The Retribution of Mara Dyer

by Michelle Hodkin

  The video camera swiveled in our direction. I’d already told Jamie what to say.

  “Hi,” he said, as if reading from a script. “I’m here to see Noah? I’m a friend from school?”

  There was a click, and then a voice on the intercom. “No visitors are to be admitted at present, I’m afraid.”

  I knew that voice. “Albert?” The Shaws’ butler. He’d met me before. I prayed that he would remember. “It’s Mara Dyer—I have something of Noah’s—”

  “He’s . . . he’s unavailable, miss.”

  Unavailable. Unavailable dead or unavailable alive?

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  There was a pause. “I’m afraid—” My heart lodged in my throat. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”

  I tried to stay calm. I had to stay calm, or we would be thrown out of there with more questions and fewer answers than we’d arrived with.

  “Can I give you something to give to him?”

  There was no answer, but the gate swung open. I leaned my head back against the seat in relief as Jamie drove forward.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” Jamie said. He’d said that before. Every time, actually.

  Watching him exercise his ability was sort of fascinating. He worked himself up into an anxious, nervous frenzy, wondering out loud if he could do it, mumbling to himself about the consequences. It reminded me of something I’d read once, about divers making themselves hyperventilate before they dove, to force more oxygen into their lungs or something. Since we were triggered by stress and fear and possibly pain, Jamie freaking out about whether or not he could work his magic made it more likely that he could.

  Albert was waiting for us at the front door when we drove up. His hands were tucked behind his back. I fleetingly wondered how he would react to Jamie vomiting in one of the mammoth potted boxwood urns when he finished with him.

  “You can do this,” I whispered to Jamie. And then he did.

  “Hi, Albert,” Jamie said in that calm, confident, crystalline voice. “My name is Jamie Roth, though you’re not actually going to remember that, or the fact that we had this conversation, once we’ve had it.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “So here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to ask you questions, and you’re going to give me honest answers, all right?”

  “All right.”

  “Okay, what’s your middle name?”

  Stella and I shared a glance.

  “Eugene.”

  “Do you have a driver’s license?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give me your wallet, please.”

  Albert did so. Jamie checked it. “His middle name is in fact Eugene. Great. Okay, Albert. Now this is where it’s going to get a little weird. Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready for weird, sir.”

  “Is Noah Shaw alive?”

  It took an eternal, agonizing second for Albert to answer.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes, Noah’s alive?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  I wanted to do cartwheels on the lawn. I wanted to fly. I wanted to rocket into the sun.

  “Where is he?”

  “At the Horizons Residential Treatment Center, sir.”

  No. No.

  “Are you sure, Albert?”

  “Yes, sir. I drove him there myself.”

  “When?”

  “Three weeks ago.”

  That was shortly after I’d been dropped off myself.

  “Do you know if he was there just for the retreat or if he’d been admitted long-term?”

  “I’m not sure, sir.”

  “Aren’t his parents worried about him?”

  “Not particularly, no.”

  No surprise there.

  “Are they home?” Jamie asked. “Can we speak to them?”

  “I’m afraid they’re in Europe at the moment.”

  “What about Katie?” I asked. Jamie repeated my question.

  “Her as well,” Albert answered.

  Jamie looked at me and shrugged. “What next?”

  I didn’t know. But at least we had one more answer than we’d had when we’d arrived; there had been no funeral. Which meant his family believed he was alive. But they also thought he was at Horizons. Noah had gotten himself thrown in there for me. To be with me. And now—

  Now he was nowhere. Because of me.

  22

  JAMIE AND STELLA TRIED TO cheer me up when we got back into the car. “It’s not hopeless,” they said. “We’ll find him.” But I began to feel hopeless and doubt that we would find him. I had nothing to hold on to, so I held on to myself. My arms crossed over my stomach, pressing his clothes against my skin as I tried to think about what he would have said if he’d been there. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine him, what he would have looked like, sounded like, if he’d been in the seat next to me.

  I pictured his face, careless and unworried, his hair a tousled mess as he reminded me that his parents were idiots. That they never knew where he was, even when he was home. He would tell me not to believe something unless it could be proven. Once, I would’ve said that just because you couldn’t prove something didn’t mean it wasn’t real. But I wouldn’t say that today. Today I needed to believe he was right.

  Jamie came up with the implausible explanation we would offer to each of our respective families when we showed up on our respective doorsteps. We’re still at Horizons. Everything is fine. We’re going on an extended wilderness retreat up north, where we can sing with all the voices of the mountains and paint with all the colors of the wind. I’d seen Jamie work miracles, but this was my mother I had to convince. I did not have high hopes.

  But we didn’t end up visiting my house first. My mother and father would have been out working, and Joseph would have been at school. Stella’s mother worked the night shift, and her dad had left when she was little, so it was just her and her mom. Jamie talked to her mother, which seemed to go well, and then he went to talk to his own parents. I have no idea how that went because he didn’t invite us into his house. He walked out carrying a bigger duffel bag with “provisions.” For what, I didn’t ask. On his way back to the car (our third), he wiped his mouth and gave us the thumbs-up. I started the car. “Shotgun,” he said to Stella.

  “But I’m already sitting here.”

  “But I’m the one who got us the car. And the one messing with our parents’ memories. Come on,” he whined. “It’s hot in the backseat, and I don’t feel well.”

  “How did it go?” I asked him.

  Jamie shrugged. “Okay? They were surprised to see me at first, obviously, but I fed them the bullshit and they swallowed it.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that.”

  “Like that,” I repeated. “You’re proving to be quite handy.”

  “Yeah, I am. And you’re next.”

  I was, finally. The afternoon light filtered through the palm trees and oaks that dotted the cul-de-sac we lived on, and I did a quick car check when we drove by the house. Mom’s, Dad’s, and Daniel’s cars were all there, which meant Joseph would hopefully be there too. Jamie said that would make this all easier—feed everyone the same lines at the same time, and there’s less chance that an inconsistency will crop up later and conflict with what they remember.

  But for this visit both Jamie and Stella would need to join me. Because it wasn’t just my parent problem we needed to fix; we needed to get New Theories in Genetics from Daniel too. While Jamie was talking, Stella would entertain my brother, and I’d fetch the book. Lemon squeezy.

  I realized when I walked up to the house that I didn’t have my key, and my parents didn’t keep a spare in any obvious places, like under the doormat or a decorative rock or something.

  I looked at Jamie and Stella. “So what, I just knock?”

  “I’d suggest it,” Jamie said.

  “And then?”

  “And then I’ll tell your family what I told my family, and Stel
la’s mom.”

  Stella put a hand on my shoulder. “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  It sounded easy enough. But my hand still shook when I lifted it to knock on the door.

  My mother answered it. Her eyes went wide when she saw me. “Mara! What are you doing here?”

  I don’t know why, but my eyes began to fill the second I saw her. I wanted to throw my arms around her and hear her tell me she loved me. That everything would be okay. But I couldn’t move, and I didn’t say a word.

  Jamie did, though. “Everything’s okay,” he said smoothly as my mother ushered the three of us in. I watched her face as he spoke to her, told her the fake story of what had happened to us, why we were there, and why we’d be leaving again soon. My mother looked completely untroubled by all of it. Relaxed, even. She urged Jamie and Stella to sit at the kitchen table while she made us something to eat, and Jamie continued to talk. It all seemed so normal, except for the fact that it wasn’t, at all. I knew why we had to do this, but I still felt the urge to take my mother by the shoulders and scream that everything was not okay, that I was not okay, and that I would probably never be okay again.

  When Joseph and my father walked into the kitchen, Jamie went to work on them, too, repeating the story word for word. He made Horizons sound like camp. He left out the fact that I had killed the counselors.

  I braced myself for my suspicious, questioning mother’s reaction, but she didn’t find Jamie’s explanation at all strange. His words cut through any resistance my parents might have had, erasing my future absence from their future memories like it was nothing. More than anything else I’d seen, that unsettled me.

  Jamie excused himself barely two minutes later. It was Stella’s turn now.

  “So where’s Daniel?” I heard her ask. I realized I wasn’t even looking at my family anymore. I’d been staring at nothing for who knew how long.

  “New York,” my father said.

  That got my attention.

  “He went to visit a few colleges,” my mother added, reaching for sandwich stuff from the refrigerator. “I think he’s deciding between Columbia and Princeton?”

  “I thought Columbia and Yale?” my father said.

  “When’s he coming back?” I asked, trying not to sound too anxious.

  Dad shrugged. “Next week, maybe? Or the week after?”

  Mom looked like she was trying to remember. “He said he might go visit Harvard and Brown, too—”

  “And Dartmouth, I think,” my father said. “I remember something about Dartmouth.” It wasn’t like my parents to not know where all of their children were. My mother especially. Something wasn’t right. Jamie returned and picked up a sandwich.

  Was what he’d told them screwing with other memories? I felt a kick under the table. Jamie was trying, poorly, to indicate with his eyes that we needed to talk alone.

  “Be back in a minute,” I said to my parents. “Stella?”

  “Still eating,” she said, popping potato chips into her mouth. She’d sat down next to Joseph on the floor and was watching him play a video game. I led Jamie into my room and closed the door behind us. As soon as I did, he spoke.

  “So we have a problem,” he said. “I haven’t done this much, but I do know that Daniel’s going to notice that something’s messed up when your parents tell him the bullshit about you, and why they aren’t worried.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think your parents would believe that you’re going on a wilderness retreat, without checking on it, if I weren’t here to make them believe it?”

  Point. “Is there anything you can do about it?”

  Jamie looked doubtful. “Doubtful. I thought about maybe trying to talk to him over the phone, but I don’t know if my mind thingie works like that? Especially when I’ve never really talked to him before. It could get weird . . . and if he doesn’t believe me, he might be able to poke holes through what I told the rest of your family too.”

  “So we just have to go, then, and hope he’s busy, and that my parents don’t mention anything strange.”

  “I think we do.”

  “Not ideal,” I said.

  “Not ideal.”

  Just then my bedroom door opened, with Stella behind it. “We have a problem.”

  “We know,” I said. “Daniel’s not here.”

  “Right. Daniel’s not here. And neither is the book.”

  23

  TELL ME YOU’RE KIDDING,” JAMIE said.

  “Tell me that was rhetorical?” Stella met my gaze. “I asked Joseph to give me a tour of the house, and he started with his bedroom, naturally, and then moved on to Daniel’s. I looked on his bookshelves, everywhere I could think of. It isn’t there.”

  I didn’t quite trust her—she didn’t know Daniel and had never been in his room before, so I went to check myself. They both tagged along after me. I looked everywhere I could think of but in the end could come to only one conclusion.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  Jamie, looking through one of his drawers, added, “Your brother does have quite the porn collection, though.”

  “Gross,” I said. “Also, false.”

  Jamie fake laughed. “Just kidding. I’m a kidder.”

  I walked up to him and punched his arm.

  “Ow.”

  “Just kidding. I’m a kidder.”

  “Not the same,” Jamie said, rubbing it.

  “Hate to break this up,” Stella said, “but if the book isn’t here, and Daniel isn’t here, my brilliant guess is that he has it with him.”

  Only my brother would bring six hundred pages of nonfiction with him on a trip. Classic Daniel.

  “And why would he do this?” Jamie asked me. “He doesn’t know about you, does he?”

  I shook my head. “And he thinks the premise of the book is crap.”

  “The premise being . . . ”

  “I was reading it—or trying to—to find out what the author said about genetic memory, because of my dreams or memories or whatever about that doll, and India. Daniel said genetic memory isn’t a real thing.” I paused. “Noah did too. But—”

  “The name of the author turned up on that list Kells had at Horizons, and what she was doing to us was real enough.” Stella said what I was thinking. “So your brother was wrong about the book.”

  “He might be wrong about it,” Jamie said. “We haven’t read it. We won’t know until we have.”

  “You’re not seriously saying that you think it’s a coincidence?” Stella asked.

  “I’m just saying—You know what? Google will resolve this,” Jamie said. “Mara, computer?”

  “Ask my mom for her laptop. I’m going to pack.” I didn’t have the energy to fight about the book now. I was too anxious—about it, about Daniel, about Noah, about everything. I needed to get out of there. Get moving.

  I left Stella and Jamie to argue about the book, and went to my room to retrieve the items I might need for our quest. Jamie and Stella had packed stuff too, but stupidly I hadn’t asked what they’d brought or how long they thought we’d be gone. I looked around my room, trying to figure out where to start.

  My room. I wondered when I’d started thinking of it that way. We’d moved to Miami only months ago; in December I’d been in Laurelton. Rachel had been alive. Jude had been my boyfriend. God, it didn’t seem possible.

  I picked out enough underwear and clothes to last a couple of weeks and packed them into a gray duffel my mom had lent me once, for a school trip. She’d let me keep it even after I’d gotten home because I liked it so much. My throat tightened. I tried to tell myself that this wasn’t permanent—that we would find answers, and a cure, and Noah, too, and I would come home and things would go back to normal, but I couldn’t quite believe it. I couldn’t even remember what normal was.

  I walked down the long hallway, taking what felt like a last look at the pictures of my family that hung on the wall. I didn’t linger on my grandmother’s portrait
. I’d seen enough of her.

  Instead I tried to act casual as I hugged my father and mother and little brother before walking out the door. I could lie to them, but I couldn’t lie to myself. It felt like good-bye.

  It was Stella’s turn to drive, but she didn’t start the car right away. “We can’t find the book online,” she said.

  “Which means it’s probably out of print,” Jamie said. “But there’s this bookstore in Coral Gables—they have everything, and if they don’t have it, they can get it for us.”

  “So we’re going there,” Stella said, and paused. “Mara? What’s wrong?”

  I didn’t want to talk about it. “Just drive.”

  “Mara—”

  “Drive.”

  She drove. After almost an hour in traffic, we parked across the street from the bookstore and walked into the courtyard. Jamie ordered a lemonade from the outdoor café before we went inside.

  If I’d been in a better mood, I would have thought I was in heaven. It was beautiful, with gleaming wood floors and rooms of books neatly stacked from floor to ceiling.

  “How have I not been here before?” I asked.

  “Right?” Jamie said. “It’s the best.”

  “Is there something I can help you with?” A woman stood behind us; the sleeves of her Books & Books T-shirt were rolled up, exposing colorful tattoos of illustrations from children’s books on her arms. Her dark hair was knotted up in a high, loose bun.

  “Why, yes,” Jamie said, and sucked loudly on his straw. “Yes, you can.”

  He told her what we were looking for, and she ducked behind the desk to try to help us.

  “What did the book look like?” Jamie asked me.

  I closed my eyes and pictured it. “Black cover,” I said. “Clothbound. The title was in gold.”

  The woman typed some things into the computer. “Author’s name was Lenaurd?”

  “Yup,” Stella said. She was practically bouncing on her heels.

  “Hmm,” the woman said. She bit her thumb. “Let me try something else.”

  She typed and searched and typed and searched, but eventually she let out a frustrated sigh. “That’s so weird,” she said.