I picture June and that speech she made when she was barely older than I am now, appealing to the people. I am not the danger. I am not the threat. I am the bell, tolling out its warning. I am delivering a message.
She had such poise, such grace. She made people believe in her. She made them believe that a criminal past life should be public information. That the warning she delivered justified the crime she committed to provide it.
Casey guides me down a step. Last year I made it only to the first step. Nobody led me anywhere. But Casey keeps moving. We walk down the rest of the steps, down the brick path, much closer to the press than I’ve ever been before. It’s not that we want to be close to them, it’s that we want to be away from the house. They smile widely, holding microphones out to me.
I see a few guards look at each other—questioning glances that I haven’t seen since they found that guard Ellis in my room. This is not part of Casey’s instructions, I am sure. And I’m supposed to be slow and malleable and content. I am not. I can see it in their eyes—they can see I am not.
They start to move closer. “One,” Casey whispers.
They won’t get here in time.
“Alina,” someone shouts again. “What did you get for your birthday?”
“Two.” I see her hand reach into her pocket.
I glance at Casey. Her face is bare. The cameras see her as much as they see me. This is the last moment I will be complicit in my own imprisonment. This is the last moment she will be anonymous.
What I’m about to gain, she is about to lose. “You’re about to see,” I say.
“Three.”
The explosion is more than just noise—it’s a rush of air and a flash of light and, yes, noise. Everyone drops to the ground instinctively.
Except Casey, who has a grip on my arm, pulling me against instinct, dragging me away.
ESCAPE.
I leave my shoes behind, my feet calloused from months of training, and I run. I can’t breathe. The air is full of dust and dirt, and then suddenly it’s worse—smoke. I glance behind me quickly, but the house is fine. Still standing. The window from my room is missing and there’s a gaping hole in the bricks surrounding it.
People are moving toward us.
And then I can’t see anymore because smoke settles down from above. From the trees. I can’t see at all, but that must be the point. I wonder if Cameron is up in the trees somewhere. Or if he’s running with us right now.
I hear shouting, hear footsteps, feel the ground vibrating beneath my feet.
“Close your eyes,” she says, her hand still on my arm. I don’t know how she can tell where she’s going with her eyes closed, but she does. She counts as she runs. Stopping. Turning. Counting again.
I run with my eyes closed. I didn’t train for this. If they had told me to memorize this island blind, I would have. I would’ve been ready, and not just someone who had to be dragged. I know this island. I know it better than anyone.
Casey slows, and I open my eyes. We’ve broken through the smoke and are deep in the trees—almost to the cliffs. She stops abruptly and rips her shirt over her head. “Switch!” she yells at me. “Hurry!” A wig comes off with her shirt, and a long dark braid weaves down her back. Her body is lean and muscular under her clothes as she tosses them my way. If I catch a glimpse of her from just the corner of my eye, she looks like me.
“Now!”
I tear off my dress, and the picture of my mother drifts away, and with a single gust, it flips over the edge of the cliffs and it’s gone. I pull on her pants. Her shirt. She tugs at my hair, yanking the elastic out, and I understand, shaking out the braid.
She looks out over the edge. “This is where you jump,” she says. I look down, but I shouldn’t have. The waves crash against the rock, and the sea swirls and foams.
This is the edge of my world, and it looks exactly like an edge of the world should look.
I imagine my eyes are huge when I look back at her. “No. Over here.” She points behind her, and I lean over the edge. There’s a small cove. It looks still, as far as oceans go. “Swim to the entrance.” She must be talking about the mouth between the rocks.
I thought I could do it, but there’s no way. It’s suicide. If I jump I’ll be too deep, and how do you swim for the surface? Is it instinct? People drown every day, even people who know how to swim. I can’t do it.
“There’s netting, and—” And I can’t swim. But they have made a mistake beyond that. There’s no way out. It looks just like an island, and the guards look just like people, and the mile-long bridge doesn’t need guns or barricades, because it lifts—it ceases to be a bridge unless a bridge is needed. This is a prison, and I am its captive. The air above is restricted airspace. And below the water, there’s a cage. Steel netting, hooked into the floor, and it rises up out of the water, attached to steel posts. Everyone knows this. Algae and seaweed make it look natural. Beautiful, even. But this is a prison. There’s no way through it. I’d have to climb up over the top, and everyone would see. Then again, I’d have to be able to swim there in the first place.
“Trust me,” she says as she zips up the dress and backs away.
“You’re not coming with me?” I ask.
I cover my face as another round of smoke drops over us. Over the whole island. Cameron darts out of the clearing. “Let’s go,” he says to her, not even looking at me.
“We jump somewhere else,” she says. “With your tracker.”
And then I understand. She will be running through the smoke with another person, dressed like me, carrying my tracker. She is the diversion.
“I can’t,” I say. I grip on to her, like she’d been doing to me.
“You have to,” Cameron says. “You can’t see him, but Dom’s there. He’s outside the cove. Under the surface. He’s waiting for you.”
“Okay?” Casey says, but I shake my head. Not okay. There must be another way. I’ve been training. I am strong, but I’m seized with the fear of water in my lungs. With the fear of never resurfacing, of drowning, of dying, of becoming nothing. I can’t will myself to jump—to trust that I can reach the surface, to trust that someone is waiting for me.
“We’re behind schedule,” Cameron mumbles. He turns me around, facing the water, and I realize what he’s about to do the second before he does it.
“I can’t swim!” I scream, but it’s too late. His hands are already on my back, and his weight is already behind it, and I’m leaning over the edge—my feet kick up dirt, and I feel Cameron’s fingers grasping at my shirt. He’s too late. I’m too far. I feel air, and my feet clamber for nothing. My hands, for nothing.
But then I feel him still, his fingers tightening on the fabric, and then his arm around my waist, but I’m still falling. No. We are falling.
We hit the water, and it’s colder than I imagined it would be. And it slams into my side—or my side slams into it—at the same moment my head collides with Cameron’s. Either way, it feels nothing like freedom.
Chapter 4
The shock of cold wears off, and my head throbs, and my eyes burn, but the cut on my rib burns far more. I feel Cameron pulling me by the waist, his legs moving below, and I keep mine still, against instinct, so I don’t make things worse. We break through the surface, and I suck in air. Except the water crests up at the same moment, and I take in salty water, burning a path to my lungs.
Cameron lets go of me as he turns his face to the top of the cliff, and I start to slip under. I reach up and throw my arms over his shoulders in a panic, taking him down with me.
He pushes me off under the water, then comes up coughing, holding me by my arm. I follow his gaze to the top of the cliff and see Casey leaning over the edge. He waves vigorously for her to go, and she disappears.
“Shit,” he says. “Shit, shit, shit.” Then to me: “Float. Can’t you even do that?”