“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.”
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.