I am kept in a hotel room, somewhere near my island—where the original event took place. They are careful not to call my escape a crime, because that implies I had been held captive. But still, I am kept. It is not a prison, or a containment. Not exactly. But it is a room with a guard just outside—it’s for my own protection, I am assured.
I spent one day inside a cell while they sorted everything out, but they could not hold me any longer without charges. Not even for my own protection. Not with the public watching so closely. Not with the endless debating on television, which I have now come to love. It may save me this time, public opinion. Which is all law really is, anyway.
We make our laws, and then we must suffer for them.
I’ve been in this place for six days now, and I’m growing anxious.
Casey, Cameron, and I were kept in different rooms, paid for by public donations to our cause. Yet again, I have become a cause.
Cameron spent the first two days in the hospital, and he was here for only one night before he and Casey left for their sister’s memorial. I felt better when Casey was in the same building, but she and Cameron have been gone for four days now.
Even when they were here, we had very little contact.
We were watched at all times. We were never left alone together. I know we were all walking a line, each afraid to cross it.
Casey hadn’t spoken about her sister other than that one morning over breakfast, before Cameron returned. “I just don’t feel like she’s gone,” she said.
But the thing is, she’s not. Just like June isn’t. Not entirely. I hope that thought gives her comfort.
Ivory and Mason are under investigation—kept under house arrest—but Dominic is gone. Disappeared through the tunnels during the chaos.
I am the only one here, once again.
The news reported that Casey has struck some kind of deal in the days after the memorial. And, they say, if she is free, then the logic goes that Cameron should also be free. And then maybe I will be free. But in the meantime, I am not eighteen yet, and there are legal loopholes to examine and stories to dissect and truths to create.
My lawyer said that part of Casey’s deal will be her cooperation with the federal division of cyber crimes—I guess technically they have recruited her. Part of me thinks this will make her happy, that she will love it, but I haven’t had a chance to ask her. I don’t know if I will. I don’t know whether she will come back.
Cameron and Casey will not need the public’s funds any longer. They don’t have to come back here, once they are set free. He and Casey will inherit the money that Ava had left to herself in her previous life. Once they are free, they will truly be free.
I tried to catch Cameron in the hotel lobby as he left for the memorial. But I barely got a chance to say anything other than sorry as he and Casey were ushered past me, through the open glass doors and into the back of a black SUV, disappearing down the road.
And so I am in a room, alone, with a television and a laptop and a window blocked by trees—no view in, but no view out, either. With a guard outside and the media out front and a lawyer who sits in the lounge all day and doesn’t let anyone question me anymore.
The news is on again—this time, it’s a talk-show-style debate about Ivory Street and the falsified study. They cannot disprove the study for certain without going back into the database; but they also cannot prove it. They show June’s math on the screens, pictures captured from the video I took in the van and enlarged for all to see. Our fates will be decided by the public. Not science. Not law. I know that.
We cannot be reduced to numbers. A human being isn’t quantifiable.
Even if we could find out for sure—whether one life affects the next, whether our nature is predetermined—people keep saying it’s better not to know. There’s too much at stake. Too many consequences. We want to believe in free will here. We want to believe in the power of redemption here. That we are always capable, for this life or the last, of making each life worth something.
What I would give for that chance—what I have given for that.
Nobody’s sure what to do about Dominic. Where he fits in the balance of good and evil, right and wrong. If Cameron, Casey, and I are to be free, then shouldn’t he be as well? I think about telling the investigators about the gun, and the way he pointed it at Casey, the way the bullet grazed my skin. That’s a crime with a standard punishment. An accepted consequence.
But part of me does believe in some sort of karmic justice, and my soul cost him his life once before. I do not want to be responsible for the containment of his soul anymore.
I have given them the location of the hideaway, so sure he would be there. And the cabin, too, but it had been destroyed. It doesn’t seem fair to me that he should be out there when I am still being held. But then I think of June, driven underground, unable to show her face. Out, but not free. And then I think that maybe it’s fitting.
There are different types of prison, after all.
Besides, Dominic has too many cards to play. He’s too smart. He’ll strike a deal if he gets a taste of containment—maybe end up like Casey. I don’t want to be anywhere nearby when he crawls out of the woodwork. I need to shake myself free of his obsession as well. I have this fear that he is in a basement somewhere, watching us. Hacking into the security feed of the hotel, watching my keystrokes on the computer. Sometimes I write him notes, typing and deleting them in a blank document, just in case he is watching.
Go live, I tell him. Live this life.
Sometimes I type I’m sorry.
I don’t know for sure whether he’s alive or dead, but he’s a ghost to me either way.
I’m lying on my stomach with the laptop propped up between myself and the television. I scroll through a new article I find and stop at the bottom, at the comments section. It’s become an obsession, reading the comments on the articles and the blog posts. I probably shouldn’t, but I cannot stop. The opinions vary, but the majority are in support of my freedom. Many offer their homes, their names, their help. I’ve read thousands. And still I cannot stop.
Because the first article I read, three pages down in the comments, I found this, sent from an anonymous account:
I wonder what you dream of, ni?a. I hope you find it.
And I remembered that commenter from the article we read in the school computer lab.
Where she might go, one can only dream.
So I began an endless search, every place our video feed appeared. Every news site, every blog, every online journal. I read every comment, searching and searching for more.
I’ve found 107 comments. Every one from an anonymous source. Every one the same:
I wonder what you dream of, ni?a. I hope you find it.
There aren’t any comments left on this one yet. So I close the article and bring up that video feed of my mother, the only time she spoke to the press. I watch it again, even though I know it by heart. But I like to see the shape of my eyes mirrored back at me as she speaks. In truth, there’s a lot I get from her. Not everything comes from June, from my soul. We are more than that—a combination of genetics and the soul and the experience of our lives. And something more, I am sure.
“I used to sing her a lullaby,” she says on the video. “Same as my mother used to sing to me. She can find me there, in her dreams.” I see myself reflected in her. Her eyes. Her resistance. Her refusal to barter with lives. And her ability to bide her time, to trust that I might find her.
Go to sleep, and we will see each other in the land of dreams. Tierra de Sue?os.
She can find me there, she told the media—she was telling me.
Find me there.
I am not supposed to leave. It’s for my own protection, I am told. But there’s a gaping void the size of a lifetime that can fit between “not allowed to” and “not supposed to.” I have read the comments. I have listened to the news. I believe they will let me go. I believe that if I walk out that front door and turn down the street and wave good-bye, nobody will stop me.
I am not okay with waiting for someone else to decide my fate.