He did.
There is an unparalleled freedom in fighting. I can’t be hurt and so I’m afraid of nothing. They can be, so they’re afraid of everything. That makes it easy, and so I always win.
Mara calls. She’s hopeful for answers but I have none and I don’t want her to know.
He must have written the entries on Thursday, when he didn’t come over. After I called him and he hung up and I worried, wondered why he sounded so distant. I was riveted.
When I don’t see her, her ghost wanders my veins. And when I see Mara today after a day apart, she is different.
The word seeps into my blood.
It is subtle—so subtle that I hadn’t quite noticed it myself until she mentioned it; perhaps I’m too close. But now, the time apart throws the changes into relief and I watch her closely, so I can remember. She is still beautiful—always—but her cheekbones are more prominent. Her collarbone is diamond sharp. The softness I love is slowly being filed away by something inside or outside, I don’t know.
I don’t want to tell her. She came undone over nothing at the fair, after some hack fed her lines about destiny and fate. Things are precarious enough as it is.
He wrote that yesterday.
I tried to piece together the things he thought with the moments he may have thought them, moments he was with me. The words picked up again on the bottom of the same page.
I can’t forget the kiss.
It’s laughable. I barely touched her but it was distressingly intimate. She arched up toward me, but I placed my hand on her waist and she stilled under my palm. I don’t think she’s ever looked so perilously beautiful as she did in that second.
She isn’t the only one changing. Every day she shapes me into something else.
I am definitely a pussy.
Sharing a bed with her is its own exquisite torture. I twine around her like moss on a limb; our heartbeats synchronize and we become one twisted, codependent thing. She brings me to heel with one look and I hear an aching violin, a cello’s low swell. It hums beneath my skin; I want nothing more than to devour her, yet I do nothing but clench my jaw, press my lips to her neck, and savour the tremor in her chord. After a while, it softens at the edges as she slips into sleep. Her sound is a siren’s song, calling me to the rocks.
She thinks I don’t desire her and it’s almost ridiculous how wrong she is. But she has to fight her demons before I can prove it, lest I become one of them. She hears Jude’s name and her sound tightens, rises; her breath and heart quicken with fear. He fractured something inside of her and God knows, I will make him pay.
I can’t slay her dragon because I can’t find him, so for now I stay close.
It’s not enough.
My dragon. My demons.
Noah thought what Jude did to me was what made me afraid to kiss him. That if I was still fearful and Noah let things go too far, it would haunt me the way Jude does now.
He didn’t trust me when I said I wasn’t afraid of him. He didn’t understand that I was only afraid of myself.
Then there was nothing for five, seven pages. On the thirteenth page, there was more:
My theory: that Mara can manipulate events the way I can manipulate cells. I have no idea how either of us can do either thing, but nevertheless.
I try to get her to envision something benign but she stares and concentrates while her sound never changes. Is her ability linked to desire? Does she not want anything good?
Nightmare:
The sun slants through my bedroom windows, backlighting Mara as she draws in my bed. She wears my shirt—a shapeless black and white plaid thing that I wouldn’t normally notice but with her inside of it, it is beautiful.
The skin of her bare thigh glances against my arm as she shifts in my sheets. My hand holds a book: Invitation to a Beheading. I’m trying to read it, but I can’t get past this passage:
“In spite of everything I loved you, and will go on loving you—on my knees, with my shoulders drawn back, showing my heels to the headsman and straining my goose neck—even then. And afterwards—perhaps most of all afterwards—I shall love you, and one day we shall have a real, all-embracing explanation, and then perhaps we shall somehow fit together, you and I . . . we shall connect the points . . . and you and I shall form that unique design for which I yearn.”
I can’t get past it because I keep wondering what Mara’s thigh would feel like against my cheek.
Her graphite pencil scratches the thick paper and it is the soundtrack to my bliss. That, and her sound—dissonant, aching. Her breath and heartbeat and pulse are my new favourite symphony; I’m beginning to learn which notes will play when, and to interpret them. There is wrath and contentment and fear and desire—but she has never let the last get too far. Yet.
The sun sings in her hair as her head tilts, dips toward the page. She arches forward, her shape slightly feline as she draws. My heart beats her name. She glances over her shoulder and smirks like she can hear it.
Enough.
I toss the book on the floor—a first edition, I don’t care—and I lean into her. She coyly moves to block her sketchbook. Fine. It isn’t what I want, anyway.
“Come here,” I whisper into her skin. I turn her to face me. She knots her fingers in my hair and my eyelids drop at her touch.
And then she kisses me first, which never happens. It is light and fresh and soft. Careful. She still thinks she can hurt me, somehow; she doesn’t grasp yet that it isn’t possible. I have no idea what’s going on in her mind but even if it takes her years to let go, it will be worth it. I would wait forever for the promise of seeing Mara, unleashed.
I pull back to look at her again, but something is wrong. Off. Her eyes are glassy and blurred, shining with tears.
“Are you all right?”
She shakes her head. A tear spills over, rolls down her cheek. I hold her face in my hands. “What?”
She glances at the sketchbook behind her. Moves out of the way. I lift it.
It’s a sketch of me, but my eyes are blacked out. I narrow mine at hers.
“Why would you draw this?”
She shakes her head. I grow frustrated. “Tell me.”
She opens her mouth to speak, but she has no tongue.
When I wake, Mara is no longer in bed.
I lie alone, staring at the ceiling, then at the clock. Three minutes after two in the morning. I wait five minutes. After ten, I get up to see where she’s gone.
I find her in the kitchen. She is staring at her reflection in the dark window with a long knife pressed against her thumb, and suddenly I’m not in Miami but in London, in my father’s study; I am fifteen and completely numb. I skirt the desk my father never sits in and reach for his knife. I drag it across my skin—
I blink the memory away and whisper Mara’s name in desperation. She doesn’t respond, so I cross the kitchen and take her hand and gently put down the knife.
She smiles and it is empty and it freezes my blood because I’ve seen that smile on myself.
In the morning, she remembers nothing.
It is March 29th.
I couldn’t breathe when I read the date. March 29th is today.
43
I WAS A SEETHING CAULDRON OF THOUGHTS, NONE OF which I could process before I heard Daniel calling my name.
I rushed to put the notebook back where I found it and slipped out of the guest bedroom and into the kitchen. Daniel was twirling his keys.
“We’re going out,” he said.
I glanced at the hallway. “I don’t really feel like—”
“Like staying home. Trust me.” Daniel flashed a cryptic smile. “You’ll thank me later.”
I doubted that. I needed to sit still, by myself, and just think. About what I would say to Noah when I finally saw him. What I would tell him after what I read.
The entries about me were one thing. Noah wrote them for me, meant for me to see them, someday.
But the rest. The rest was his. Hi
s. I felt sick.
“I got you out of seeing that awful-looking movie with Mom and Joseph. Come on,” Daniel said with an exaggerated arm-wave. “COME ON.”
He was relentless so I followed him sulkily into the car. “Where are we going?” I asked, trying to sound casual. Trying to sound okay.
“We are going out for your birthday.”
“Hate to break it to you, but you’re a little late.”
He stroked his chin. “Yes, yes, I see how it may seem that way from your unenlightened perspective. But in fact, seeing as how your technical birthday resulted in what we shall henceforth call your ‘Dark Period’, it was discussed and then agreed that you should have a do-over.”
I shot him a sidelong glance as he turned onto the highway. “Discussed and agreed by . . .?”
“By everyone. Everyone in the whole world. There is no other topic of discussion other than Mara Dyer, didn’t you get the memo?”
I sighed. “You’re not going to tell me where we’re going, are you?”
Daniel mimed zipping his lips.
“Right,” I said. It was hard not to smile, even though I wasn’t in the mood. My brother was trying to make me happy. It was my fault that I was miserable, not his.
We eventually stopped at a marina, which, obviously, I did not expect. I got out of the car, my feet crunching on the gravel, but Daniel stayed put. I looped around to his window and he rolled it down.
“This is where I leave you,” he said with a salute.
I glanced back at the entrance. The sky was beginning to change, and silver-pink clouds appeared low over the tall masts. No one was there. “Am I supposed to do anything?”
“All shall be revealed in time.”
There was a plan, clearly, a plan that likely involved Noah, which made me want to smile and cry at the same time. “Does Mom know?” was all I asked.
“Sort of . . . not really.”
“Daniel—”
“It’s worth it, you deserve this. Hey, look behind you!”
I turned. A man in a nautical-ish uniform was walking from a long dock into the parking lot, a garment bag draped over his arms. When I looked back at Daniel, he’d rolled up his window. He winked through it and waved.
A lump formed in my throat as I waved back. I didn’t deserve him.
The uniformed man spoke. “If you would be so kind as to come with me, Miss Dyer, I’ll bring you to the boat.”
I smiled, but it didn’t reach my eyes. I thought Noah would catch me reading his journal, maybe. He’d get angry. We’d fight. I’d explain, we’d make up, we’d move on.
But now as I walked toward what was sure to be a grand gesture of the grandest sort, it was polluted by my betrayal. I had to tell him; the longer I waited, the worse it would be.
The man introduced himself as Ron and led me toward the end of the dock. The air smelled of brine and seaweed and water lapped beneath our heavy steps. We finally came to a stop before a sleek, stunning boat. I was helped up the steps and asked to take off my shoes; the blond wood deck gleamed beneath my bare feet, shining and spotless.
Once we were on board, Ron turned to me and asked if I’d like anything to drink. I said I was fine, even though I wasn’t.
A flurry of activity began behind me. Knots were being untied and it looked like we were getting ready to leave.
“Where are we going?” I asked him.
“It won’t be a long trip,” he said with a smile. I looked at the sky; it was nearly sunset now, and I wondered when Noah would appear.
Ron handed me the garment bag. “I’ve been instructed to tell you that you don’t need to change, but that this was made for you if you’d like to wear it. Either way, it’s yours to keep.”
Something fluttered in my chest and in my mind as I took the bag from him gingerly.
“But if you’d like to, I can show you the cabin?”
I thanked him and he led me down a small, narrow half-staircase, half-ladder situation. We climbed down into an abbreviated hallway that sprouted off into a few separate rooms; a man in a chef’s hat worked in the galley, and we passed two bedrooms before he showed me into the third. I looked for Noah in all of them. He wasn’t there.
“Let me know if there’s anything you need,” he said.
“Thanks.”
He inclined his head and closed the door behind him, leaving me alone.
I could have been in a boutique hotel. Plush white bed linens adorned the bed that anchored the room, and twin swing-arm sconces flanked either side of the tufted leather headboard. There was a small bar built into the wall below a row of round windows. I spread the garment bag onto the bed and unzipped it.
A sliver of dark blue, almost black cloth peeked out, and when I lifted the strapless dress—the gown, really—out of the bag, the fabric felt like water beneath my fingers. It was extraordinary; so soft and perfect it didn’t feel real. I slipped on the dress, and looked in the mirrored wall.
It was like I was wearing night itself. The color made my skin look like cream; flawless, instead of just pale. The dress gently skimmed every curve as if it had been taught how by someone who knew every line and dip and arch of my frame. The act of wearing it was intimate, and my skin flooded with heat.
But most astonishing of all was that when I looked at my reflection, it seemed more familiar to me than it had in weeks.
When I finally tore my eyes away, I opened the closet to see if there were shoes. There weren’t. I searched in a few places I thought shoes might be, but I didn’t see a box.
Or, more precisely, I didn’t see a shoe box. As my eyes roamed the room, I noticed a small box on the built-in nightstand that was part of the bed. A small, black, velvet box.
A jewelry box. It rested on top of a cream colored envelope. I opened it with trembling fingers and unfolded the note inside as carefully as I could. My breath caught in my throat as I read the words in Noah’s script.
This belonged to my mother, but it was meant for you.
My heart thundered against my rib cage and my pulse fluttered beneath my skin as I put down the note and finally looked inside.
44
THE DARK JEWEL WAS THE COLOR OF MIDNIGHT and it glittered with fire. A hundred diamonds or more surrounded the sapphire in a loop and extended into a long strand, which uncoiled into my palm. I had never held anything so precious. I was almost afraid to put it on.
Almost.
I glanced at the door. I half-expected Noah to appear to clasp it around my neck, but he didn’t so I did it myself. The necklace was heavy but the weight felt right, somehow, around my throat.
I tied my hair back in a knot, then left the room. My bare feet found purchase on the narrow ladder as I climbed up to the dock where I knew I’d see Noah. My heart was beating fast and I bit my lip as I emerged.
He wasn’t there.
Perplexing. I slowly let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and looked around. We were far from the marina now, floating in a large, dark turquoise expanse of water dotted with many other boats. Tangles of seaweed floated by on the surface, the foam from another boat’s wake clinging to the water. There were people, too; some drifting in tubes, others flying kites off the decks of their boats. An old man floated by us on an orange foam noodle, with neon green sunglasses on his reddened face and a neon pink beer cozy in his hand. A preppy college student in plaid shorts and a dumb little straw hat manned a shiny yacht that blasted the air with inane lyrics and a pulsing, officious beat. He tossed his cigarette butt in the water. Ass.
And then, as we sailed under a beautiful, old-fashioned white drawbridge dotted with street lamps, the landscape around us changed. We passed a golf course peppered with palm trees on one side, and beautiful homes lined the opposite shore. The backyards were thick with peach and olive trees, or rose gardens with arbors surrounding full tennis courts. A lonely frame ladder stood in one yard, there to trim a menagerie of hedge animals into their respective shapes. The house beyond
the yard was enormous, Tuscan style, with tiered arches spanning the length of the floor to the ceiling.
I leaned my arms against the prow, taking in the lavish mansions; the modern glass and steel monstrosities and the attempted charm of the sprawling older homes. The boat rocked gently beneath my bare feet. I spent so much time feeling sick these days that I was mildly surprised at not feeling sick on the boat.
A blast of loud music assaulted my ears and I looked up. Someone in one of the homes had turned on a massive outdoor speaker system. I heard the angry wail of guitars and crashing electronica in the background, and a growling singer yell about damage and abuse and saving yourself.
We passed an enormous boxlike house, a throwback to the sixties, I guessed, and then floated by a grand, white mansion with soaring windows that faced the water. Greek statues bordered the intricately landscaped lawn, and something about it felt—
Familiar.
Because it was Noah’s house. I almost didn’t recognize it from here; I had always been on the inside looking out, but now I was out, looking in.
But I didn’t see or feel any sign that we were stopping. That apparently wasn’t where we were going. Curious.
The houses soon gave way to forest. An enormous banyan tree bent away from its roots, saturated with Spanish moss that kissed the water. The dying sun reflected off the surface, casting rippling shadows beneath the tree. Palm trees on either side of us bent and swayed, heavy with coconuts. Then the forest became less dense. We passed pylons with nothing tethered to them, their weathered wood exposed at mid-tide. A palm tree with the top cut off stood at attention to our right, just a tall stump that punctured the air.
And then, finally, I saw where we were headed. A small island appeared in front of us—we had passed many, but I felt, I knew, that Noah was on this one. Waiting for me.
We sailed around to a narrow dock that jutted out into the ocean. The crew anchored the boat and Ron helped me step off, but didn’t join me. He just nodded to the end of the small pier, and I began to walk.
The wind had untied my hair and now it hung loose in dark waves over my bare shoulders. The wood beneath my feet was smooth, worn down by air and water. I lifted the hem of the dress—I would die if I tripped—and wondered where I was going.