s staring at my clenched fists, at the shard of glass sticking out.
“I don’t know,” I say. It’s the truth if he’s asking what I intended to do after I got out of his grip. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Step One: Break the hold. Step Two: To be determined. I’m losing a grip on myself the longer I spend away from the island. I swallow dry air and meet his eyes. “I don’t feel safe here.”
He looks at me like he knows, of course he knows, that I was going to cut him. He who has done nothing but help me. Who risked his life to remove the tracker from my rib, who dove into the ocean after me so I wouldn’t drown, who shared my air tank, my fear, my secrets. I betrayed him. I was planning to slice my way out of his hold, before I even thought of trying to ask him to stop. I am impulsive. I am driven by rage. I am
nothing more than the person they believe me to be. Selfish and self-righteous. I am.
I want to apologize, to ask forgiveness, to take it back, as impossible as that seems. But words mean nothing. Action, everything.
I let the pieces fall to the floor in a tiny melody, in surrender, and all he does is bend down to clean them up, making me feel even worse.
“Why didn’t you tell?” I ask. It’s obvious that Casey wanted any information I had, and it’s obvious that he knew about the coordinates. I wonder if Dominic is right, if they really do care about what I say. But I think that was just Dom, twisting words, twisting me, to get the information he needed.
“Wasn’t mine to tell,” he says, still looking at the floor.
“What does she want from me?” I ask.
He pauses, the glass half in his palm, half on the wood floor. “Also not mine to tell,” he says.
He continues to pick up the pieces. “Then why are you here? What do you want?”
He doesn’t answer at first, staring at the floor, at the pieces of glass. And then at me. “I’m here because she’d do this anyway. I’m here because I’m scared to lose her.” He stands with the glass, and then he shocks me by coming closer. “I’m here because I have nowhere else to go.”
Closer still, and I feel a hand on my waist again. “I’m here because I would do anything for my sister,” he says, and now he’s whispering. “And I’m still here because I don’t see any other option.” I feel his fingers along the side of my pants, and I don’t know what to do. His fingers find the pocket, and I’m holding my breath, and I feel the shards of glass drop back inside my pocket. “This really wouldn’t have done anything to me. There were two other people in the room. You get that?” I nod, because I’m out of words. “I’d do anything for her. Do you understand?”
He backs away, and his words echo in a pattern in my head.
His sister.
Other option.
Do you understand?
He leaves me in the main room with the glass in my pocket, and he disappears into the bathroom.
Yes, I think. I understand.
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