Read Online Soulprint by Megan Miranda - Free Book Online Page B

joke.
    I had been researching what I could make with batteries, with the pieces of the electronics I’d taken apart and put back together. If I could make a radio. A phone. Or a bomb.
    How to start a fire.
    And he knew.
    How did it not occur to me that computers were monitored? That just because it was in my room didn’t make it mine? Of course later I found out about search histories and remote access, but I didn’t know as much about computers when he was a guard eight months ago. Just that I had one and it was
full of information
. Lots of information. Information is free to me, I just can’t send it out. Just like in a prison.
    I felt my anger grow, and I buried it under my indifferent expression.
    At first.
    â€œDo you ever get messages from the outside?” he asked.
    June. Like everyone else, he was looking for June.
    I set my jaw, set my resolve. “Yes,” I’d told him, “but you can’t tell.” I gave him a small smile. “And not through the computer.”
    If he was playing me, I was going to play him right back. “How, then?” he’d asked, leaning toward me, the light from the window catching off the blue of his irises. His whole face seemed to glow.
    â€œI don’t know how exactly, but sometimes at night, there are words shining directly onto my wall.” I pointed to the wall opposite the window for emphasis. “It says, ‘In the ocean is the key.’ What do you suppose that means?” The lie slipped out aseffortlessly as it manifested in my head. I walked closer, studying his reaction.
    Dom was mumbling to himself. “I don’t know.” Then he refocused on me, searching my face. “I can help you,” he said, “but I need something from you. Just one thing.” He pulled the needle out of his pocket—the one they use to administer shots—but it had been refashioned in some way, so the syringe was instead a glass tube. “I need a sample.”
    And then the rage clawed its way up from the depths. He knew I was June. They
all
knew I was June. Who the hell did he think he was, coming in here, thinking he could mess with me, thinking he could
use
me? Who the hell did he think
I
was? Some easily manipulated kid who’d let him take everything and leave me here to rot? I walked closer to where he stood leaning against my desk, but he must’ve been confused, because when I got within reach, he put an arm around my waist. He leaned down, and he paused—just for a second—and then he kissed me. And I let him. I kissed him back, as I reached behind his back to my desk, to my clock …
    When I glance back at Cameron, his eyes are on my knuckles, which are turning white from gripping my towel, and the steam filling the room makes him feel closer. Makes
us
feel closer.
    I wonder now if Cameron is pretending. If Casey is pretending.
    Cameron gestures to my clothes on the floor and looks away. After I dress, I tell him, like a warning, “The last time I saw him, he was being dragged from my room, unconscious.”It’s not a lie, but it’s not all of the truth, either. I leave out the kiss, and the fact that I was screaming at him, full of rage and nonsense, as his body shook on the floor. I leave out the lies I told and the part where the entire island went on lockdown. My words, unchecked. My actions, unchecked. They were so careful about blades and points and weapons on the island, but when you need something to use, none of that matters. Everything could be a weapon.
    And I
had
been able to make something from the batteries and simple circuits I found in the room, from the careful wiring.
    I can still feel it, the power of it, in my hand. I can still see the surprise on his face, the way everything about him changed as I held the base of the clock to his back and the current ran through him.
    â€œI had turned my clock into a stun gun,” I say.
    Cameron starts laughing, and