The Retribution of Mara Dyer

  He was getting more and more confident about using his ability, but I still caught him digging his nails into his palms sometimes, or biting his lip until it bled. Perversely, it made me feel better to see him struggle too. Like I was less of a freak among freaks. Maybe what we had was an illness, like Kells had said. Sometimes I caught Stella watching me nervously, like I might be contagious.

  But Jamie never acted that way. We talked about it later that night, in my room in one of the motels we’d found clustered by the highway exit, while Stella went off in search of something more palatable than fast food.

  “I think Stella’s a little scared of you,” he said, while I changed for bed in the bathroom.

  “And you’re not?” I called out.

  “Of you? You have the soul of a kitten.”

  I popped my head out of the bathroom. “A kitten.”

  “An assassin kitten.”

  I laughed for the first time in I couldn’t remember how long. The thing about Jamie was that he didn’t seem disturbed enough, sometimes, by the things I’d done. He’d say they were fucked up the way he would point out that the sky was blue. Just a fact, like anything else. But the things I did never seemed to really bother him. I never seemed to bother him. In some ways it made him easier to talk to than even Noah.

  “So, what are we going to do with you?” Jamie asked.

  “In what sense?”

  “In the sense that you go from zero to homicidal in sixty seconds.”

  “I’m passionate.”

  “You’re manic,” Jamie said.

  “Promise to put me out of my misery before an alien erupts from my stomach?”

  “No lie, I think Stella thinks that’s a thing that could actually happen. You scare the filling out of her doughnut.”

  “I’m not pregnant. Not with an alien or anything else.”

  Jamie quickly changed the subject. “You know, I’ve been thinking—”

  “How novel.”

  “About your ability,” he said, ignoring me. “Have you ever tried to, like, make good shit happen?”

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing.” I paused, wondering if I should ask something I’d been thinking about for a while. Oh, why not. “Do you ever think about Anna?”

  “Nope,” Jamie said without hesitation, which is how I knew he was lying. But I understood why. Sometimes lies are easier to believe.

  Jamie changed the subject. “It’s too bad you can’t just, like, will yourself to win the presidency.”

  “At seventeen?”

  “Whatever. I just mean—if the stuff you imagine could actually happen, you could change the world.”

  “I don’t think I’d want to be president.”

  “Really?” Jamie looked incredulous. “God, I’d love it.”

  “Why?”

  “Someone has to be leader of the free world. It might as well be me.”

  “And what would you do with your great power? It comes with great responsibility, you know.”

  “New world order,” he said, grinning. “The freaks shall inherit the earth.”

  “I don’t think that’s how democracy works.”

  “Democracy is overrated.”

  “Spoken like a true dictator. If only we could trade abilities.”

  “I have an inappropriate amount of enthusiasm for that idea.”

  “This whole conversation is inappropriate.” Which was probably why I was enjoying it.

  Jamie frowned. “We need some music up in this joint.” He looked around. “Is that Noah’s laptop?”

  I had opened his bag, as well as mine, and the computer was sticking out. “Yeah.”

  “Have you . . . looked at it?”

  I shook my head. “Password protected.”

  “You can’t crack it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Can I try?”

  I shrugged. If I hadn’t had any luck, he probably wouldn’t either.

  Less than five minutes later his eyes closed and his face fell. As I predicted.

  “No luck?”

  “No, I got it,” he said. His voice was weird.

  “Really?” I felt a nervous thrill in my stomach. “What was it?”

  Jamie hesitated before he spoke. Then he said, “Marashaw.”

  I couldn’t breathe. I dropped my head between my knees, but when Jamie put his arm around me I flinched.

  I had not seen that coming. It was sweet, too sweet for Noah. If he were there, I’d make fun of him for it, tease him about doodling my would-be married name on his binder.

  But he wasn’t there. I couldn’t tease him. Suddenly it was just too much. I reached for the laptop.

  “Should I go?” Jamie asked. I nodded, not looking at him. I heard him leave the room.

  My fingers trembled as I poked around in Noah’s files, looking for something, anything that might tell me where to find him, but nothing stood out. Finally I just started opening things at random. What I found made me wish I hadn’t.

  It was in a folder labeled MAD:

  Gather my leaves,

  Twist them into crowns

  Let me be the king of your forest

  Climb on my branches,

  I will seek out your hide

  As you sleep beneath the shade

  Of my giving tree

  I held my breath as I read poem after poem that Noah had written for me—the old Velveteen Rabbit one, a new Lolita one, and even the terribly filthy Dr. Seuss one. My hands shook and my throat ached but I didn’t cry. I couldn’t. I felt angry instead. If he could have been with me, he would have been, which meant he couldn’t. I would make whoever kept him from me pay.

  I turned on the bathtub faucet and closed the door, breathing in the steam as the tub filled with water, trying to calm myself down. I let myself imagine Noah in there with me as I undressed.

  I thought about him lifting his shirt over his head, the way his muscles would tense beneath his skin. How he would climb into the tub first, wearing nothing but a smirk as he waited for me to join him. I closed my eyes and smiled, but when I opened them, I bit back a scream.

  Noah was there, in the tub. The water was red with his blood. His veins were slashed open at the wrists.

  I bolted from the bathroom, threw on clothes. I snatched Noah’s laptop from the bed and carried it with me to Jamie’s room. I pounded on the door.

  “Put on some music,” I said the second he opened it, thrusting the laptop into his hands.

  “Mara—”

  “Just do it, Jamie.” Thoughts roared in my brain, none of them good. I had to drown them out.

  “You don’t think he’d mind?”

  I shook my head without looking up.

  I heard Jamie scroll through his music. “What are you in the mood for?”

  I closed my eyes. “Something we can dance to.”

  Five minutes later I heard the intro for “Sympathy for the Devil.” Jamie stepped up onto the bed and held out his hand. I took it and plastered a smile on my face, but it didn’t reach my eyes. He kicked off his shoes, and I kicked off mine.

  When the door opened, we didn’t even hear it—we were screaming along with Mick Jagger at the top of our lungs. It felt good.

  “Hate to interrupt,” Stella said, eyeing us both, “but dinner has arrived.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Jamie jumped off the bed. “I’m starving.”

  The smell of whatever was in the plastic bags she’d brought made my stomach growl. “Me too.” I peered into the bag Stella was holding. “What did you get?”

  “Mexican,” she said.

  “Perfect.” I plucked a foil-covered burrito out of the bag. We ate together with Noah’s playlist still playing. We talked and laughed about nothing, because if we didn’t, we would give up. Before she and I left Jamie’s room, Stella handed me a plastic bag. “I bought this for you,” she said as she opened the door.

  “Um, thanks?”

  She was alread
y walking away, and waved at me without turning around. I looked into the bag.

  It was a pregnancy test.

  27

  I LOOKED AT IT, CRADLED in the plastic bag telling me to HAVE A NICE DAY!, but I couldn’t even seem to take it out to read the instructions. I saw the scene unfold in my mind: me in the bathroom, fumbling to open the package and dropping the instructions on the sodden tile floor. Picking them up and trying to read the blurred letters. Sitting on the toilet, practically forcing myself to pee on the stick. And then, after, waiting for fate to hand down my sentence. I just couldn’t do it.

  Stella and Jamie knew I hadn’t taken the test, and the atmosphere in the thousandth stolen/borrowed car was dark and uncomfortable. Every time I gagged, Stella and Jamie exchanged a knowing glance, which made me want to kill them, which made me feel even sicker. I caught my reflection in the mirrored entry to the Georgetown hotel Jamie checked us into. I looked undead. I was mildly surprised no one had tried to behead me.

  “Just wait,” the girl in the mirror said back.

  “Shut up.”

  Jamie and Stella both turned to look at me. Guess I’d said that out loud.

  As soon as I’d dropped my things in my room, Jamie knocked on my door. He brushed past me and then flung himself onto my bed. “Mara, dear, hand me that menu?”

  “Make yourself comfortable,” I said, tossing it to him.

  “I’m ordering room service,” Jamie said.

  I dropped into an armchair. “It’s not even six.”

  “I’m a growing boy. Leave me alone.” Jamie changed the TV channel. “Oh, a Tarantino marathon!”

  I eyed the television. “Pulp Fiction? Not my favorite.”

  “Blasphemy.”

  “I prefer Kill Bill.”

  “Hmm. Acceptable,” Jamie said with a nod. “Ugh, I can’t order what I want until seven. Bastards.” He punted the remote, and it bounced off the mattress.

  “Temper, temper.”

  “Pot, meet kettle. Where’s the minibar?”

  I pointed to the other side of the room.

  “Fetch me something?”

  “Fetch yourself.”

  Samuel L. Jackson was reciting the last bit of his Ezekiel 25:17 monologue on the flatscreen TV: “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger, those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.”

  Jamie blocked my view. “You didn’t take it, I’m guessing?”

  “Take what?” I asked, watching John Travolta and Sammy empty their clips into that sad guy.

  “The, uh, test.”

  “The—oh.” The pregnancy test. Before I could even answer, Jamie’s focus was diverted.

  “Oh, hello there.” Jamie tossed a little black cardboard box at me just as Samuel was saying, “And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

  I caught it even though I wasn’t looking, and turned the box over. “What is this?”

  “It’s, like, a sex kit.” Jamie ripped open a bag of Skittles and tossed a handful into his mouth.

  I threw the box back at him. “You’re more likely to need this than me.”

  “Since you’re incubating an alien fetus, you mean?”

  “There. Is. No. Fetus. And I’m a virgin. Still. Which I believe I’ve told you already. Several times.”

  “I don’t think Stella believes you,” Jamie said. “And I can’t entirely blame her. It strains credulity to imagine Noah could avoid such temptation.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  “Yes I am. You just have a crappy sense of humor. God, only you could manage to get pregnant without even getting to have sex first.”

  “My life does seem to be uniquely shitty lately.”

  “I’ll give you that,” Jamie said. “But really, though—why haven’t you done it yet?”

  The best defense is a good offense. “Why haven’t you done it yet?”

  “I’m saving myself for marriage,” Jamie said, chewing openmouthed.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Probably. Maybe. I don’t know. We’re not talking about me. Did you— I mean, do you want to? Have sex with Noah? Current predicament aside?”

  I noticed Jamie’s switch from past tense to present, but ignored it. “Of course,” I said quietly.

  “So what stopped you? Current predicament aside.”

  I wondered how to explain what had kept me and Noah apart even before Horizons. What I was afraid I might have done to him. What the fortune-teller had told me and what part of me still believed.

  “I was afraid . . . I’d hurt him.”

  Jamie quirked an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.”

  “Ha-ha, hilarious.”

  “Seriously, though. You can tell me.”

  I was embarrassed, putting the kissing conundrum into words, worrying Jamie might think I was crazier than I actually was, which, given the circumstances. But he listened intently, and didn’t mock me when I was finished.

  “You think it’s just kissing?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve kissed Noah before, obviously—”

  “Obviously. He could never be that much of a saint.”

  I ignored him. “And we did notice that something—happened. I think maybe it’s connected to my emotional state or whatever—like, I don’t know if it would happen with just a peck on the cheek, because—”

  “Because there’s no intensity.”

  “Right.”

  “So you could probably kiss me or Stella and nothing would happen.”

  “Stella would think I was trying to bite her. She’d mace me.”

  Jamie cracked a grin. “God, that’s so accurate. It makes sense, though, the kissing thing? Like, if you stray out of your stable emotional range, something changes with your ability. Excess energy or something.”

  “So a peck on the cheek wouldn’t do anything,” I said.

  “Probably not.”

  I planted a kamikaze kiss on Jamie’s cheek.

  “FUCK,” he shouted, wiping it off. “What if you killed me!” He threw a Skittle at my face. It hit my forehead.

  “Ow!”

  “Taste the rainbow, bitch.”

  “Don’t be a baby.”

  “I am going to be a baby. I am going to lock myself in the bathroom and cry now, in fact.” Jamie did go into the bathroom, and he did lock the door. Whether he cried, who knows.

  I heard the toilet flush and the water run, and when he opened the door, he said, “I left something on the counter for you.”

  “I’m . . . afraid to ask.”

  “You really should take it.”

  “Are we talking about the pregnancy test again? Because, no.”

  “Whatever the result is, you have to know. We’ll figure it out, but we can’t pretend this isn’t happening.”

  “I will admit to deriving a positive psychological benefit from your using the word ‘we.’ ”

  “Positive psychological benefit intended.”

  I wanted to argue with him, but I couldn’t really. Jamie was right. If it was negative, I was like this for some other reason, and nothing changed. But if it was positive . . .

  If it was positive, everything changed.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Jamie said, popping another Skittle into his mouth. “If you think about it, you’ll change your mind. Like you said, you’re probably not . . . you know. But won’t it be a relief to know?”

  Yes. It would be.

  He turned around and not so gently pushed me into the bathroom. “Like ripping off a Band-Aid,” he said, closing the door behind me. “Just pee.”

  I looked at the box. Jamie had already opened it, and the instructions were lying next to it, by the sink. I read them. Plus sign for positive, minus for negative. Easy enough. I ripped open the package and sat on the toilet. I could practically hear him outside the door, breathing.

  I felt like a defendant, waiting for the jury to hand down
its verdict. Seconds passed, or maybe minutes, before someone knocked on the bathroom door.

  “I don’t hear peeing,” Jamie said mockingly.

  “Eat me,” I muttered.

  “What’s that?”

  “Leave me,” I said louder. My voice was hoarse, and my bladder was shy. Or something. I couldn’t do it, not with him listening. I said so and told Jamie to leave. To my surprise, he did.

  And then I did. I quickly put the test on the edge of the vanity. I felt sick just looking at it, felt the urge to run. I could run. I could run out of the room, run out of the hotel, lie to Stella and Jamie and myself, never mention it again.

  But my mother always said that the truth will catch up with you eventually. It always does.

  So I forced my eyes shut and reached for it. On the count of three, I swore to myself that I would look.

  One.

  Two.

  I opened my eyes.

  It was negative.

  28

  I TOLD THEM ON THE way to the train station in DC. Stella, who had been ignoring me for nearly the entire cab ride, actually broke into a grin. “Don’t you feel so much better?”

  I did and didn’t. My mind could now finally let go of the ugliest, scariest possibility, that something had been done to me while I’d been at Horizons that could have gotten me pregnant. My mind shied away from the word “rape,” but I didn’t know what else it could’ve been. But it didn’t matter now. I could finally let myself feel relief.

  It was short lived, however. I got sick in the cab, opening the door at a red light to throw up in the street. The driver freaked out.

  I might not have been pregnant, but I was sick. With what, I didn’t know. Or maybe I did know—maybe this was just the gene. Maybe something made me different from Stella and Jamie, and it would just have to run its course.

  It wasn’t a pleasant thought, and I felt shaky as we followed Jamie up to the ticket counter. Whatever was happening to me was happening quickly, and we needed to get to New York faster than we could drive there.

  “Three tickets to New York,” he said. “One way.”

  The train was clotted with people, and we had to walk through a thousand cars before we could find seats even remotely close to one another. I stumbled twice. Jamie caught me both times.