Cameron leaves through my window. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not difficult, once you get the hang of the tree. I’ve done it myself before. But I am surprised that there’s nobody there to see him do it. The guards stationed outside always make sure that I know they see me, and I pretend not to notice. Not that there’s anywhere for me to go, but I like to see how far I can push them. What I can get away with, what they report back on later, and what they approach me about right then.
So I expect them to be there watching, but they’re not. The press must be waiting out front already. The guards must be restationed. It must be almost time.
The press come every year, because the public likes to see that I’m treated well. Kept safe. Proof that this is not a punishment but a humanitarian effort. My parents cannot care for me, so the state must watch over me. This is their mistake, after all—that everyone knows who I am—and now they are responsible. The pictures from when I was younger, eating my cake and laughing, hugging a stranger, kept the public content. Except now that I’m older, I no longer smile and laugh and hug strangers. I have seen the headlines. Now I make them nervous.
It’s not my fault that I am what I am, and so, like the mentally ill, they like to see that I am both contained and cared for. Like if you cross your eyes and look through the blurry filter, maybe I am even free. And so the guards will look like people who keep me company today. They will watch the press very closely. They will watch me, probably following my blip on the computer screen from somewhere in the basement. They will not watch my window, or see the guy jumping from it, or the trees he disappears into.
I consider doing it myself. I can see straight to the section of woods. I could hide there for a bit, now that the tracker is out. Create some chaos as the media sets up their cameras. Make a scene. Make that speech I’ve been saving since last year. Wait for people to rise up in support, to lobby for my cause, to fight for me. But I’m not June. I’m not good at the same things that she was, despite what science claims about the elements fully bound to a soul: left-or right-handedness; the results of standardized personality tests; areas of extreme giftedness.
Whatever. All the charisma in the world couldn’t save her. She couldn’t persuade her way out of death. There was no equation to be solved that would extend her life, no pattern she could find that would keep everyone from turning on her.
And my father has tried. He had appealed to the masses from behind the bars of his cell. And when he was released five years ago, he came a step too close to me—a violation of his parole—and ended up back in jail.
There’s a plan. There’s a plan, there’s a plan, and I’ll stick to it. READY. YES.
There’s a knock on the door just as Cameron disappears into the distance. He runs like he’s been training for it, like someone taught him how to move his arms and the perfect length of a stride. He doesn’t look back.
I’ve been training, too. But nobody teaches me how to run faster. All I can do is imagine someone after me, someone who trains every moment I’m thinking of taking a rest. I always outrun them. My muscles twitch with adrenaline just thinking of it.
“Just a sec,” I say as I move the dresser away from the door.
The girl—Casey—is there. She looks at my dress, at the spot where my third rib sits underneath, and she says, “All set?”
“Yes,” I say, even though it’s an effort not to hunch over, to hold my hand against my rib cage.
She touches my hand, and I flinch. Then I feel her fingers spreading, and something cold and hard that she presses into my palm. “Under your desk,” she whispers. “And I need the tracker.”
She shifts her weight from foot to foot and casts a quick glance over her shoulder. I want to tell her to calm down, to not draw attention to herself, but I realize I’m doing the same thing. My fingers tremble as I place the small cylinder under my desk. I wonder how she got this inside. It looks like a candle, all waxy on the outside, but without the top. And then I realize: the cake. No wonder she was nervous when she brought it in.
I guess this is what they meant by DISTRACT.
I told them no casualties, and at this point I have to trust that this is just that—a distraction. That it won’t destroy everything. Just this. My computer. My journal. My life.
Everything I’ve been for seventeen years will be gone. Everything I’ve known for seventeen years …
I open the bottom drawer and grab the picture buried near the bottom. The newspaper clipping with my mother’s photo that I printed off years ago, and I fold it up and shove it into the sleeve of my dress.
I grab my journal from the desk.
Casey watches me from the doorway. She frowns and says, “You can’t take that with you.”
I nod. Of course I understand. It’s too bulky, too noticeable, and I’ll be in the water at some point anyway. But my nails dig into the softened spine. I know it’s just words, but they are my words. I know the people here can and probably do read it, but I don’t even care. It’s the words of Alina Chase, not June Calahan, and in a way, it’s the only tangible evidence of my existence. It’s proof that I am something other than the soul of June Calahan. Her soul may be mine, but my mind is my own.
I clear my throat and dart to the bathroom, tossing the journal behind the toilet, hoping it survives. I want it to exist. Even if I never see it again, whether it’s peeled back and exposed for everyone to see, or whether it’s kept locked up in some closet of evidence, I want to know it’s somewhere.
I retrieve the tracker from the bathroom, balling it up in my fist, preparing to hand it to her the same way she passed me the candle.
Casey frowns as our hands connect. “Your hair is wet,” she says.
“I took a shower.” Not a lie.
“Turn around,” she says. She pulls an elastic band from her wrist and holds it in her teeth. I do as I’m told. I feel her hands in my hair, dividing it up, weaving it together. She spins me around and smooths back the sides of my hair. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I leave my room for presumably the very last time.
A braid runs down my back, and my dark hair looks just that—dark. Slick, like it was styled that way. And with the dress, I look like I cared that there were cameras coming. That my face would be splashed on every network today. And in the coming days.
Jen or Kate or whoever stands at the end of the hall. “You look lovely, Alina,” she says, eyes flat and full of dispassion. “Leigh will take you out to see them now.”
I look in the hall, wondering who this Leigh is, and then I realize: she meant Casey. Cameron gave me her real name, and I’m wearing her elastic, and she did my hair. I hear both of us breathing over my pounding heartbeat. I try to slow it, to be calm, act normal, but nothing is working.
I feel my mother’s picture crumpled against my shoulder, and I concentrate on that. Not on the fact that I am following her, the girl in the frayed pants—a person with a real name—and I am walking away from my room for the very last time, down the hall for the very last time, out the door for the very last time.
I hear the shutter of camera lenses as I step outside. I shield my eyes for a moment—from the sun on the horizon in the distance, from the flashes at the edge of the path. Casey walks down the steps, and I follow.
“Alina,” a reporter shouts. “Do you have anything to say?”