The Evolution of Mara Dyer

  NOAH WAS COMPLETELY SILENT.

  My eyes hardened as I stared at the screen. “Evidence,” I said, and Noah looked at me, his expression chilling. “We need to copy the files, then tell everyone what’s going on.”

  Noah clicked an icon and an electronic window opened—a picture of a yellow triangle around an exclamation mark appeared on-screen along with the words:

  UNABLE TO CONNECT

  “Fine, then,” Noah said, and kicked out of the chair. He took my hand. “We’ll leave.”

  But we couldn’t. “Not without proof,” I said, thinking of my file. Delusions. Nightmares. Hallucinations. “If we have no proof that Jude’s alive, that she knew, and we get out—I could just be sent back.”

  My voice cracked on the word. I tried to swallow away the tightness in my throat and handed Noah Phoebe’s journal so I could keep rifling through the desk. For CDs, a thumb drive, any way to record this.

  But Noah’s voice stopped me cold.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, staring inside Phoebe’s notebook. I leaned around to see.

  I could barely read her chicken scratch, but I did see my name in several places, along with sketches of a crude likeness of myself with my insides spilled out.

  “Not that,” Noah said. He pointed instead to the inside cover.

  Where Phoebe had drawn hearts with the initials J+P inside. Where she had written in flowery, cursive script:

  Phoebe Lowe

  Phoebe’s last name was Reynard. Jude’s last name was Lowe.

  J + P.

  Phoebe’s words rushed back to me—what she said after she planted the note in my backpack, the one that said I see you. They tumbled and spun in my brain:

  “I didn’t write it,” Phoebe had said, then lowered her eyes back to her journal. She smiled. “But I did put it there.”

  I heard her voice in my mind again as bile rose in my throat.

  “My boyfriend gave it to me,” she said in a singsong voice.

  “Who’s your boyfriend, Phoebe?” I asked.

  But I never believed she actually had one. I just thought she was playing some crazy game. When she never answered, when she started singing, it made me think I won. But now I knew I hadn’t.

  Jude did.

  “He was using her,” I said, the fear fresh and raw. “He was using her.”

  Dr. Kells knew Jude was alive and knew his connection to me. Jude was meeting with Phoebe, telling her who-knew-what and giving her frightening notes to pass along. Phoebe and I were Horizons patients. Dr. Kells was the Horizons director. And Jude?

  What the hell was he?

  “Fuck this.” Noah snapped Phoebe’s notebook shut and took my hand. “We’re leaving now.” He pulled me, tugged me toward the door. I could barely make my leaden legs move.

  “What are they doing?” l whispered.

  “We’ll figure it out, let’s just go—”

  My mind was shutting down in fear and confusion and shock. I wouldn’t have known what direction to go in if Noah didn’t lead me. I followed him out of Dr. Kells’s office—the door closed behind us with a click. The halls were still empty and all of the dormitory room doors were still closed. None of the counselors had woken up yet. We might be able to slip out before they did.

  Did they know everything too?

  As we rushed through the hall, though, I noticed that there was, in fact, one door still open. One that I made sure I closed earlier on my way out.

  My door.

  I jerked to a stop in front of it, halting Noah along with me. “My door,” I whispered to him. “I closed it, Noah. I closed it.”

  “Mara—”

  I pushed the door open—a dim rectangle of light fell on the wall, by Phoebe’s bed.

  Where there were letters.

  Letters that formed words.

  Words that were written in something dark and wet.

  The salt-rust smell assaulted my nostrils and turned my stomach. Noah flipped the light switch but the light didn’t turn on. He moved deeper into the room, but did not let go of my hand.

  Phoebe was tucked into her bed, the covers up to her chest. Her arms were by her side, and two dark, red balloons of blood burst from her slashed wrists, staining the white blanket on either side of her body. And on the wall, written in blood, were three words.

  I SEE YOU

  Jude was here.

  The room was sucked of all sound. I tried to swallow, to scream, but I couldn’t. It was an infinity before I heard my name whispered in the most familiar voice I knew.

  Noah’s arms wrapped around me, vise-tight and perfect. He folded me into him. He lifted me up, the warmth of him warming me through my sweat-damp shirt. I wrapped my legs around him and buried my face in his neck and sobbed without sound.

  He didn’t say anything as he carried me. Noah stalked swiftly and silently, through the hall with me in his arms; I didn’t know how he was doing it and I didn’t care. If he put me down, I wasn’t sure I would be able to stand on my own.

  We reached the front entrance then. And he leaned back and looked up into my eyes.

  “The resort is maybe twenty minutes, if we run. Can you run, Mara?”

  Could I run?

  The wolf was at my door and there was fire at my feet. I had to run. I would.

  I nodded, and Noah set me down, my hand still in his grasp. He reached for the door.

  But what about—

  “Jamie,” I whispered, looking behind us. Looking back. “Jamie was with us in the office, Noah. He was with us.”

  I was being watched and tortured. Phoebe was being used and had been killed.

  Neither of us had been safe. Both of us were here.

  Which meant Jamie wasn’t safe either. None of the other students were.

  But of them, Jamie was the one I cared about the most. If I had to choose, he was the one I had to get out.

  “We have to get Jamie,” I said, my voice clear.

  Noah nodded once, his expression hard. “I will, I swear it, but I need to get you safe, first.”

  Noah was choosing me.

  I didn’t waver. “We can’t leave him.”

  “Mara—”

  “We can’t leave him,” I said, and tried to pull away.

  “We won’t,” Noah said. But he placed his hand on the doorknob anyway, and he wouldn’t let me go.

  It wouldn’t have mattered if he had, though, because the door didn’t open. The knob didn’t even turn.

  We were locked inside.

  “We’re trapped,” I whispered. I hated my voice. I hated my fear.

  Noah pulled me away from the door and headed left. His strides were long and fast and I could barely keep up. I had no idea where we were going; the place was like a maze. But Noah’s perfect memory served us well—he led us to the empty dining room, which looked out over the ocean. The edge of dawn had begun to creep over the black horizon through the window. Noah tried the door that led to the kitchen.

  It was locked too.

  He swore, and then he was back by my side. He looked out at the dark water. Looked at the tables and chairs.

  “Move,” he said to me, urging me away from the window.

  I backed away as Noah lifted a chair. Launched it in fury at the glass.

  It bounced off.

  “All right,” he said calmly to the air, to no one. Then to me he said, “Let’s wake them up.”

  Jamie. Stella. Everyone, he meant. We outnumbered the adults, and together, maybe we could do something that alone, we couldn’t. Maybe together, we could all find a way out.

  We ran back to the patient rooms. Noah tried to open the first door. Locked. He banged his fist once, ordered whoever was inside to wake up.

  He was met with silence. We tried another door.

  Another locked door.

  That was when I realized I’d never seen any locks on any of the patient doors. There were no latches to turn. No buttons to press.

  That didn’t mean there were no
locks. It just meant that we, the patients, weren’t able to lock them.

  But now we were locked inside.

  Trapped, my mind whispered.

  We hadn’t seen or heard another living soul since we left Kells’s office. No counselors. No adults. They left us here.

  Why?

  My mind bent in confusion as Noah pulled me to his room, the one he shared with Jamie. The door was open.

  Jamie was not inside.

  My legs were string—I couldn’t stand anymore. I sank, but Noah caught me. He pulled me close, so close against him and wrapped himself around me until every point of my body made contact with his. Forehead to forehead, chest to chest, hips to hips. He loosened his arms and pushed the matted, damp hair from my face, from my neck. He tried to hold me together, but I still fell apart.

  After my pointless sobs softened into silence, I spoke. “I’m so scared,” I said.

  And so ashamed, I didn’t say. I felt so weak.

  “I know,” Noah said, his back against the frame of his bed, his arms wrapped around me still. His lips brushed my ear. “But I have to go find Jamie.”

  I nodded. I knew. I wanted him to. But I couldn’t seem to let him go.

  It wouldn’t have mattered, though. A few seconds later, we heard the scream.

  65

  IT CUT OFF AS SHARPLY AS IT BEGAN.

  “That wasn’t Jamie,” Noah said strongly against my temple. He tucked my head beneath his chin, my cheek against his chest.

  He was right. The voice had been female.

  We listened, fitted against each other in the dark. The silence was thick, shutting out everything but my heartbeat. Or Noah’s. It was impossible to know.

  Another scream issued—from the compound’s center. From the garden? I couldn’t tell from here.

  “Stay here,” Noah said to me, his voice firm and clear.

  He couldn’t not go. But I couldn’t leave him.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “We’re not splitting up.” My voice sharpened. “We’re not splitting up.”

  Noah exhaled slowly. He didn’t answer, but he took my hand and lifted me up.

  Our footsteps echoed in the silent halls and I gripped his fingers tightly, wishing we could become one thing. Holding on to him, I noticed, my wrists didn’t even hurt.

  The early morning sky was still very dark, the black brightening only to a deep purple. Lightning flickered through the windows that wouldn’t release us and made monsters of our shadows against the wall.

  Another scream.

  We were corralled by it. Drawn to it. That was the point.

  We walked into my nightmare together.

  Jude stood in the Zen garden, broad and imposing in the sand. He stood between harmoniously arranged stalks of bamboo and sculptured bonsai trees. Jamie and Stella Adam and Megan were kneeling, arranged in the sand. Heads bowed. Hands bound. Positioned among the rocks.

  Another girl—I couldn’t see her face—was lying on her side, unmoving. Her white shirt was soaked in blood, coloring it red.

  There was a storm outside. It raged through the skylight. But the garden was quiet. No one struggled. No one said a word. Not even Jamie. The tableau was surreal. Deranged. Utterly terrifying.

  Then Jude’s voice polluted the air. “Did you try the doors first?” he asked us, and smiled. “The windows?”

  No one spoke.

  Jude clucked his tongue. “You did. I can tell.” His gaze wandered over each of the bodies in the sand. When he looked up, it was at Noah. “While I’m glad we’re able to finally meet,” he said, “I did want to avoid this.”

  Nothing in Noah’s posture or expression showed that he’d even heard him. He was as still and smooth as one of the stones in the sand. The sight of bound and kneeling teenagers didn’t appear to unsettle him at all.

  Which appeared to unsettle Jude. He blinked and swallowed, then met my eyes. “I tried to find you, Mara, but you were hiding. So I had no choice. You made me take them.”

  “Why?” My voice shattered the quiet. “What do you want?”

  “I want Claire back,” he said simply.

  “She’s dead,” I said, my voice quivering. “I killed her and I wish I hadn’t but I did and she’s dead. I’m sorry.”

  “He thinks you can bring her back,” Stella said, her husky voice barely above a whisper.

  Seven pairs of eyes focused on her with eerie precision.

  “What?” I asked her.

  Jude crouched down in front of Stella, a coiled snake.

  She ignored him, didn’t look. She looked, instead, at me. “He thinks you can bring her back.”

  Jude smacked Stella across the face.

  Jamie flinched.

  Megan started to cry.

  Adam watched Jude with keen interest—not fear.

  Noah took a step forward, brimming with quiet violence.

  But when I saw Jude hit Stella, something inside of me rose up from the dark. I held on to Noah still, but I stopped shaking.

  “Bring Claire back,” I said slowly.

  Stella nodded. “That’s what he thinks.”

  “How do you—” I began to ask. Then stopped, because I knew.

  Stella was like us. Different. I looked at her, at the expression on her face, and realized how.

  She knew what Jude was thinking. She could hear his thoughts.

  If Jude believed that I could bring Claire back from the dead, Claire who was mangled and crushed to pieces, who was buried in a closed casket in Rhode Island under six feet of earth, he was absolutely detached from reality. Completely delusional.

  The only way out of this would be to act like his delusion was real.

  “Jude,” I said, my voice pleading. Practiced. “I want to bring Claire back. Tell me how to bring her back.”

  The muscles in his face twitched. “You have to be motivated,” he said mechanically. Then smacked Stella again. Hard.

  The muscles in Noah’s arms went rigid, tense beneath my grip.

  Jude’s eyes raked over Noah and a smile formed on his lips. “Yes, join us,” he said to him. “You can help.”

  Something changed in Noah, then. He relaxed. “And how, precisely, would I do that?” His voice had become more than just blank. It was bored.

  Stella coughed. Bowed to the ground, spat blood on the sand. Then looked up at me, her stare direct. “You have to be scared,” she said to me. “If you’re afraid enough, he thinks, you’ll do it.”

  So Jude did want me afraid. Everything he did was designed to terrify me. Showing up at the police station so I would know he was alive. Stealing Daniel’s key so he could come and go whenever he wanted, so he could take pictures of me while I slept, so he could move my things around, like the doll, and I would know he had been there, violating the place I should have felt safe.

  He killed the cat and told me why with a message in blood.

  But that wasn’t enough. He didn’t want me to feel safe anywhere, with anyone. Not with my father—so he nearly ran us off the road. And not at Horizons—so he used Phoebe to scare me. He gave her the picture and had her scratch out my eyes, he wrote that note and had her deliver it. He played me like an instrument and used Phoebe like a tool, to unsettle me, to push me, to make me afraid when he couldn’t be around to do it himself.

  I thought it was all for revenge. For Claire. To punish me for what I’d done to her and to him. And no doubt that was part of it. But in his mind, it was also a means to an end.

  An end I couldn’t possibly deliver.

  I had to be motivated, he said. If I was afraid enough I’d do it, he thought.

  But I was afraid. I was terrified. And Claire was still never going to come back.

  I didn’t know how to pretend otherwise anymore. “Jude,” I said. “I swear, I would do it if I could. I’m sorry.”

  He cocked his head at me. Studied me. “You’re not sorry,” he said plainly. “But you will be.”

  Then, in a movement so sudden
I almost couldn’t make sense of it, he grabbed a fistful of Stella’s thick curls, lifting her up and bending her back at once.

  Megan screamed. Jamie looked away. Adam made a surprised noise.

  Noah was on edge again, I could feel it. But he didn’t move from my side.

  I was seething. “You think if you torture her, I’ll bring Claire back?” I asked, my voice rising in fury. “If I could do it I’d have done it already—”

  Jude let Stella fall back to her knees. He looked down at her.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered.

  A smile crept across Jude’s mouth.

  The way she sounded, the way he smiled, set my nerves on fire. “What?”

  Jude looked up at me, and his grin grew wider. “Tell them,” he said to Stella. When she didn’t speak, he tugged on her hair. “Tell them.”

  “She—” Stella screwed up her face, and her eyes flicked to Jude as he crouched beside her. “She knew,” Stella whispered, looking straight at him. “Jude’s part of it. She knew—oh my God, she knew, about all of us, the whole time—he’s part of it, she promised him you’d bring Claire back if he brought you here, she told him how to make you do it, and she left the rest of us here to see what you would do, oh God—”

  “She?” Jamie whispered.

  “Kells,” Noah said.

  “Jude’s part of it?” I asked, my voice brittle and breaking. “He’s part of what?”

  What was he? What were we?

  “I can’t hear,” Stella wailed, “there are too many voices!” Then Stella whispered and mumbled; I could only catch one word. It sounded like “insurance.”

  “How do we get out?” I asked quickly. That was what I needed to know, before Stella lost it. How to get out.

  “You can’t,” Stella moaned.

  “I was let in,” Jude said calmly.

  I felt like I’d been kicked in the chest.

  Dr. Kells had let Jude in. The adults were all gone. There was no one to help us, no one who would come.

  “He killed Phoebe,” Stella said, her shoulders shaking. “But it looks like you did it, Mara—that’s what they’re going to say. They need you—”

  Jude slapped her cheek. Stella sucked her full lips into her mouth and looked down at the sand. She wasn’t going to say anything else.