The Evolution of Mara Dyer

by Michelle Hodkin

  I sat down on the couch and positioned the spiral notebook conspicuously on my lap. “So,” I said to my brother casually, “At Horizons, they gave us this assignment,” I started, my lie beginning to develop. “To, uh, fictionalize our . . . problems.” That sounded about right. “They said writing is cathartic.” Mom’s favorite word.

  My brother broke into a smile. “That sounds . . . fun?”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Okay, so maybe fun’s the wrong word.”

  “ ‘Stupid’ would be more appropriate,” I said, adding an eye roll. “They want us to work things out in a safe, creative space. I don’t know.”

  My brother nodded slowly. “It makes sense. Sort of like puppet therapy for little kids.”

  “I don’t know what that is, and I’m glad.”

  Daniel chuckled. “Mom told me about it once—the therapist uses a puppet to indirectly address the kid’s feelings in an impersonal way; the child transfers her feelings to the puppet. Your assignment sounds like the teen version.”

  Sure. “Exactly. So, now I have to write this story thing about me but not me, and I need help.”

  “It would be my utmost pleasure.” Daniel hunched forward and rubbed his hands together. He was into it. “So. What’s your premise?”

  Where to begin? “Well . . . something weird is happening to this girl. . . .”

  Daniel placed his hand in his chin and glanced up at the ceiling. “Fairly standard,” he said. “And familiar.” He grinned.

  “And she doesn’t know what it is.”

  “Okay. Is it something supernatural weird, or something normal weird?”

  “Supernatural weird,” I said, without hesitation.

  “How old is she?”

  “A teenager.”

  “Right, of course,” he said with a wink. “Does anyone else know what’s happening to her?”

  Just Noah, but he was as lost in this as I was. And everyone else I tried to tell didn’t believe me. “She’s told other people, but no one believes her,” I said.

  Daniel nodded sagely. “The Cassandra effect. Cursed by Apollo with prophetic visions that always came true, but were never believed by anyone else.”

  Close enough. “Right.”

  “So everyone thinks your ‘protagonist’ is crazy,” he said, making air quotes with his fingers.

  Everyone does seem to. “Pretty much.”

  A smile appeared on Daniel’s lips. “But she’s an unreliable narrator who happens to be telling the truth?”

  Seems that way. “Yep.”

  “Okay,” he said. “So what’s really happening to you—I mean, her?”

  “She doesn’t know, but she has to find out.”

  “Why?”

  Because she’s a murderer. Because she’s losing her mind. Because she’s being tormented by someone who should be dead.

  I studied my brother. His posture was relaxed, his arms draped casually over either side of the patterned black and gold armchair. Daniel would never believe that the things that were happening to me, the things I could do, were real—aside from Noah, who would?—but it was important to make sure he thought I didn’t believe they were real either. I had to make sure he didn’t think I believed my own fiction, or I would set off his alarms.

  So I lolled my head back and looked at the ceiling. Stay casual, stay vague. “Someone’s after her—”

  “Your antagonist, good . . .”

  “And she’s getting worse. She needs to figure out what’s going on.”

  Daniel leaned his chin on his hand and raised his eyebrows. “How about an Obi-Wan slash Gandalf slash Dumbledore slash Giles?”

  “Giles?”

  Daniel shook his head sadly. “I hate that I never managed to persuade you to watch Buffy. It’s a flaw in you, Mara.”

  “Add it to the list.”

  “Anyway,” he went on, “throw in a wise and mysterious character to swoop in and help you—I mean, your heroine—along on her quest, either by offering much-needed guidance or by taking her on as his pupil.”

  I should be so lucky. “There’s no Dumbledore.”

  “Or go really old-school and pull a Tiresias,” he said, nodding to himself. “From Oedipus.”

  I shot him a look. “I know who Tiresias is.”

  But Daniel ignored me. He was getting excited. “Make him blind but able to ‘see’ more than she can. I like that.”

  “Yeah, Daniel, I get it, but there’s no mysterious figure.”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “You just started working on it, Mara. Make one up.”

  I clenched my teeth.

  “Wait a second,” Daniel said quickly, rubbing his hands together. “Are you going to make her an orphan?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, if you don’t, you can have her family help,” he said and grinned. “You could give her a profoundly insightful and knowledgeable older brother.”

  If only my profoundly insightful and knowledgeable older brother believed me. “I think that might be a little too transparent,” I said, growing frustrated. “It’s a creative writing assignment, not a memoir.”

  “Picky, picky,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Write the requisite Google scene, then.”

  I could see it now: Searching for “kids with powers” would generate about a billion hits about X-Men and derivative novels and movies.

  “She wouldn’t even know what to Google,” I said, and sank back against the couch. This wasn’t turning out the way I’d hoped.

  Daniel rubbed his chin, squinting. “How about a significant and portentous dream?”

  Sure, I’ll just snap my fingers. “That’s a little . . . passive?”

  “That’s fair. Is not-Mara a vampire or a creature of some kind but just doesn’t know it yet?”

  I seriously hope not. “I don’t think so . . . she has, like . . . a power.”

  “Like telepathy?”

  “No.”

  “Telekinesis?”

  I don’t think so? I shook my head.

  “Prophecy?”

  “No.” I didn’t want to tell him what she—what I did. “She doesn’t know the extent of it yet.”

  “Have her test it out. Try different things.”

  “It would be dangerous.”

  “Hmm . . . like she shoots lasers out of her eyes?”

  I smiled wryly. “Something like that.”

  “So she could be a superhero or supervillain. Hmm.” He folded one leg beneath him. “Is it a Peter Parker or a Clark Kent situation?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, was your character born with this thing à la Superman or did she acquire it like Spider-Man?”

  An excellent, excellent question—which I didn’t know how to answer.

  “The weirdness started—”

  When? When did it start? My seventeenth birthday wasn’t when this began—it was just when I remembered what I did.

  What I did at the asylum.

  So was the asylum the beginning? When Rachel died? When I killed her?

  I heard her voice in my mind, then.

  “How am I going to die?”

  The hair rose on the back of my neck. “She played with a Ouija board.”

  “BOOM!” Daniel fist-pumped. “Your character is possessed.”

  My throat tightened. “What?”

  “You should have told me earlier, the Ouija board changes everything.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “I don’t understand.”

  “Ouija boards are a conduit to the spirit world,” Daniel explained. “They are always, always bad news. If your protagonist played with one and then weird stuff started happening to her, she’s possessed. You’ve seen The Exorcist. You,” he said, pointing, “have a horror story on your hands.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think she’s possessed—”

  “She’s possessed,” Daniel said knowingly. “I like it. She’ll get way worse before she gets better—if she gets bett
er. Lots of conflict, and you can hit all the genre tropes. Good way to deal with the superhero-slash-supervillain issue too.” Headlights appeared in our driveway and Daniel stood up.

  “What do you mean?” I asked quickly. I needed to hear this.

  “If she’s a hero, she’ll use her powers for good and defeat it. If she’s a villain, she’ll give in to it. Become it. And whoever the hero is will probably defeat her.” He tucked his notebook under his arm. “But you should probably go for the hero angle—otherwise your therapists might worry about you—I mean, her.” He glanced out the window. “Looks like your hero has arrived,” he said with a smirk just as his phone rang. He held it up to his ear. “Hello?”

  “Wait—”

  “It’s Sophie—I’ll help more later, okay?” Daniel turned to leave.

  “The girlfriend before the sister?”

  Daniel waved and winked, then disappeared into his room.

  I stood there, paralyzed, still trying to process everything my brother said when his head popped out from the doorway.

  “You should write it in first-person present tense, by the way—then no one will know whether she survives the possession, although that creates a problematic narratological space.” He vanished again.

  “But she’s not possessed,” I said loudly.

  “Then she’s a vampire,” my brother called out from his room.

  “She’s not a vampire!”

  “Or a werewolf, those are popular too!”

  “SHE’S NOT A WEREWOLF!”

  “LOVE YOU!” he shouted, then closed his door.

  I watched Noah walk up to our house, his gait languorous despite the rain. I was at the front door before he could even knock, and the second I saw him, I pulled him inside.

  He stood there in the foyer, with wet hair curling into his eyes and droplets of rain falling from his soaked T-shirt onto the glossy hardwood floor. “What happened?”

  I didn’t answer him. I led him into my bedroom instead. Opened my messenger bag and handed him the picture of me, the one Jude took. And then I began to talk.

  21

  NOAH WENT TENSE AS HE LISTENED TO ME, HIS muscles visibly rigid beneath his soaked T-shirt. He ran his hand roughly through his wet hair, pushing it back and twisting it up as he studied it. I showed him the camera, too, and he scrolled through each photo. When Noah finally spoke, his voice had a dangerous edge. “Where did you find these?”

  “At Horizons today. The camera was in my bag. The picture, too.”

  “They’re from last night?” he asked, not looking up.

  “Yeah.”

  “Were the doors locked? Your windows?”

  I nodded. “But he has a key.”

  “How?”

  I looked at the floor. “There’s almost a whole day I don’t remember,” I said. “I had Daniel’s keys with me at the police station, but after that, I’m blank.” I was growing angry, now, but with myself. “He could’ve taken the house key there, on the way to the psych unit, at the psych unit . . . I don’t know.”

  Noah looked down at the pictures. “This one was taken from the foot of your bed,” he said mechanically. His eyes rested on my closet. “He must have been standing there.”

  I edged closer to Noah and stared as he studied the image, then scrolled to the next one. It was me in profile, my arm tossed above my head, my blanket down by my waist.

  I spoke, this time. “He was standing at my window when he took this one.” The words, the thought, filled my veins with ice. How long had Jude been standing there? Watching me?

  Noah opened my bedroom door. He pointed at one of the sets of French doors in our hallway, just five feet away. “That’s probably where he—Mara?”

  I looked up at him. His eyes were dark with concern. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  It was only then that I realized I wasn’t quite breathing. A fist squeezed my lungs.

  Noah drew me back into my room and closed the door. He settled me against it, placing his strong hands on my waist. “Breathe,” he whispered.

  I tried to. But with the pressure of his fingers against my skin, with his storm-gray eyes staring into mine, with his warmth and nearness just inches away, I was finding it difficult for other reasons. I nodded anyway, though.

  And then Noah pulled away. “I called the security firm after I left yesterday, but the person I wanted for you was on assignment until tomorrow. I didn’t think—” He closed his eyes, quietly furious. “I should never have left.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, because it wasn’t. “But I’m glad you’re staying tonight.”

  He looked at me, and there was something hard about his stare. “Did you really think I wouldn’t? After what you just told me?”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m a bit bothered by your uncertainty,” Noah said. “I said I wouldn’t let Jude hurt you, and I meant it. If you didn’t want me in the house, I’d be sleeping in my car.”

  His words drew a smile from my lips. “How did you manage to convince my parents to let you stay?”

  “I’m taking Joseph fishing tomorrow. It’s all been arranged.”

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “At five-thirty in the morning.”

  “Still,” I said, giving him a long look. “I’m impressed.”

  “By?”

  “You have my mom wrapped around your little finger—”

  “I do well with older women, it’s true.”

  “And everyone else adores you,” I said.

  At this, Noah paused. “I think your father actually likes me less with each passing day.”

  “He doesn’t know you saved his life.”

  Noah didn’t respond; he went back to studying the pictures instead. “Your eyes in this one . . .”

  Ah. Phoebe’s handiwork. “That wasn’t Jude,” I said. “There’s this girl at Horizons—she’s seriously crazy, Noah, not just, like, neurotic or manic or whatever—she said the picture fell out of my bag, and then handed it to me just like that.”

  He held the photograph up against the light of my grandmother’s white chandelier. “You’re certain she’s the one who scratched them out?”

  I nodded. “She admitted it. She said she ‘fixed’ them.”

  “That is rather disturbing,” he said and paused. “Is it awful there?”

  I shrugged. “Jamie helps.”

  “Wait—Jamie . . . Roth?”

  “Yup. He was banished there post-expulsion.”

  “Intriguing,” Noah said, before I continued recounting everything that had happened. I watched him intently as I told him about the dead cat, the writing on my mirror, the near-accident, and the doll. But after his initial reaction to the pictures, he now seemed . . . impassive.

  Carefully so.

  And by the time I relayed my conversation with Daniel, including the fact that my brother thought I was possessed, Noah seemed light.

  “Possessed with . . . emotion?” he asked slowly.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Possessed, possessed.”

  “And he believes this, why, exactly?” He turned to my bathroom. “May I get a towel?”

  “Sure,” I said, dropping down onto my bed as Noah disappeared. “I told him what’s happening to me.”

  He emerged with his head bent, rubbing a towel through his hair. When he stood up straight, I saw that he was shirtless.

  The architecture of him drew my eyes like a magnet. Noah was built with clean lines and strong ones; his jeans hung low, exposing fine hip bones that made me want to touch.

  I’d seen this much of him before, but not in my room, not like this. It brought a rush of heat to my skin.

  “I thought we decided against that to avoid a lockdown scenario?” He hung the towel on the knob of my bathroom door. “May I borrow a shirt?”

  It took a few seconds to collect myself before I could answer. “I don’t think mine would fit you,” I said, my eyes still lingering on his lean frame. “Ask Danie
l?”

  Noah’s gaze slid to my bedroom door. “I would, but I don’t think it would be wise to leave your room like this.”

  Right. “Right,” I said. I left, came back, and tossed Noah one of Daniel’s shirts. He stretched it over his head and his slender muscles moved beneath his skin and I was riveted.

  “So,” he finally said, unfortunately clothed and leaning back against my desk. “You told your brother what’s been happening?”

  “Kind of . . . I said Horizons gave us a stupid assignment to fictionalize our problems and then described what was happening to my fake protagonist.”

  “Oh, good,” Noah said, nodding seriously. “I was afraid you’d be obvious about it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “He bought it because it’s obvious. Fictionalizing my problems for therapeutic purposes is believable. Me having the ability to kill people with my mind, less so.”

  Noah inclined his head. “Fair point.”

  “Anyway,” I went on, “his conclusion is that I’m possessed and I think there’s something to it, Noah.”

  He ran his fingers through his chaotic hair once again. “Mara, you’re not possessed.”

  “But I’m losing time and I played with a Ouija board.”

  “I never played with a Ouija board,” Noah said.

  “But I did. And it predicted Rachel’s death.”

  It predicted I would kill her.

  Noah slid into my desk chair and listened.

  “Rachel asked it how she was going to die six months before the asylum collapsed,” I explained. “And it spelled out my name. I didn’t even think about it then.”

  “Dramatic irony.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “Mara,” he said lazily. “There are a million explanations for the scenario you just described.”

  “A million?”

  “All right, not a million. Two. One being that Claire, Rachel, or both of them moved the piece themselves.”

  “I thought Claire was doing it too—”

  “The other being that perhaps you moved it yourself.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why would I do that?”

  Noah shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe you were upset with Rachel, and subconsciously you spelled your own name.”