Soulprint (23 page)

He grins and taps the brim of my hat again, and I look away, back to the screen. “It's pathetic, I know. I was ten.”

He's silent for a long time, and I've gone back to working by the time he responds. “It's not pathetic,” he says. Cameron pushes his chair back, the legs squeaking against the linoleum. “I'm going back to the gym. Hungry.”

Casey raises her hand as he passes but doesn't make eye contact.

Eventually, I decide to print out the articles and bring them back to the gym, where I can spread them out and analyze them a little better. And eat at the same time.

“Hey,” Casey says, as I'm leaving the room. “Save me dinner.”

“If by dinner you mean cereal, that won't be a problem.”

“By the way,” she says, the door half-closed. “Nice outfit.”

I don't see Cameron anywhere when I get back to the gym, so I pull one of the blue mats onto the floor and spread the articles around, lying on my stomach, propped up on my elbows between them. I should've printed off the other hard drive, the one with the information June kept in the hideaway, with all the numbers, but that would've taken far too long. Besides, sorting all of that … that's the kind of stuff you use a computer for. I'll ask Casey to help with that later. But
this
is the kind of stuff you need your own brain for.

I don't like being in this empty gym, I don't like this feeling of being alone, that anything can happen to me and nobody would know, but this information is like a comfort to me. Like June is here with me, sharing it. Pointing things out. Her ideas, her thoughts, twisting their way into mine.

I read the articles in full. The famous study, reduced to numbers and math. To get the right data—a sample of uninfluenced
human
data—they used markers for other aspects correlated to criminal activity. For instance, they only studied souls that remained the same sex from generation to generation, because most violent crime was committed by men. They didn't want the fact that a man's soul later became a woman's soul to influence the data, since one had a higher chance of violent criminal activity to begin with. They also grouped by souls born from generation to generation with similar socioeconomic backgrounds, living in areas with similar crime statistics. So all that was left was a subset of souls with little
variation from generation to generation, as controlled an experiment as a human soul could be, I suppose.

The resulting evidence was purely empirical, but it's presented with graphs and equations and a concluding statement about the calculated correlation between violent criminal activity and the soul in the samples they studied: 0.8.

Damning.

When I'm done reading several of the other articles in detail, I flip onto my back with my eyes closed and let June's voice tell me what we know: the data subsets, the publishing journal, the grants received, the tagged markers, which must correlate with the starred data on the spreadsheets. Her words fill my head until they start to make sense, coming together as something I can almost grasp on to. Like I can see the connection, but not what it's connecting.

I hear steps, and I know it's Cameron the same way I know things belong to June. I've been studying him without realizing it. I know his walk. His pace. His looks. The mat underneath me shifts with his weight, but I don't know what will happen when it's just the two of us here on the blue mat and I open my eyes. I'm not sure what I'll say. What I'll do. I have not had time to think it all through.

“You up?” he asks, but he asks it so softly, I'm not sure if he expects me to answer, to have heard.

I am thinking of all the different incarnations of Cameron I have been imagining, wondering which one is the closest to the truth. But maybe this is the only one that matters. Right now,
this
is the real one.

I open my eyes, turning my head toward him, but his eyes are drifting over my shirt, down my arms, down my legs, to my toes. And I feel a rush of something—like I am more naked, fully clothed, than when he cut the tracker from my rib. I wiggle my toes, and his gaze drifts back up quickly, and he sees me looking.

He stands abruptly and says, “Casey's probably on her way back by now.” Like that's a legitimate reason for him to stand. To move away.

“It's not a crime to sit here,” I say. “I mean, not that that would stop you …”

He sits back down. “Are you making criminal jokes now? Is that what's happening here?”

I meet his eyes, and I summon every ounce of bravery I possess to the surface. “I don't know what's happening here.”

He nods so subtly I only see it because I am currently hyperfocused on everything Cameron. “About earlier,” he says. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry I made you uncomfortable. I thought you were used to people seeing you. Looking at you. You told me that once, and I just thought …”

“I'm not used to people looking at me
like that
,” I say, pushing myself up on my elbows. It comes out accusing, but I don't mean it to.

He winces, but he doesn't deny it. “I'm sorry,” he says.

God, it's impossible to say what I mean, to even put it into words. I feel like we're having a conversation with the things we don't say instead, and the only thing he's capable of saying is
I'm sorry
.

But I don't want to forgive him for it. It's not something I want him to take back. “I just said I'm not
used
to it. That's all.” It made me feel out of control again. Out of my element. Like I wasn't in charge, didn't have time to weigh everything and think about what to say, what to do.

He plays with the back of my ponytail for a second, as if he's testing something, and I stay perfectly still until he lets it drop.

I don't know whether it's normal for my heart to beat so fast it feels like it's tripping over itself.

I don't know whether it's normal to both want and fear a kiss. For the anticipation to be both crippling and thrilling. He's close enough to do it, but he hasn't moved. Like he's waiting for some sign from me.

I think back to every movie I've seen, every television show, every book I've read. I turn to look at him, I drop my head slightly to the side, I lean, just an inch, toward him. But he doesn't do anything. Doesn't come closer or bring his hand to my face or
anything
. I know my face is red now, which makes me even more embarrassed, which makes me ever redder, I'm sure. I lean back that one inch, and I straighten my head. I look away.

“Can I ask you something?” he asks. But he doesn't wait for me to answer. He puts a hand gently under my chin, guiding me to look at him. “What Dominic said out in the woods—about June and Liam, and how they would die for each other, and how that kind of love lasts beyond just one life. Do you think that's true?”

“No,” I say. “Remember the whole ‘he's a psychopath' thing?”

“Yeah, but what if you'd met him somewhere else. If you weren't locked up. If he wasn't trying to use you for something.” He drops his hand from my face and looks away. “You're drawn to him, aren't you? You were at one point, anyway. And I've seen the way he looks at you sometimes. I think it would be easier for him if he didn't care, but he does. And so do you.”

I shake my head even before he finishes speaking. “Stop. I don't want to have anything to do with him. I won't.”

“But if you knew him in some other setting … if he was a guy in a coffee shop and you were a girl in school …” His words trail off as his eyes drift to the side—to nothing.

At first, I thought he was accusing me. But part of me thinks that maybe he's jealous. That maybe I'm not defending myself here, but reassuring him instead.

“But I'm not,” I say, mirroring Cameron's own words. He wouldn't even check to see if his last life had left him something. All the hypotheticals in the world can't change who we are right now.

“There are things about your personalities that must make you compatible,” he says.

He's right, of course. There's
something
. But it's not enough, on its own. “You're right,” I say. “There must be. But only on paper. Human beings aren't quantifiable,” I say, thinking of those scientific studies. What I wouldn't give for just one life. Just this one.

His eyes meet mine. “You kissed him,” he says. It's a statement, but it's also a question.

“Yes,” I say. I'm incapable of lying to him, apparently. Consequences be damned.

He pauses. “Why?”

“To buy myself some time. To catch him off guard.” I don't pause. The words pour out of me, and I don't know what he'll do with them.

He nods to himself, like yes, that seems like me, and my heart sinks. “Dominic said you don't do things without a reason.”

“Seems like a good idea to have a reason for things.”

“You want me to kiss you?” he asks. Cameron kills me with his honesty. With the way he challenges me to be honest with him, as well.

I squeeze me eyes shut and almost deny it, but stop myself. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“I thought you wanted to,” I say, evading the question.

He half laughs. “Yeah, which is why I'm asking. The thing is, I have a terrible history with girls I like betraying me. So I'm feeling just the slightest bit cautious.” I assume he's talking about this Ella person, but the only thing I notice is the whole “girls I like” part, and that I'm included in this category.

I look away, trying not to smile, then face him again. “I have no idea why I'm doing this.”

“That really doesn't sound anything like you. Do better than that, Alina.” He leans back on his arms, and he watches my face as I answer.

I shrug with one shoulder. And I tell him the thing I was thinking, but didn't say, back in the cafeteria. “Because I think you're incredible. Because I want you to.”

And that's all it takes. He leans forward and pulls my hat off, my ponytail now undone. He puts both hands on each side of my face, and his kiss is soft—softer than I expected. I don't know what to do exactly, as my only experience before this was a fake kiss and I wasn't thinking so much about the kiss as I was about the next step. But now I am lost in this moment, and this one only. He's breathing me in, somehow, but he's going slow, like he's waiting for a sign from me, but I can't move. And I can't get him to move any closer.

I'm resting on my elbows and I have no idea how to move without us both toppling over, without ruining this. So I stay perfectly still, with his hands on my face, and his lips barely pressing on my own. I should probably do something. But I'm frozen, because there are a thousand different possibilities suddenly before me.

Like that moment when we left the underground for the rest of the world, that new and terrifying possibility of something
more
. It's all I wanted, and now it's right here, right in front of me. Suddenly, I have it: somebody who doesn't see me as June—I am free of her. And now I'm just Alina Chase, and I don't know if that's good enough. How frightening that big expanse of freedom can be when you finally get there.

He pulls back, resting his forehead against mine, and it leaves me wanting and wanting and pushing up on my hands
and leaning closer for more. He puts a hand on the back of my head then, and he gives me exactly what I'm asking for, coming closer.

I stop thinking. I know nothing.

Except this: with his hands tangled in my hair, and his weight on top of mine, I have never felt so free.

And then the door opens.

“Oh, ick.”

“Stop.” casey holds a hand out. “Rewind. Undo. Cameron, a word?”

Cameron pulls back in record speed, his hand dropping from my hair, his body shifting to the other side of the mat.

“Find anything?” he asks, acting like nothing has happened, nothing has changed. Like the whole world hasn't shifted in some way.

My body still feels charged—I can't shift back like Cameron has just done. I feel like the room is moving.

Casey stands with her hands on her hips. “This”—she points at Cameron, then me, then him again—“isn't happening.”

“Like I said,” he says, shrugging with one shoulder, “find anything?” I can't tell whether his shrug means
okay sure, nothing will happen
or
hey, that was nothing anyway
or
I'm ignoring you
. There's so much I don't know about him still. The last moment has made me feel like I know both everything and nothing about him. That he's telling me something and yet
showing me how much more there's still to know. The world balancing on a point, and he is at the center.

“Cameron,” she says.

“Casey,” he says.

She gestures to the doors behind her.

He sighs and shrugs again, but he follows her out into the hallway. Great. I flip onto my back again, and I try to switch my mind like Cameron has done. I think of the data, the names, the science, the starred numbers. But they float through my mind with no purpose, deemed unimportant by the current state of events.

I can hear them arguing, because as one voice raises, the other raises higher, until they're almost yelling. “Casey, get a grip!”

“No, you get a grip!”

Ugh.

And then the door flies open, and someone sounds out of breath. I don't dare move. They pace around the room, and finally, when I can't stand it anymore, I ask, “Did you find anything about Ivory Street?”

Casey huffs, and I can't tell whether she's mad at me or him or the entire situation we're stuck in. “As a matter of fact, yes,” she says. “I've found out she's unlisted. But her name was on a paper published two years ago, which is promising.”

“How is that promising?”

“Well I was hoping she's not dead, seeing as this was seventeen years ago … but no worries, she's fifty-five and alive and well.” She pulls out a folded-up sheet of paper. “Here she is. At
some political fund-raiser.” The picture is grainy and black-and-white, and from the distance, I can't make out her features. “And while I don't have a contact for her personally, I
do
have the location for her lab.”