The Retribution of Mara Dyer (15 page)

It sounded easy enough. But my hand still shook when I lifted it to knock on the door.

My mother answered it. Her eyes went wide when she saw me. “Mara! What are you doing here?”

I don’t know why, but my eyes began to fill the second I saw her. I wanted to throw my arms around her and hear her tell me she loved me. That everything would be okay. But I couldn’t move, and I didn’t say a word.

Jamie did, though. “Everything’s okay,” he said smoothly as my mother ushered the three of us in. I watched her face as he spoke to her, told her the fake story of what had happened to us, why we were there, and why we’d be leaving again soon. My mother looked completely untroubled by all of it. Relaxed, even. She urged Jamie and Stella to sit at the kitchen table while she made us something to eat, and Jamie continued to talk. It all seemed so
normal
, except for the fact that it wasn’t, at all. I knew why we had to do this, but I still felt the urge to take my mother by the shoulders and scream that everything was not okay, that
I
was not okay, and that I would probably never be okay again.

When Joseph and my father walked into the kitchen, Jamie went to work on them, too, repeating the story word for word. He made Horizons sound like camp. He left out the fact that I had killed the counselors.

I braced myself for my suspicious, questioning mother’s reaction, but she didn’t find Jamie’s explanation at all strange. His words cut through any resistance my parents might have had, erasing my future absence from their future memories like it was nothing. More than anything else I’d seen, that unsettled me.

Jamie excused himself barely two minutes later. It was Stella’s turn now.

“So where’s Daniel?” I heard her ask. I realized I wasn’t even looking at my family anymore. I’d been staring at nothing for who knew how long.

“New York,” my father said.

That got my attention.

“He went to visit a few colleges,” my mother added, reaching for sandwich stuff from the refrigerator. “I think he’s deciding between Columbia and Princeton?”

“I thought Columbia and Yale?” my father said.

“When’s he coming back?” I asked, trying not to sound too anxious.

Dad shrugged. “Next week, maybe? Or the week after?”

Mom looked like she was trying to remember. “He said he might go visit Harvard and Brown, too—”

“And Dartmouth, I think,” my father said. “I remember something about Dartmouth.” It wasn’t like my parents to not know where all of their children were. My mother especially. Something wasn’t right. Jamie returned and picked up a sandwich.

Was what he’d told them screwing with other memories? I felt a kick under the table. Jamie was trying, poorly, to indicate with his eyes that we needed to talk alone.

“Be back in a minute,” I said to my parents. “Stella?”

“Still eating,” she said, popping potato chips into her mouth. She’d sat down next to Joseph on the floor and was watching him play a video game. I led Jamie into my room and closed the door behind us. As soon as I did, he spoke.

“So we have a problem,” he said. “I haven’t done this much, but I do know that Daniel’s going to notice that something’s messed up when your parents tell him the bullshit about you, and why they aren’t worried.”

“What do you mean?”

“You think your parents would believe that you’re going on a wilderness retreat, without checking on it, if I weren’t here to make them believe it?”

Point. “Is there anything you can do about it?”

Jamie looked doubtful. “Doubtful. I thought about maybe trying to talk to him over the phone, but I don’t know if my mind thingie works like that? Especially when I’ve never really talked to him before. It could get weird . . . and if he doesn’t
believe me, he might be able to poke holes through what I told the rest of your family too.”

“So we just have to go, then, and hope he’s busy, and that my parents don’t mention anything strange.”

“I think we do.”

“Not ideal,” I said.

“Not ideal.”

Just then my bedroom door opened, with Stella behind it. “We have a problem.”

“We know,” I said. “Daniel’s not here.”

“Right. Daniel’s not here. And neither is the book.”

23

T
ELL ME YOU’RE KIDDING,” JAMIE
said.

“Tell me that was rhetorical?” Stella met my gaze. “I asked Joseph to give me a tour of the house, and he started with his bedroom, naturally, and then moved on to Daniel’s. I looked on his bookshelves, everywhere I could think of. It isn’t there.”

I didn’t quite trust her—she didn’t know Daniel and had never been in his room before, so I went to check myself. They both tagged along after me. I looked everywhere I could think of but in the end could come to only one conclusion.

“Fuck,” I said.

Jamie, looking through one of his drawers, added, “Your
brother does have quite the porn collection, though.”

“Gross,” I said. “Also, false.”

Jamie fake laughed. “Just kidding. I’m a kidder.”

I walked up to him and punched his arm.

“Ow.”

“Just kidding. I’m a kidder.”

“Not the same,” Jamie said, rubbing it.

“Hate to break this up,” Stella said, “but if the book isn’t here, and Daniel isn’t here, my brilliant guess is that he has it with him.”

Only my brother would bring six hundred pages of nonfiction with him on a trip. Classic Daniel.

“And why would he do this?” Jamie asked me. “He doesn’t know about you, does he?”

I shook my head. “And he thinks the premise of the book is crap.”

“The premise being . . . ”

“I was reading it—or trying to—to find out what the author said about genetic memory, because of my dreams or memories or whatever about that doll, and India. Daniel said genetic memory isn’t a real thing.” I paused. “Noah did too. But—”

“The name of the author turned up on that list Kells had at Horizons, and what she was doing to us was real enough.” Stella said what I was thinking. “So your brother was wrong about the book.”

“He
might
be wrong about it,” Jamie said. “We haven’t read it. We won’t know until we have.”

“You’re not seriously saying that you think it’s a coincidence?” Stella asked.

“I’m just saying—You know what? Google will resolve this,” Jamie said. “Mara, computer?”

“Ask my mom for her laptop. I’m going to pack.” I didn’t have the energy to fight about the book now. I was too anxious—about it, about Daniel, about Noah, about everything. I needed to get out of there. Get moving.

I left Stella and Jamie to argue about the book, and went to my room to retrieve the items I might need for our quest. Jamie and Stella had packed stuff too, but stupidly I hadn’t asked what they’d brought or how long they thought we’d be gone. I looked around my room, trying to figure out where to start.

My
room. I wondered when I’d started thinking of it that way. We’d moved to Miami only months ago; in December I’d been in Laurelton. Rachel had been alive. Jude had been my boyfriend. God, it didn’t seem possible.

I picked out enough underwear and clothes to last a couple of weeks and packed them into a gray duffel my mom had lent me once, for a school trip. She’d let me keep it even after I’d gotten home because I liked it so much. My throat tightened. I tried to tell myself that this wasn’t permanent—that we would find answers, and a cure, and Noah, too, and I would come home and things would go back to normal, but I couldn’t quite believe it. I couldn’t even remember what normal was.

I walked down the long hallway, taking what felt like a last look at the pictures of my family that hung on the wall. I didn’t linger on my grandmother’s portrait. I’d seen enough of her.

Instead I tried to act casual as I hugged my father and mother and little brother before walking out the door. I could lie to them, but I couldn’t lie to myself. It felt like good-bye.

It was Stella’s turn to drive, but she didn’t start the car right away. “We can’t find the book online,” she said.

“Which means it’s probably out of print,” Jamie said. “But there’s this bookstore in Coral Gables—they have everything, and if they don’t have it, they can get it for us.”

“So we’re going there,” Stella said, and paused. “Mara? What’s wrong?”

I didn’t want to talk about it. “Just drive.”

“Mara—”

“Drive.”

She drove. After almost an hour in traffic, we parked across the street from the bookstore and walked into the courtyard. Jamie ordered a lemonade from the outdoor café before we went inside.

If I’d been in a better mood, I would have thought I was in heaven. It was beautiful, with gleaming wood floors and rooms of books neatly stacked from floor to ceiling.

“How have I not been here before?” I asked.

“Right?” Jamie said. “It’s the best.”

“Is there something I can help you with?” A woman stood behind us; the sleeves of her Books & Books T-shirt were rolled up, exposing colorful tattoos of illustrations from children’s books on her arms. Her dark hair was knotted up in a high, loose bun.

“Why, yes,” Jamie said, and sucked loudly on his straw. “Yes, you can.”

He told her what we were looking for, and she ducked behind the desk to try to help us.

“What did the book look like?” Jamie asked me.

I closed my eyes and pictured it. “Black cover,” I said. “Clothbound. The title was in gold.”

The woman typed some things into the computer. “Author’s name was Lenaurd?”

“Yup,” Stella said. She was practically bouncing on her heels.

“Hmm,” the woman said. She bit her thumb. “Let me try something else.”

She typed and searched and typed and searched, but eventually she let out a frustrated sigh. “That’s so weird,” she said.

“What?” Jamie asked.

“There’s literally nothing in any of the databases. I even searched for articles, thinking maybe it was published in an academic journal and then bound later, but nothing’s coming up. Not for that title or for that author. I can try calling some of the rare-book dealers we know and get back to you?”

Stella visibly deflated. Jamie thanked the woman, and the three of us walked out. Jamie ordered three sandwiches to go. I left mine untouched.

“So.” He put his hands on his hips. “Off to New York we go, yes?”

Yes.

Stella wanted to fly there. She was putting all of her eggs into the
New Theories
basket, and she was dying to collect them. If Daniel was in New York, she reasoned, the book would be too. Jamie wanted to get there too, for other reasons. He wanted to follow the money re: Horizons, and to do that we had to follow the accountant, and the accountant was in New York. But flying meant airport security, which meant video cameras and disgruntled TSA agents and being surrounded by a lot of people. With our semi-fugitive status, Jamie thought that would be unwise. I concurred.

So we drove. For hours. We switched cars again as we passed West Palm Beach, exchanging one not-really-but-kind-of stolen car for another, in case our absence from Horizons had been noticed by anyone who might have been looking.

The green of the trees and the gray of the sky blurred together into a humid-looking soup. At some point the air thickened with fog and rain as we followed I-95 out of the city and into the middle of Nowhere, Florida. When I woke up from a spontaneous nap, I looked up and realized
I could barely see the road in front of us. And stupidly, Stella hadn’t slowed down. I snapped at her about it. She ignored me.

Jamie reached between us from the backseat to turn on the radio, but the only non-staticky stations out there broadcast evangelical preachers.

“Are we there yet?” he whined.

“Don’t whine,” I said to him. “It’s unbecoming.”

“Feeling a bit moody, are we?” Stella asked. “I’d have thought a nap would’ve made you less cranky.”

“Die in a fire.”

“Maybe she’s having her period,” Jamie said.

I whipped around in my seat.
“Really?”

“You
are
acting uncharacteristically moody.”

“Uncharacteristically?” Stella chimed in.

“I hate both of you,” I mumbled, and rested my cheek on the cool glass. I was so hot. And I
was
actually feeling moody. And achy. Maybe I
was
getting my period.