“No, I would not like one. Cigarettes are disgusting,”
Noah placed the pack back in the top pocket of his shirt. “I don’t have to smoke if it bothers you,” he said, but the way he said it set me on edge.
“It doesn’t bother me,” I said. “If you don’t mind looking forty years old at twenty, smelling like an ashtray, and getting lung cancer, why should I?” The words tumbled out of my mouth. So obnoxious, but I couldn’t help it; Noah brought out the worst in me. Feeling a tad guilty, I snuck a glance at him to see if he was annoyed.
Of course not. He just looked amused.
“I find it hilarious that whenever I light up, Americans look at me like I’m going to urinate on their children. And thanks for your concern, but I’ve never been ill a day in my life.”
“How nice for you.”
“It is nice, yes. Now, do you mind if I drive this starving dog in the back of my car to the veterinarian?”
And the guilt was gone. A rush of heat spread from my cheeks to my collarbone. “I’m sorry, is driving and talking too complicated? No problem, I’ll shut up.”
Noah opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again and shook his head. He pulled out of the parking lot and we sat in awkward silence for nine minutes, thanks to a train.
When we reached the vet’s office, Noah left the car and started walking to the passenger side. I flung my door open, just in case he had a mind to open it. His coltish gait didn’t change; instead, he opened the back door and reached for the dog. The upholstery was mercifully free of canine bodily fluids as he lifted the dog out. But instead of placing her on the ground, Noah carried her all the way to the door of the building. She nuzzled into his chest. Traitor.
As we neared the door, he asked me what her name was.
I shrugged. “I have no idea. I told you, I found her ten minutes ago.”
“Yes,” Noah said, cocking his head to one side. “You did tell me that. But they’re going to need a name to register her under.”
“Well, pick one, then.” I shifted my weight from foot to foot, growing nervous. I didn’t have a clue how I was going to pay for the vet visit, or what I would say once we went inside.
“Hmm,” Noah murmured. He looked at the dog with a serious expression. “What’s your name?”
I threw my head back in exasperation. I just wanted to get this over with.
Noah ignored me, taking his sweet time. After an eternity, he smiled. “Mabel. Your name is Mabel,” he told the dog.
She didn’t even look up at him; she was still curled up comfortably in his arms.
“Can we go in now?” I asked.
“You’re a piece of work,” he declared. “Now be a gentleman and open the door for me. My hands are full.”
I complied, sulking the whole time.
When we walked in, the receptionist’s eyes widened as she took in the dog’s appearance. She rushed off to get the vet and my mind raced, trying to think of what I could possibly say to finagle treatment for the dog without having to pay for it. A cheerful voice from the other side of the large waiting area startled me from my scheming.
“Noah!” A petite woman emerged from one of the examining rooms. Her face was pleasant, alight with surprise. “What are you doing here?” she asked, beaming at him as he bent over and kissed both her cheeks. Curious.
“Hello, Mum,” Noah said. “This is Mabel.” He nodded down at the dog tucked into his arms. “My schoolmate Mara found her near campus.”
It took a conscious exertion of will to nod my head. Noah’s smile suggested that he noticed my bewilderment, and enjoyed it.
“I’m going to take her in the back to weigh her.”
She motioned to the veterinary assistant, who gently extracted the dog from Noah’s arms. Then it was just me and Noah in the waiting area. Alone.
“So,” I started. “You didn’t think to mention that your mother was the vet?”
“You never asked,” he said. He was right, of course. But still.
When his mother came back into the room, she outlined the various treatments she was going to administer, which included keeping the dog over the weekend for observation. I silently thanked the heavens. That would buy me some time to figure out what I was going to do with her.
After she finished ticking off a list of Mabel’s ailments, Noah’s mother looked at me expectantly. Guess I couldn’t delay the payment discussion any further.
“Umm, Dr. Shaw?” I hated the sound of my voice. “I’m sorry, I don’t—I don’t have any money with me, but if the receptionist can give me an estimate, I can get to the bank and—”
Dr. Shaw cut me off with a smile. “That won’t be necessary, Mara. Thank you for … catching her, did you say?”
I swallowed and my eyes flicked to my shoes before I met her gaze. “Yes. I found her.”
Dr. Shaw looked skeptical, but she smiled. “Thank you for bringing her in. She wouldn’t have lasted much longer.”
If she only knew. An image of her owner’s body lying on blood-darkened mud flickered in my mind again, and I tried not to let it show in my face. I thanked Noah’s mother profusely and then he and I headed back to the car. Noah’s stride was twice as long as mine and he got there first, opening the passenger door for me.
“Thanks,” I said, before glancing at his smug, self-satisfied expression. “For everything.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, his voice laced with obnoxious triumph. As expected. “Now, are you going to tell me how you really found the dog?”
I turned away from his stare. “What are you talking about?” I hoped he wouldn’t notice that I couldn’t look him in the eye.
“You were walking Mabel on a slip lead when I saw you. There’s no way she was wearing that, from the wounds on her neck. Where’d you get it?”
Being trapped, I did what any self-respecting liar would do. I changed the subject. My eyes fell on his clothes.
“Why do you always look like you just rolled out of bed?”
“Because usually I have.” And the way he raised his eyebrow at me made me blush.
“Classy,” I said.
Noah leaned back and laughed. The sound was raucous. I loved it immediately, then mentally flogged myself for the thought. But his eyes crinkled at the corners and his smile illuminated his entire face. The light changed, and Noah, still smiling, took his hands off the steering wheel and reached into his pocket, withdrawing the cigarettes. He drove with his knee as he tapped one out in his hand, flicked open a small silver lighter and lit up in one fluid movement.
I tried to ignore the way his lips curved around the cigarette, how he held it pinched between thumb and third finger, and drew it almost reverently to his mouth.
That mouth. Smoking was a bad habit, yes. But he looked so good doing it.
“I hate uncomfortable silences,” Noah said, interrupting my less-than-clean thoughts. He tilted his head back slightly and a few strands of his spiking, curling hair caught a shaft of sunlight that filtered through his car window. “They make me nervous,” he said.
That comment warranted an eye-roll. “I have a hard time believing anything makes you nervous.” The words rang true. It was impossible to imagine that Noah was anything but comfortable, all the time. And not just comfortable—bored. Bored. And gorgeous. And I was sitting next to him. Close.
My pulse raced to catch up with my thoughts. There was some villainy afoot, absolutely.
“It’s true,” he continued. “I totally freak out when people look at me, as well.”
“I call shenanigans,” I said, as the sounds of Miami floated in through the window.
“What?” Noah looked at me, all innocence.
“You’re not shy.”
“No?”
“No,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “And pretending to be makes you look like a jackass.”
Noah feigned offense. “You’ve wounded me to the core with your profane characterization.”
“Pass the tiss
ues.”
Noah broke into an easy smile as the cars in front of us lurched forward. “All right. Maybe ‘shy’ isn’t the right word,” he said. “But I do get—anxious—when there are too many people around. I don’t really like attention.” He then studied me carefully. “A vestige of my dark and mysterious past.”
It was a struggle not to laugh in his face. “Really.”
He took another long drag on his cigarette. “No. I was just an awkward kid. I remember being, like, twelve or thirteen and all my friends had little girlfriends. And I’d go to sleep and feel like a loser, wishing that one day I could grow up and just be fit.”
“Fit?”
“Yeah. Fit. Hot. Anyway, I did.”
“Did what?”
“I woke up one morning, went to school, and the girls noticed me back. Rather unnerving, actually.”
His candor caught me a little off guard. I tried not to let it show. “Poor Noah,” I said, and sighed.
He smirked and stared straight ahead. “I figured out what to do with it eventually, but not until we moved here. Unfortunately.”
“I’m sure you worked it out just fine.”
He turned to me and arched an eyebrow. “The girls here are boring.”
And the arrogance was back. “We Americans are so uncouth,” I said.
“Not Americans. Just the girls here, at Croyden.”
I noticed then that we were back in the parking lot. And parked. How did that happen?
“Most of them, anyway,” Noah finished.
“You seem to be managing.”
“I was, but things are looking up this week in particular.”
So awful. I shook my head slowly, not even bothering to hide my grin.
“You’re not like other girls.”
I snorted. “Seriously?” And Jamie said he was smooth.
“Seriously,” he replied, missing my sarcasm. Or ignoring it. Noah took a final drag on his stub of a cigarette, breathed the smoke out of his flared nostrils and flicked the remains of the cancer stick out the window.
My mouth fell open. “Did I just see you litter?”
“I’m driving a hybrid. It cancels out.”
“You’re horrible,” I said, without conviction.
“I know,” Noah said, with it. He smiled, then reached over my lap to open my door, brushing my arm with his as he leaned across my body. He cracked my door open but didn’t move away. His face was inches from mine, and I could see hints of gold in his perpetual five o’ clock shadow. He smelled like sandalwood and ocean, but only faintly of smoke. My breath caught in my throat.
When my cell phone rang, I jumped so forcefully that my head hit the roof of Noah’s car. “Whatthef—!”
The phone continued to ring, ignorant of my pain. The lyrics of Tupac’s “Dear Mama” that Joseph had programmed for my ringtone indicated the culprit.
“I’m sorry, I have to—”
“Wait—” Noah started.
My heart galloped in my chest and only partly from surprise. Noah’s lips were inches away from my face, my phone was protesting in my hand, and I was in trouble.
15
I MUSTERED UP EVERY OUNCE OF FREE WILL I HAD and extracted myself from his car. I gave him a halfhearted wave as I shut the door behind me. I answered the phone.
“Hello?”
“Mara! Where are you?” My mother sounded frantic.
I turned the key in the ignition of Daniel’s car and glanced at the clock. I was seriously late. Not good.
“I’m driving home now.” My tires squealed as I reversed out of the spot, and almost hit a parked black Mercedes in the spot behind me.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
She was counting every nanosecond I hesitated, so I went with the truth. “I found a starving dog near the school and she was in really bad shape so I had to take her to the vet.” There.
There was silence on her end before she finally asked, “Where is it now?”
Some jerk honked behind me as I turned onto the expressway. “Where is what?”
“The dog, Mara.”
“Still at the vet.”
“How did you pay for it?”
“I didn’t—a classmate saw me and he took me to his mom, a vet, and she treated her for free.”
“That’s convenient,” she said.
There it was; that edge to her voice. I was in it, and deep. I didn’t respond.
“I’ll see you when you get home,” my mother said. Abruptly.
I was not looking forward to it, but I slammed on the gas at the first opportunity anyway. I dared the cops to pull me over, pushing ninety when I could. I wove in and out of lanes at every opportunity. I ignored the irritated honking. Miami was infecting me.
It wasn’t long before I pulled into the driveway at home. I crept into the house like a criminal, hoping to be able to sneak into my room without being seen, but my mother was perched on the arm of the sofa in the sunken living room. She’d been waiting for me. Neither of my brothers was within sight or hearing. Curse them.
“Let’s talk.” Her expression was unnaturally calm. I braced myself for the onslaught.
“You have to answer the phone when I call. Every time.”
“I didn’t realize it was you calling before. I didn’t recognize the number.”
“It’s my office number, Mara. I told you to program it in as soon as we moved, and left you a voice mail.”
“I didn’t have time to listen to it. Sorry.”
My mother leaned forward, and her eyes searched my face. “Is there really a dog?”
I stared straight back into them, defiant. “Yes.”
“So if I call the vet’s office tomorrow morning and ask about it, they’ll confirm?”
“You don’t trust me?”
My mother didn’t respond. She just sat there, eyebrows raised, waiting for me to say something.
I gritted my teeth, then spoke. “The vet’s name is Dr. Shaw, and her office near school,” I said. “I don’t remember the street address.”
Her expression didn’t change.
I was sick of this. “I’m going to my room,” I said. When I turned around, she let me go.
I closed the door a bit too forcefully. Trapped in my room, I couldn’t delay thinking about what happened today any longer. Noah. Mabel. Her owner. His death.
Things were changing. Sweat pebbled my skin, even though I knew it wasn’t possible. It wasn’t possible. I was in class at nine this morning, when that bastard died. He had to have died earlier. The coroner, or whoever he was, was wrong. Even he’d said he was just guessing.
That was it. I imagined my conversation with him. I’d thought he snuck up on me too quietly, but he didn’t sneak up on me at all. He was already dead. The whole thing was just another hallucination—par for the course, really, considering my PTSD.
But still. Today felt … different. Confirmation that I was now crazier than I’d known it was possible for me to be. My mother worked with only the mildly disturbed. I was full on delusional. Abnormal. Psychotic.
When I joined my family for dinner that night, I felt strangely, disturbingly calm as I ate, as if watching the whole thing from a distance. I even managed to be polite to my mother. In a way, it was oddly comforting, the conviction of my insanity. The man died before I met him this morning. Wait, no—I never met him. I invented the conversation between us to give me a feeling of power over the situation in which I felt powerless; my mother’s words, but they sounded about right. I was powerless to bring Rachel back, she’d said, after I was released from the hospital. Right before she mentioned—pushed—the idea of counseling and/or drugs to help me cope. And of course now, I was powerless to leave Florida and go back home. But a skinny, neglected, abandoned dog was something I could fix.
So that was it, then. I was truly crazy. But then why did I feel like there was something else? Something I was missing?
My mother’s laughter at the dinner table brought me b
ack to the present. Her whole face lit up when she smiled, and I felt guilty for freaking her out. I decided not to tell her about my little adventure today; if she watched me any closer, she’d turn into the Eye of Sauron. And then she’d follow through on her threat of therapy and medication. Neither option sounded particularly appealing, and really, now that I knew what was happening, I could deal with it.
Until I fell asleep.
16
BEFORE
WE PULLED INTO A LONG DRIVEWAY guarded by a rusting iron gate. Thick branches of leafless trees twisted over the car, rasping in the wind. Our headlights provided the only light on the silent road. Despite the artificial heat, I shivered.
Jude put his arm around me and turned down Death Cab on the speakers. I looked out the window. The headlights flashed over an idling car about twenty feet away, and I instantly recognized it as Claire’s. The glass was fogged and she cut the engine as we pulled up. I reached for the door and Jude reached for my waist. I gritted my teeth. I was already on edge, and wasn’t up to fending him off again tonight.
I twisted away. “They’re waiting for us.”
He didn’t let me go. “You sure you’re ready?” He looked skeptical.
“Hell, yes,” I lied. I smiled for emphasis.
“Because we can turn around if you want.”
I can’t say his suggestion wasn’t appealing. Warm covers usually win over midnight excursions in the freezing cold.
But tonight was different. Rachel had been begging me to do this since last year. And now that she had Claire in her corner, my neuroses could cost me my best friend.
So instead of saying yes, emphatically yes, I rolled my eyes. “I said I was in. I’m in.”
“Or, we could stay here.” Jude pulled me toward him but I turned my head so that he caught my cheek.
“Do you want to turn around?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
Jude pulled away, irritated. “I’ve already done this. It’s just an old building. Big deal.”
He launched himself out of the car and I followed. He’d be pissy later, but it was worth it. We’d been dating for only two months, and during the first one, I actually liked him. Who wouldn’t? He was the picture of all-American wholesomeness. Dark blond hair and green eyes, same as Claire’s. Big linebacker shoulders. And he was sweet. Syrup sweet. For the first month.
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer md-1 Page 7
