The Evolution of Mara Dyer

  “I’m afraid of . . . myself,” I clarified. “I don’t—I don’t feel like I’m in control with you.”

  His brow creased. I could see the gears turning in his mind.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Liar. You’re never thinking nothing.”

  “I’m wondering what would make you feel as though you’re in control. What could make you trust yourself with me.”

  “Any luck?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Well.” I glanced at the clock. “We have a few hours before we have to be up again.”

  “We should sleep,” he said, but didn’t move back to his bed.

  I grinned. “We should go back to my room.”

  That was when he stood. “Which is right between Joseph’s room and your parents’. And I thought I just told you I didn’t think we should rush anything?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I meant my old bedroom.”

  “Ah.”

  I stood and wove my fingers into his. “Noah,” I said, my voice soft.

  He turned and looked down at me. The shadow of a smile touched his mouth. “Tomorrow,” he said.

  I must have been unable to hide my disappointment, because he placed his finger beneath my chin and tipped it up. “Tomorrow,” he said again, and I could hear the promise in the word.

  I nodded. As the adrenaline dissolved in my blood, Noah pressed his lips to my forehead and led me to his bed. I wished with everything in me that I could sink into the feeling of Noah wrapped around me as I slept. But despite his words tonight, all I heard were Roslyn’s as I lay in his arms, awake in the dark.

  You will love him to ruins.

  If I did, it would ruin us both.

  41

  MY EYES FLUTTERED OPEN. THEY WERE unfocused, my vision hazy as I stared at the ceiling. Not the guest room ceiling.

  Noah’s ceiling.

  I was in Noah’s house. I was in his bed.

  I was dreaming, I realized. And then the mattress shifted beside me.

  The word nightmare came to mind unbidden, and suddenly, I was afraid.

  But it was only Noah, facing away from me, staring at the rows of books that spanned the length of his room. What little light filtered in through the curtains shaded his beautiful face in sharp angles.

  He could never be a nightmare.

  I knelt up gingerly, afraid that the wrong movement would make the dream dissolve. I reached out and cautiously pushed his hair back. It felt so real, even though he didn’t move, didn’t respond, to my touch. I ran my fingers through his hair because when I was awake, I was scared I would do it too much.

  But this wasn’t real, so there was nothing to be scared of. I ran my finger, my hand, along his jaw, enjoying the scrape against my skin. Touching him felt natural but possessive, and I wasn’t sure how far he would let me go.

  Not far, apparently. Noah looked down at me with translucent eyes. His stare was desolate and hopeless.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered, but he didn’t answer. His expression frightened me. Looking at his face and into his eyes, all I wanted was to make him feel something else.

  With a boldness my waking self didn’t have, I took his face in my hands, tilted him toward me, and kissed him. Not deeply. Light. Fresh. Soft.

  He didn’t move toward me, not at first. He closed his eyes, shut them tight like I had hurt him. I blushed, stung, and backed away.

  But then. He pulled my hair back from my face, brushed it behind my shoulders. With the flat of his palm, he pushed me down against the mattress very softly. He moved over me, pressed soft kisses against my skin, teased me with his mouth. I heard him whisper in my ear but I couldn’t hear his words—my own breath was too loud. He slid his hands into mine then, and kissed my lips lightly, one last time. Then he withdrew, leaving something behind in my open palm.

  It was heavy but soft and fit perfectly in my hand. I couldn’t see what it was in the dark, so I cradled it to my chest. Followed him out onto the balcony, out of his room.

  But when I stepped outside my feet touched nothing. I was weightless. I turned back to look at Noah’s house, but dark vines crawled over it. Trees burst from the ground and cracked through his roof.

  I didn’t want to see this. I closed my eyes. Wake up, I told myself. Wake up.

  But I opened them just in time to watch the bay soak into the ground. Buildings were crushed and crumpled in seconds beneath the weight of the forest. The jungle had been let in, and now there was nothing I could do.

  I closed my eyes and twisted inside myself. I willed the nightmare to end.

  But then I heard voices. Footsteps. They were approaching, but my eyelids were filled with lead; they wouldn’t open. Not until I felt the brush of a feather on my cheek. My lungs filled with breath and my eyes opened, drenching my world in color. When I woke, I was not myself.

  A man knelt before me; he looked familiar but I did not know his name. He withdrew the feather from my cheek and placed it in one of my hands. My thumb caressed the edges. It was so soft.

  “Show me what is in the other,” he said kindly.

  I obeyed him. Uncurled my fingers to reveal what was inside.

  It was Noah’s heart.

  I woke up in the kitchen, facing the dark window above the sink. Noah was next to me. I had sleepwalked again but I was flooded with relief as I glanced at his chest—it was very much whole, and he was very much alive.

  The nightmare wasn’t real. Noah was all right.

  But when I looked up at his eyes, they were desolate. Hopeless. It was the expression he wore in my dream, before he gave me his heart.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him, panicked.

  “Nothing,” he said, and his hand found mine. “Come back to bed.”

  Noah woke me a few hours later and urged me into my own bed before the rest of the house woke up. I left because I had to but I was unsettled and didn’t want to be alone.

  I felt sick. My muscles were tight and sore and my vertebrae crackled when I stretched my neck. My skin felt hot and the brush of my clothes against my skin seared my flesh. I felt wrong, like someone had poured me into a different body overnight.

  What was happening to me?

  I walked into my bathroom and turned on the light. I was shocked by what I saw.

  Looking at myself in the mirror was like looking at a picture of myself in the future, like I had aged a year in an hour—I was still me, but not quite the same. The curves of my cheeks seemed hollow, and my eyes looked hollow too.

  Was I the only one who could see it?

  Did Noah see it?

  “All you can do is watch,” I had said to him, in his bed but lying alone.

  “I have been, Mara.”

  If that was true then he had to see me changing, and whatever he saw I had to know. Noah seemed so haunted when I woke up in the kitchen: I’d sleepwalked before, but he never looked at me that way before. . . .

  I was profoundly uneasy. I climbed back into bed, but it was a long time before I finally fell asleep.

  “Morning, sleepyhead,” my mother called, her face peeking out from behind my door. “It’s almost noon.”

  My eyes felt like they were pasted shut. I pushed myself up on my elbows and groaned.

  “You feeling okay?”

  I nodded. “Just tired.”

  “You want to go back to bed?”

  I did, but I shouldn’t. “No, I’ll be out soon.”

  “Should I make you some lunch? Breakfast, I mean?”

  I wasn’t really hungry, but knew I should eat anyway. “Thanks.”

  My mother smiled, then left. I stood slowly and leaned against my dresser, arching my back.

  I kept seeing Noah in my mind. The way he looked last night, in the kitchen and in my dream. Something was really wrong. We needed to talk because I couldn’t make sense of it by myself—the dream, the pendants, my grandmother, the picture. I was falling apart,
and all my pieces were scattering to the wind.

  When I dressed and made my way to the kitchen, Joseph was eating a sandwich, but aside from my mother, he was the only one.

  “Where’s—everyone?” I asked. Didn’t want to be too obvious.

  “Dad’s playing golf,” Joseph said between bites.

  Next.

  “Daniel went to hear Sophie rehearse for a recital she has in a couple of weeks.”

  Next.

  Except neither of them mentioned Noah. I sat down at the table and poured myself some juice. I glanced at the phone. I’d call.

  “Noah went to pick something up at his house,” my mother said, a smile in her voice. “He’ll be back later.”

  So I was that obvious. Excellent.

  “Toast?”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “What do you want to do today?” she asked me.

  “Horseback riding,” Joseph answered, mid-bite.

  “I’m not sure I’d even know where to go for that.”

  “Noah does,” Joseph said. “He knows everything.”

  “I see we have a bit of hero worship happening here.” My mother handed me a plate of toast as she shot Joseph a knowing look. “I think maybe we should let Noah have some space today and do what he wants to do. Why don’t we see a movie?”

  My brother sighed. “Which one?”

  “Whichever one you like—”

  Joseph flashed a mischievous smile

  “That’s rated no higher than PG-13.”

  His expression fell. Then brightened again. “What about Aftermath?”

  My mother squinted. “Is that the one about the plague?”

  Joseph nodded vehemently.

  My mother looked at me. “Okay with you?”

  I didn’t particularly want to go anywhere. In fact, I could think of nothing I’d rather do than have the house to myself for a while. Maybe try to read more New Theories, or research the pendant symbols, the feather—something.

  But my mom would never agree to leave me alone, and if I said I didn’t want to go out, she might wonder why. And wondering would lead to worrying, which would only make her less likely to release me from captivity anytime soon. So I assented. I could make Joseph happy, at least.

  The movie didn’t start for over an hour, so I found myself with time to kill. I nearly called Noah to ask him about last night, but my mother was right. He deserved some space.

  Which is why my insides squirmed with guilt when I found myself standing in the doorway of the guest room. I didn’t know what I was looking for until my eyes found it.

  I didn’t touch his things. I didn’t dig through his black nylon bag. The room was as neat as if it had never been slept in, as if no one had ever been inside. Everything of his had been carefully put away. But just before I turned to leave, I noticed the corner of something peeking out from the crack between the wall and the bed.

  A notebook.

  Noah didn’t take notes.

  I took a step into the room. Maybe it wasn’t his. Maybe Daniel or Joseph had left it there and forgotten, or maybe it belonged to one of their friends? I could look at the first page. Just to check.

  No. I marched out of the room and picked up the phone to call Noah. I’d ask if it was his and if it was he’d know that I found it but didn’t betray his trust by looking inside.

  This was my inner monologue as I dialed his number, as his phone continued to ring. Eventually, I heard a click, but it was only his voice mail. He didn’t pick up.

  Within moments, I found myself back in the room.

  The notebook probably wasn’t even his. I’d never seen him with one, ever, and anyway, there was no reason for him to bring one to my house. On spring break, no less. I would just flip through it to see whose it was; I wouldn’t read whatever was inside.

  A Gollum/Sméagol conundrum. Would evil or good prevail?

  I took a step toward the bed. If the notebook was Noah’s, the law of the universe dictated that I would get caught.

  But it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. I took another step. Another. Then I reached for the notebook, swallowed my guilt, and began to read.

  42

  So begins the unillustrious record of the observations and musings of one Noah Elliot Simon Shaw insofar as they relate to one Mara (middle name as yet unknown, must remedy) Dyer and her purported metamorphosis.

  Mara has just left. We have just immolated her grandmother’s doll, which seems to have been (distressingly) stuffed with human hair, as well as a pendant identical to the one I own. Both of us are justifiably disturbed by this development, though it has provided a new avenue of exploration as to why the fuck both of us are so deeply weird.

  Also, I kissed her. She liked it.

  Naturally.

  If there was anyone to speak to, I would have been speechless. I blinked, hard, and then stared at the page, at the words, in his handwriting, just to make sure they were actually there.

  They were. And I knew when he’d started writing then. It was after I told him I was afraid of losing control. Of losing myself. After telling him—

  That all he could do was watch. My own voice echoed harshly in my ears.

  “Tell me what you see. Because I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t or what’s new or different and I can’t trust myself, but I trust you.”

  He had closed his eyes. Said my name. And then I said—

  “You know what? Don’t tell me, because I might not remember. Write it down, and then maybe someday, if I ever get better, let me read it. Otherwise I’ll change a little bit every day and never know who I was until after I’m gone.”

  My throat felt tight. He was writing this for me.

  I could stop reading now. Put the notebook back, tell him I found it and admit to reading the beginning. I could tell him I just wanted to check to see who it belonged to and once I saw it was his, stopped reading right away.

  But I didn’t. I turned the page.

  Ruth informs me that when my father returns home, I’ll be expected to return to school and attend classes without fail. I listen patiently but I can feel myself detach as I see it in exquisite, miserable detail:

  I stare listlessly behind the teachers’ heads as I listen to them drone on about things I already know. I cut class and stretch out on a picnic table beneath the tiki monstrosity and lie there, completely still.

  A group of girls walks by, peering over the edge of the table. I am envious of chameleons. I open my eyes, squinting, and the girls dart away. They titter and giggle and I hear one of them whisper, “too perfect.” I want to shake them for their ignorance and scream that their Sistine Chapel is filled with cracks.

  In my previous life, for it seems that way though it’s barely been a few months, I would flirt, or not, with anyone who seemed remotely interesting on any given day. There’d be one candidate, if I was lucky. Then I would count down the hours and minutes and seconds until another pointless day would finally end.

  And then I’d go home. Or go to a new club with Parker or some other asshole who wears a cardigan around his shoulders and pops the collar on his fucking polo. I would stumble out, two gorgeous, faceless girls clutching my waist, the dull thud of soulless house music matching the dull throb in my temples, evident even through the slight haze of ecstasy and alcohol, and I would drink and feel nothing and laugh and feel nothing and stare at my life for the next three, five, twenty years, and loathe it.

  The image of it bores me so deeply that I’m willing to die, right now, just to feel something else.

  When the words ended, I realized that I was no longer standing; I had backed onto the bed. The notebook, the journal, was spread open against it, and my left hand had covered my mouth. I heard Noah’s voice when I read his thoughts but there was a bitterness to them that I couldn’t ever remember hearing out loud. I turned the page.

  The best money can buy is nothing. Nothing on Lukumi or whoever the hell he is, and nothing on Jude. E
ven the search for his family has proven fruitless; nothing on Claire Lowe or Jude Lowe or parents William and Deborah since the collapse. There was an obituary in the Rhode Island paper with donation instructions and such, but the parents moved after the accident—or incident, I should say. And even with Charles’s PI connections, zero. People can disappear—but not from people like him. It’s as though the longer I reach, the further the truth gets. I hate that there’s nothing more I can do. I’d go to Providence myself, but I don’t want to leave Mara behind.

  I might say something when I see her, though at present she seems preoccupied with some psycho at Horizons. I’m not the only one who doesn’t play well with others. Perhaps that’s why we get on so well.

  Those were the first words that made me smile. The next ones made it vanish.

  I sift through my dead mother’s things. It’s been years since I’ve bothered and I feel empty as I explore the full boxes, mostly brimming with battered, dog-eared, highlighted books. Singer and Ginsberg and Hoffman and Kerouac, philosophy and poetry and radicalism and Beat. The pages are worn, well-read, and I skim through them. I wonder if it’s possible to know someone through the words they loved. There are photographs stuck in some of the books. Mostly people I don’t recognize, but there are a few of her. She looks fierce.

  A book that doesn’t seem to belong catches my eye— Le Petit Prince. I open it and a black-and-white picture slips out—her from the back, looking down, holding a blond boy’s hand. My hand, I realize. My hair grew darker as I grew up.

  A spot of red bleeds through the picture and spreads, covering her fingers, mine. I hear shouting and screaming and a boy’s voice begging her to come back.

  The text ended there and didn’t pick up again until the following page. My throat ached and my fingers were shaking and I shouldn’t be reading this but I couldn’t stop.

  Another fight.

  I was already annoyed by the Lukumi-fraud situation when I heard some random on Calle Ocho say something vaguely insulting to the girl he was with. I said something profoundly insulting back. I desperately hoped he’d swing.