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 ni?a, duérmete, mi amor, duérmete, y nos vemos en la tierra de sue?os …
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 face. 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.