Soulprint

by Megan Miranda

  “Do you ever think of getting out of here?” Dominic had asked, looking anywhere but at my computer. It’s not like the guards never go through my things. They do, all the time, but they don’t hide it. This was the first time I realized that maybe computer searches weren’t private. And I was thinking about the things I’d been researching.

  “No point,” I’d said. I thought about it every second of every day. I thought about it as I looked at the sky, at the sea, at the blackness behind my eyelids, but I made a point never to say the things that were merely hope, things that might burst if I gave voice to them, stranded out in the air by themselves.

  “You don’t want to?”

  I didn’t understand at first. I thought I did, I thought he was going to help. And then his eyes shifted from one electronic device to the next: the computer, the printer, the light fixture, the clock.

  I felt the truth seep into my bones, like acid.

  “Are there cameras in here?” I asked, turning away so I could mask my expression. Turn it to calm. How else would he know?

  “No,” he said, “and you know that.” It’s true. The humanitarian groups are allowed to screen this island twice a year, to make sure I am treated humanely. Like an animal. You can keep her forever, just give her the decency of some privacy. What a joke.

  I had been researching what I could make with batteries, with the pieces of the electronics I’d taken apart and put back together. If I could make a radio. A phone. Or a bomb.

  How to start a fire.

  And he knew.

  How did it not occur to me that computers were monitored? That just because it was in my room didn’t make it mine? Of course later I found out about search histories and remote access, but I didn’t know as much about computers when he was a guard eight months ago. Just that I had one and it was full of information. Lots of information. Information is free to me, I just can’t send it out. Just like in a prison.

  I felt my anger grow, and I buried it under my indifferent expression.

  At first.

  “Do you ever get messages from the outside?” he asked.

  June. Like everyone else, he was looking for June.

  I set my jaw, set my resolve. “Yes,” I’d told him, “but you can’t tell.” I gave him a small smile. “And not through the computer.”

  If he was playing me, I was going to play him right back. “How, then?” he’d asked, leaning toward me, the light from the window catching off the blue of his irises. His whole face seemed to glow.

  “I don’t know how exactly, but sometimes at night, there are words shining directly onto my wall.” I pointed to the wall opposite the window for emphasis. “It says, ‘In the ocean is the key.’ What do you suppose that means?” The lie slipped out as effortlessly as it manifested in my head. I walked closer, studying his reaction.

  Dom was mumbling to himself. “I don’t know.” Then he refocused on me, searching my face. “I can help you,” he said, “but I need something from you. Just one thing.” He pulled the needle out of his pocket—the one they use to administer shots—but it had been refashioned in some way, so the syringe was instead a glass tube. “I need a sample.”

  And then the rage clawed its way up from the depths. He knew I was June. They all knew I was June. Who the hell did he think he was, coming in here, thinking he could mess with me, thinking he could use me? Who the hell did he think I was? Some easily manipulated kid who’d let him take everything and leave me here to rot? I walked closer to where he stood leaning against my desk, but he must’ve been confused, because when I got within reach, he put an arm around my waist. He leaned down, and he paused—just for a second—and then he kissed me. And I let him. I kissed him back, as I reached behind his back to my desk, to my clock …

  When I glance back at Cameron, his eyes are on my knuckles, which are turning white from gripping my towel, and the steam filling the room makes him feel closer. Makes us feel closer.

  I wonder now if Cameron is pretending. If Casey is pretending.

  Cameron gestures to my clothes on the floor and looks away. After I dress, I tell him, like a warning, “The last time I saw him, he was being dragged from my room, unconscious.” It’s not a lie, but it’s not all of the truth, either. I leave out the kiss, and the fact that I was screaming at him, full of rage and nonsense, as his body shook on the floor. I leave out the lies I told and the part where the entire island went on lockdown. My words, unchecked. My actions, unchecked. They were so careful about blades and points and weapons on the island, but when you need something to use, none of that matters. Everything could be a weapon.

  And I had been able to make something from the batteries and simple circuits I found in the room, from the careful wiring.

  I can still feel it, the power of it, in my hand. I can still see the surprise on his face, the way everything about him changed as I held the base of the clock to his back and the current ran through him.

  “I had turned my clock into a stun gun,” I say.

  Cameron starts laughing, and instantly it is my new favorite sound. It’s surprisingly fast, and real, and his eyes narrow like he can’t control the rest of his face. I smile back at him without even thinking. “You have no idea how much I would’ve loved to see that,” he says. Then he holds up the needle he must’ve just threaded. “Ready?”

  “Yes,” I say. This time, at least, I don’t have to lie on the floor. He sits me on the counter, and I lean back against the mirror to give him more access. I hold up my shirt, and his hand shakes as he nears my skin.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I’m cold.”

  But he doesn’t try to warm them up. He takes a deep breath to steady himself, and then he pushes the needle through my skin, over and over, as if I were a piece of fabric. I should’ve taken the pill. I know it. He knows it. But he doesn’t say anything as I choke on my cries, or as I tense with each new stitch, and he doesn’t mention the fact that there are tears rolling down my cheeks. He pretends not to notice that I’m gripping on to his shoulders in a way that must hurt, but he doesn’t flinch.

  When he finishes, before he looks up at my face, he moves the side of his hand across my cheeks in a quick motion, and he smiles to himself. “Not too bad,” he says, “for my first time.”

  “You were practicing on my rib cage?” I ask, feeling a pull each time I breathe in.

  “I was,” he says, trying not to smile. He dabs some sort of ointment over the top. “There. Done.”

  And then we’re stuck there, with nothing more to do. It’s just him and me, inches apart, my bare skin on display in front of him. He must notice at the same time, because his hand reaches for the bottom of my shirt, still held over my ribs, and he pulls it down and backs away.

  I make him nervous.

  I’m not entirely sure why.

  He’s still watching me, but I guess that’s his job. “Look—” But Cameron’s gaze quickly shifts to the wall—to somewhere beyond the wall—where I hear a faint beep. He opens the bathroom door and holds his breath. I hear Dominic whispering in the house. I hear Dominic whispering to someone in the house, and so does Cameron, who runs out of the bathroom into the dark.

  I hop off the counter and stand in the doorway. Cameron already has Casey in his arms, and his shoulders are shaking as if he’s laughing, and Casey is pushing him away saying, “Yeah, yeah, oh ye of little faith.” Then he picks her up and spins her once, and I want to run to her, too. I’m overwhelmed with that same feeling. Of relief. Of happiness. Of wanting to go to her.

  But I stay in the doorway to the bathroom, watching them instead.

  Then Casey starts laughing, and even Dominic Ellis is smiling. Casey spots me over Cameron’s shoulder, her eyes twinkling, her face smiling as her chin rests on Cameron’s shoulder. She is contagious. I am laughing with her. With them. “We made it,” Casey says.

  “Of course we made it,” Cameron says.

  “Shh,” Dominic says, but he is smiling, too. And his steps
are the loudest of us all. His gaze shifts to me, but his smile never falters—crooked and personal. In the dark, with only the light from the bathroom, he nods at me once, coming closer. I force my spine straighter, taller. I force my smile to remain, to reach my eyes.

  I force myself to act as if I don’t understand that he is smiling at me like a man who has already won.

  Chapter 7

  After the rest of them take turns in the shower, we shut off all the lights again and head down to the basement. There’s only a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and there’s a small television in the corner, which Dominic turns on but keeps the volume so low he has to lean forward to hear it. There are mattresses along the floor and a stash of food, and I don’t wait for anyone to offer it to me. I rip open a granola bar and devour it in two bites, downing an entire bottle of water afterward. I focus on the door at the top of the stairs. It’s closed, but I didn’t notice anyone lock it. Still, I don’t know where to go. What to do. I can’t think of a single person who would take me in. Who would keep me hidden.

  “Let me see your rib,” Casey says. “We need to disinfect and stitch it up.”

  I shake my head, swallowing the last of the water. “Cameron did it.”

  She raises her eyebrows, and one side of her mouth lifts along with it. “Did he now?”

  “I have many talents,” he says from across the room.

  She puts one hand on her hip and says, “I bet outrunning three guards and outswimming a motorized boat aren’t on your list of talents.”

  Cameron is enraptured as she tells us the story of how she raced across the island, through the smoke, and dove off the cliff. She says her hands brushed the air tank on her way down. “It was just … perfect,” she says, as if the whole world was conspiring to enable her escape. She must’ve looked like a girl who died under the surface, never coming back up. By the time they realized the tracker was still moving, she was probably already halfway to the cage.

  There were too many boats, she says, after she put the tracker on the sub, and she couldn’t get to the next tank in time. She ran out of air. And so she stayed near the surface, with her nose peeking above the water with every dip of the wave—breathing, when she could, right in front of everyone. “I was right there,” she says, wide-eyed. She laughs, almost out of breath, as if she can’t believe her own luck. She says she didn’t dare move until dark. She hit the rendezvous point at the steel netting after we’d already left. She had her own GPS. And she swam through that dark ocean by herself, crawled through the pipe by herself, found her way to freedom by herself.

  Seeing her now, standing before me, the others watching her with awe, I wish I was more like her. More competent, more capable.

  “So,” she says. “I’m beat.” And she flops back against a mattress, smiling at the ceiling.

  “Wait,” Dominic says, turning up the television a notch. We’re on the screen. Casey and I. I look wild, feral, as my eyes smile before the explosion. They zoom in on Casey’s face after, because everyone already knows me. “According to her file, Elizabeth Lorenzo, age nineteen, joined the guard unit about six months ago,” the woman’s voice says, but the picture stays zoomed in on Casey’s face.

  She pushes herself up on her elbows. Elizabeth, she mouths to Cameron, like it’s funny.

  “But we have reason to believe that this information is false.”

  Her mouth twitches as a number appears at the bottom of the screen.

  “If you have any information about the identity of this woman, please call the number below.”

  “Well,” Cameron says, arms crossed over his chest. “There goes your identity.”

  Casey turns to Cameron and says, “I’m Nobody, who are you? Are you Nobody, too?” She laughs at her own joke, but he looks away.

  She laughs louder, and pushes him in the shoulder, but he still doesn’t say anything.

  “Then there’s a pair of us, don’t tell,” I say, completing the poem by memory. Casey turns to me and looks surprised, as if maybe she thought I had something better to do over the last seventeen years rather than to read and read and read some more.

  Casey tilts her head to the side and smiles at Dominic Ellis. “I like this Alina Chase girl, Dom. Can I keep her?”

  Dom turns the television off, turns the light off. He locks the door at the top of the stairs and pockets the key. “Sleep,” he says. “We leave early.”

  I lie on the mattress, but I cannot sleep. I eventually hear Dom’s breath go slow and steady, and then I see Casey stand up and tiptoe over to Cameron’s mattress. I see them lying side by side, and I hear faint whispering, and I want to shut them out. In this basement, with three other people, freer than I’ve ever been, I have never felt so alone. I put the pillow over my head, and I hear nothing but my own breathing.

  And then I listen for my mother, who I believe is alive somewhere out there. I wonder if she’s seen the news. If she’s somewhere nearby. If she’s in the country still, if she knows that I am out. I am out.

  Duérmete, mi niña, duérmete, mi amor, duérmete, y nos vemos en la tierra de sueños …

  There’s light from across the room. I wake up completely disoriented. Where are the walls, keeping me in, keeping me safe? Where is the window, with the perfect angle past the tree to the sky? My bed with a space carved out for me, my mother’s picture seven paces away, the world with me at its axis?

  I feel the hard ground as I shift on the thin mattress, and the walls are gray and cold. There is no window. I feel as if I do not exist.

  I see Casey, hunched in a ball in front of the silent television. Her face is on the screen. They show it from every angle. They show the explosion, the smoke, people scrambling to their feet, running at an angle across the screen—the camera on the ground somewhere.

  Casey is rocking slowly, back and forth in front of the television. I walk silently across the floor—I am good at moving silently—and I see a tear track down the side of her face. I don’t know whether to say something or pretend I don’t notice, but before I can decide, she seems to catch sight of my reflection on the screen.

  She jumps to standing, then puts a hand on her heart before wiping away the tears with the back of her hand. “You scared me to death,” she whispers, then shakes her head to herself and shrugs at me with one shoulder. “Long day, you know?” she says as explanation.

  I point to the television. “Do they know anything? Did they follow us?” I whisper.

  She puts her finger to her lips. Comes closer. Her fingers brush my arm as she goes to hold my shoulder, and I jump. She narrows her eyes and leans closer, as I lean back. “What have they done to you, Alina Chase?”

  But I don’t understand what she means.

  She steps back, moves her hand away from me, and whispers, “They found the tracker, but that’s it. Haven’t mentioned a thing about Cameron.” I catch a faint smile, and then it’s gone. “He came in with the media. His name—well, the name he was going by—was on the list, and he joined them on the other side of the bridge. But he doesn’t belong to any of them. The guards probably think he’s media, and the media think he’s a guard. Nobody misses him yet. They’re backtracking now. Looking for what really happened. But it’s still dark. In the daylight, they’ll probably find the discarded air tanks.” She looks at her watch, the same one that Dominic and Cameron have. “We’ll be gone by then.”

  As if on cue, there’s some sort of vibration coming from Dominic’s mattress. He jerks up, presses his finger to his watch, and quickly scans the room. Casey’s body goes rigid beside me, and I feel mine do the same in response. He’s on his feet as soon as he sees us. “What are you doing?” he asks, but he’s looking at Casey, not me.

  She feigns indifference. Slouches. Puts a hand on her hip. “She has to go to the bathroom,” she says, like it’s obvious.

  “And you were going to take her?” he asks incredulously. Dominic looms over us both—I have to tilt my head up just to watch his fa
ce. By now, Cameron is awake as well, and also on his feet.

  “Does it look like I’m taking her?” Casey says. “I told her we needed to wait, especially since you have the key, so I put the television on, and here we are. Waiting. With the television on. God, paranoid much?” she asks, and then she turns around, and I turn around with her, and I see she’s trying to compose herself. I see that she’s terrified.

  “All right, Ms. Chase,” Dominic says, and I feel him coming closer. My body tenses like Casey’s did before. “Let’s go.”

  Casey narrows her eyes at him and follows us both.

  “Can I help you?” he asks Casey over his shoulder.

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to leave her alone,” she says.

  “I don’t intend to,” he says. I want to tell her that I don’t care, that if he’s trying to intimidate me by following me into the bathroom, it won’t work. But I do care. I care because it’s him. Lack of privacy is fine when it’s impersonal and meaningless. But I cannot stand the thought of him watching me now. My stomach twists at the thought.

  “I have to go anyway,” she says, brushing by him, not giving him a chance to argue.

  I see why Cameron loves her, I do.

  We’re all packed up before sunrise. The mattresses are stacked in a corner, the food is in a bag, and there’s nothing to show that we’ve been here. Of course, that’s not true. I picture stray hairs with my DNA, and my fingerprints on the sink faucet. If someone knows where to look, they will see my path. They will find me.

  “What is this place?” I ask, as we pass by the furniture with the white sheets spread atop, the layer of dust across the mantel.

  “A friend’s house,” Dom says. “They’re gone, though.”

  There are no pictures and no books. Nothing on the walls, nothing on display. “Second home,” he explains, as he sees me taking it all in. I can’t imagine why one wouldn’t be enough.