Soulprint Read Online Free PDF Page B

traded in most of my curves for muscle, most of the give of my body for a tense resistance, but people don’t notice under the nondescript clothes. The doctor comes every year after my birthday. She has not seen what I have become yet.
    Everyone has seen me run—my soul is understandably restless—but I’ve hidden the fact that I do nothing but push-ups and sit-ups and lunges in my room, deep into the night, and I hide the results even more. I thought it would help me escape, but it’s weighing me down. I haven’t done a thing on my own.
    His arm is around my chest again, and I’m on my back, and he’s swimming on his front, cursing repeatedly under his breath. He pauses and pushes me against the rocks. I reach around and dig my fingers into the crevices, supporting myself for once.
    A person’s head, covered in black material, rises up beside us. I assume this must be Dom. His hand rests on my shoulder. His lips smile around the breathing apparatus in his mouth. But he stops abruptly when he sees Cameron beside me.
    â€œShe can’t swim,” Cameron says through clenched teeth.
    Dom has a face mask over his eyes and, with that thing inside his mouth, I can’t tell the level of his annoyance or disappointment—not like I can see on Cameron.
    Like it’s my fault.
    â€œExcuse me for not spending the last seventeen yearsanywhere near a goddamn swimming pool!” I slap at the water with one hand, the words pouring out before I have a chance to weigh them, like I usually would, and I momentarily lose my grip on the side. I dig my hand back into the slick rock. “I don’t even have a bathtub.”
    â€œI have to go back for Casey,” Cameron says, but looking at the slick rock, at the concave cliffs, I know it’s impossible. He knows it, too. I think he just needs someone else to tell him he can’t.
    So I do. “You can’t,” I say, as my fingers tremble to keep me above water. No one can. It’s a
prison
, which nobody seems to understand but me. He knows it’s true, but he focuses all his anger at me.
    Dom looks at the sky, points to his watch. I hear his breath, slow and loud, through the device. He hands Cameron a face mask, a set of flippers, and an air tank with a hose attached. “She’ll be fine,” Cameron says, but he’s saying it to himself, I’m sure.
    Dom disappears under the surface, but not before holding out a long piece of rope. I feel him under the water, like a shark brushing against my skin. His hand grips on to my bare ankle. And then the rope tightens, which is more than anyone here has ever done to me. They don’t need to. When I used to act up, to fight, to push back, all it would take was a sedative shot. And when I trained myself to bury it—to hide it—instead, they mostly stopped needing the shots as well.
    In the water, where I can’t swim, with a rope held by a stranger, I fear what I have traded everything for.
    Dom gives a thumbs-up, and Cameron comes very close.
    He shows me the breathing device, and he straps the tank onto my back. “Five breaths. Slow and steady. Then pass it back.” He hands it to me, and I place it between my lips, nodding at him.
    â€œAnd whatever you do, don’t let go.”
    I remove the mouthpiece for a second and say, “There’s always the rope.” It may be to hold me, but it will also keep us from getting lost, being left behind.
    But he turns away and whispers, “For you.” And I realize the power I have, as I wrap my arms around his neck, and my legs around his waist, preparing to dip under the water. If I let go of him, he could be stranded in the middle of the ocean with nothing.
    â€œDo not let go,” he says again, trying to be stern. But he is asking. As he lowers the mask around his face, I see it in his eyes. He is pleading.
    â€œI won’t,” I say. I have never held on to something so