The Evolution of Mara Dyer (36 page)

“I didn’t do this,” I pleaded, holding up my wrists. Joan was a blur of motion next to my bed. She took my arms gently but I flinched. Her hold tightened. “Don’t
touch
me.”

My mother recoiled. Covered her mouth with her hand.

“You’re not
listening
to me!” White noise pulsed in my ears. I hunched forward.

“We are listening. We are listening, honey.”

The room began to fade. “Just let me explain,” I said, but the words were slurred. I tried to look at my mother but I couldn’t focus, couldn’t meet her eyes.

“Take a deep breath, that’s a good girl.” Someone rubbed my shoulders.

My mother was leaving the room. Joan held my head. “Breathe, breathe.”

They wouldn’t listen to me. Only one person would.

“Noah,” I whispered into the thunder.

And then a shadow darkened the window in the hospital room door. I looked up before the black tide rolled in, praying silently that it would be him.

It wasn’t. It was Abel Lukumi, and he was staring directly at me.

55

T
HE NEXT TIME
I
AWOKE, THE TUBES WERE
disconnected from my skin. I was still in the hospital—in a different room, though. And I was unrestrained.

A day had passed, I learned. Doctors and nurses and psychologists swept in and out of the room in a blur of tests and questions. I went through the motions, answering them the best I could without looking in their faces and screaming about Jude. About the truth. About Lukumi.

How did he find me?

Why?

I couldn’t let myself think about it because one question
led to more and I was drowning in them and I couldn’t panic because I wouldn’t be allowed to see Noah if I did. The drugs and the tubes made me lose it, always, but without them now I could compose my face into an expressionless mask to hide the seething beneath. Good behavior would buy me time, I had to remember. With my father’s help, I was even able to talk with a detective about the cop who was found dead on the dock right by me. He had a stroke, it turned out. Not my fault.

Even if it had been, I wasn’t sure I would have cared. Not then. The only thing I wanted was Noah. To feel his hands on my face, his body wrapped around mine, to hear his voice in my ear, to listen to him say he believed me.

But another day passed, and he still didn’t show up. Joseph didn’t come, either. He wasn’t allowed, Daniel told me when he finally visited. He sat hunched over a can of soda, flipping the tab back and forth.

“What about Noah?” I asked quietly.

Daniel shook his head.

“I need to talk to him.” I tried not to sound desperate.

“You’re on another hold,” Daniel said, his voice weak. “They’re allowing immediate family only. Noah came straight here from the airport when he found out you were admitted and didn’t leave until a few hours ago.”

So he was here and gone. I deflated.

“You scared the hell out of us, Mara.”

I closed my eyes, trying not to sound as infuriated as I was. This was Jude’s fault, but they were the ones who had to pay. “I know,” I said evenly. “I’m sorry.” The apology tasted foul, and I felt the urge to spit.

“I just keep—What if the police found you an hour later?” Daniel rubbed his forehead. “I keep thinking about it.” His voice shook, and he finally broke off the tab on the soda can. He dropped it inside and it landed with a
clink
.

His words made me wonder. “Who called them?” I asked. “Who called the police?”

“The caller never left a name.”

There’s this look people give you when they think you’re insane. On the ferry to the Horizons Residential Treatment Center on No Name Island the following morning, I got it.

The wind snapped at my skin and tumbled my hair in front of my face. I smoothed it back with both hands, exposing the twin bandages on my wrists. That’s when the captain, who had been chatting with my father about the ecology of the Keys, realized he was taking us to the glorified mental hospital, not the resort that shared the island. A slow wariness crept into his expression, mingling with fear and pity. It was a look I was going to have to get used to; the doctors told me that my wrists would scar.

“We don’t have too far to go,” the captain said. He pointed at some indistinguishable clump of land in the open ocean,
and I felt obscenely small. “No Name Island right there, to the east. See it?”

I did. It looked . . . desolate. I recalled Stella’s words.

Lakewood is . . . intense. It’s in the middle of nowhere, like Horizons—practically all RTCs are.

“Do you like astronomy?” the captain asked me.

I hadn’t really thought about it.

“Look up at night, at the stars. The island is off the power grid, though the electric company is lobbying hard to change that. Most of the No Name residents don’t want it, though.”

I couldn’t imagine not wanting electricity. I couldn’t imagine not
having
it. I said as much. He just shrugged.

I must have looked panicked, because my mother reached over and smoothed her hand over my back. “Horizons is powered by solar energy and generators. There’s plenty of electricity, don’t worry.”

As we approached the island, a small dock appeared before us, with just a few boat slips and a sign:

LAST FERRY DEPARTS SIX PM, NO DEPARTURES IN INCLEMENT WEATHER

The captain looked up at the iron sky and squinted. “Might be changing things up today,” he said. “Those clouds aren’t friendly.”

“That’s what the cabin’s for,” my mother said to him, nodding in the direction of the covered part of the boat. She didn’t
like being told she’d have to leave me before she was ready. She looked at me, and I could tell how much it hurt her to leave me at all.

The captain shook his head. “It’s not the rain, it’s the waves. They get choppy in the storms. Best be getting on, otherwise you’ll be spending the night.”

“Thank you,” my father said to the captain. “We’ll be back soon.” We disembarked, my parents quietly toting the luggage I didn’t even get to pack myself as we left the ferry.

I didn’t get to see Noah before we left, either. It would be twelve weeks before I saw him again.

The thought turned my stomach. I pushed it away.

It was then that I noticed a golf cart idling near the dock. The Horizons admissions counselor, Sam Robins, nodded condescendingly at me. “Well, Mara, I wish I were seeing you again under different circumstances.”

Under no circumstances.

“Come on,” he said to my parents. “Hop in.”

We did. The golf cart whizzed around a paved path surrounded by tall reeds and grass. We stopped in front of a cluster of whitewashed buildings with bright orange Spanish roof tiles. There was lovely, wild landscaping in the courtyard, evoking my mom’s issues of
Cottage Living
. Purple hibiscus and white lilies edged a small pond filled with goldfish that drifted lazily near the surface. There were neat hedgerows lined with some kind of pink wildflowers and yellow daisies
everywhere. It felt inappropriately cheerful and I hated it.

The four of us walked into the pristine building—the main one, I guessed, since it was in the front. The walls were white stucco and the floor was white tile. Pedestals with a statue or figurine on top dotted the occasional corner, and terra cotta pots filled with manicured topiaries flanked the doorways. But other than that, the space and decor echoed Horizon’s outpatient counterpart almost exactly.

“Hermencia will check your suitcases and your clothes, Mara. And lucky you, it’s the retreat weekend, so all of your friends are here.”

The retreat. I ended up on it after all.

At least Jamie would be here to launch me into my mandatory sentence before he got to go home. That was something.

My parents went off to sign paperwork and I was ushered into a room by a woman who wore a neutral expression beneath a thick, short mop of dark hair.

The woman nodded curtly. “I need to check for anything dangerous.”

“Okay.”

“Are you wearing any jewelry?”

I shook my head.

“I need you to take off your clothes.”

I blinked stupidly.

“Okay?” she asked me.

I just stood there.

“I need you to take off your clothes,” she repeated.

My chin trembled. “Okay.”

She stared at me, waiting. I unzipped my hoodie and shrugged it off of my shoulders. I handed it to her. She put her arms through it and placed it on a table. I looked down at the floor and lifted my tank over my head. It landed softly on the tile.

I stood there, breathing hard in just my bra and my jeans. My spine was bent and my arms had unconsciously wandered over my chest.

“Your pants, too,” the woman said.

I nodded but didn’t move for one minute. Two.

“Do you need help?” she asked.

“What?”

“Do you need me to help you?”

I shook my head. I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes and inhaled. Just clothes. They were just clothes.

I unzipped my jeans and they fell around my ankles. I stood still, exposed to the air as the room began to slowly spin. She inspected my clothes with her hands and my body with her eyes and asked if I had any piercings she couldn’t see. I didn’t. Finally, she placed my clothes back into my hands. I clutched them against me and then almost tripped as I rushed to put them back on.

When we were done, my parents had signed the paperwork and then I had to sign
more
paperwork, acknowledging
the rules and regulations that hemmed me into my new life. Three months with no outside contact. Phone calls to family were allowed, but only after thirty days. I signed, and felt like I was bleeding on the page.

Then it was time to say good-bye. My mother squeezed me so tightly. “It’s temporary,” she said, trying to reassure me. Or reassure herself.

“I know,” I whispered as she pulled me even closer. I wanted to hold on to her and push her away.

She smoothed my hair down my back. “I love you.”

My throat burned with the tears I wanted to cry but wouldn’t. I knew she loved me. She just didn’t believe me. I understood why, but it hurt like hell just the same.

56

A
FTER MY PARENTS LEFT,
I
WAS GIVEN A TOUR
of the compound; four buildings that connected with a Zen garden in the center. I wandered through the rooms without paying much attention; the layout didn’t matter, and I didn’t really care. I was here. Noah and my family were out there.
Jude
was out there. He could do whatever he wanted.

I prayed he already had.

Because my family was at his mercy. I had no idea what happened to John; how Jude was able to take me without him knowing. But I had to believe that somehow, Noah would make sure my family was safe. The alternative—

I couldn’t think it.

I was scheduled for intensive therapy immediately, and answered all of the new counselor’s questions by rote. Between my cognitive behavioral therapy sessions and a meeting with the Horizons nutritionist, I thumbed through the small self-help library in the common room while the rest of the Horizons “students”—the permanents, with sentences of three months or longer, like me—and the temporaries, like Jamie, Stella, and Phoebe, unfortunately—went about their indoor team-building activities or whatever. I was excused from most of them, thanks to my “suicide attempt.” Sweat and stitches don’t mix. Lucky me.

Barney, one of the residential staff counselors, watched me from a short distance away. He was big, like most of the male staff—easier to restrain us, perhaps?—but seemed friendly when he tried to engage me in conversation. He wasn’t condescending, like Robins, or inappropriately enthusiastic like Brooke. He was nice; I just didn’t want to talk.

I idly turned the pages of a bizarre book entitled
What’s Normal?
when my compatriots filtered in. They had come from some sort of game, it looked like, because they were split into three groups wearing differently colored T-shirts: white, black, and red. Megan was in red. Her pale cheeks were flushed, and wisps of blond hair curled up around her face, creating a messy halo. She begged for the bathroom and was sent with a buddy. Adam entered next and he was also wearing red. His bulging
forearms were crossed over his puffed-out chest, looking like he’d just lost whatever game it was, and sorely.

Then Jamie waltzed in, dressed in black. He saw me and made a beeline.

“This is your fault.”

I closed the book. “Hi, Jamie. Nice to see you too.”

He shot me a glare. “It’s not nice to see you, actually, considering why you’re here.”

“Thanks for not sugarcoating anything. I’ve been really sick of everyone treating me with kid gloves.”

“The sarcasm, it burns!”

I rolled my eyes.

Jamie shrugged and said, “Look.” He leaned forward. “I refuse to acknowledge your suicide attempt because it screws with all of my preconceived notions about you, okay? Though I
am
happy to see that you still have your sense of humor, at least.”