Stella looked at me in horror. “Mara.” Jamie looked at me too. They knew.
When Freckles finally heaved Blondie up the rest of the way, he collapsed. Then he began to bleed, too.
Stella tugged on Jamie’s arm. “Jamie, tell her to—make her stop. Make her stop!”
Maria covered her mouth and looked like she might be sick.
The train rushed into the station, bringing a horde of people with it. A cluster formed around Freckles and Blondie, and I felt a twinge of surprise to see Maria in it. She’d broken away from Stella, from us, and she was gesturing to someone authoritative, trying to help the same people who had made her their victim. I was moved by it. I decided to let the boys live.
For today.
46
JAMIE WAS TUGGING MY ARM out of its socket as he rushed me up the stairs. My heart was pounding in my chest. When we were finally outside, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I needed to calm down. But then I realized something.
“We have to go back,” I said.
He shook his head vehemently. “No, Mara.”
“We left the food.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. Then he hailed a cab, threw me in, and actually paid for the ride with cash he’d gotten from who knew where. Once back on the Upper West Side, he unlocked the door to his aunt’s house and we walked in just as Stella was ascending the stairs. Her face was tear-streaked and pale. She took a step back down, toward us.
“How could you do that?” she asked me.
She didn’t need to be specific. I knew what she meant. “They deserved it.”
She walked calmly down the rest of the steps until she stood at the bottom of the stairs facing me. I didn’t see the slap coming before I felt it across my face.
“Fuck! Jesus, Stella, what is wrong with you?” I asked her.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“The world would be a better place without them,” I said, holding my cheek.
“You don’t know that,” Stella said. “People change.”
I shook my head slowly. “No. No, they don’t. We are what we are.”
“Why all the shouting?” Daniel said, as he descended the stairs. He looked back and forth between me and Stella. “What happened?”
“There was . . . an incident,” Jamie said.
“You don’t feel guilty at all, do you?” Stella shouted, her hands balled into fists at her sides.
“For scaring them?”
“For torturing them,” she said.
No. I didn’t feel guilty. I was tired of feeling ashamed for the things I thought and wanted. “I’ve evolved,” I said.
Her jaw tightened, and she brushed past my brother on the stairs, bumping his shoulder as she climbed them. Then, halfway up, she turned to the three of us and said, “I thought we were better than this. I thought we were the good guys.”
Everyone was silent, until Jamie said quietly, “None of us ever claimed to be the good guys.”
Daniel’s brow furrowed. “I’m a good guy,” my brother said.
But you’re not one of us, I thought.
Daniel followed Stella back up the stairs, probably to find out what had actually happened this afternoon. I wasn’t entirely sure what she’d say, but I was entirely sure that I didn’t want to hear it. And I didn’t want to think about Daniel hearing it.
I sat down in the living room, toed off my shoes, and I looked at my reflection in the flatscreen TV. My face was blank like an empty plate. I caught a flash of movement behind me and turned. Jamie leaned against the door frame. He didn’t speak.
“Are you mad at me too?” My voice sounded dead.
“Mad at you?” He seemed surprised by the question. “No,” he finally said. “I’m not mad at you.”
But he was still standing there, looking at me in a way I couldn’t describe but didn’t like. “Then what?”
“I’m scared of you,” he said, and left the room.
47
I’LL NEVER FORGET THE WAY Stella looked that afternoon, standing at the foot of the stairs with her things.
Her black hair hung in limp waves over her shoulders, and her eyes—there was something wrong with them. I’d seen her worried, and scared, and horrified, but she was none of those things today.
The four of us had been planning to head out for the lecture, but when I descended the stairs behind my brother and saw Stella’s red-rimmed eyes, I knew that it would not be the four of us after all.
“I’m leaving,” Stella said. She sniffed, but there was steel in her voice, not tears.
“Us too,” Daniel said. “Come with—”
“No, I’m leaving,” she said, cutting my brother off.
Daniel looked stunned for a second. “But we’re so close—”
“We aren’t,” she said sharply. “I just couldn’t see it till now.” My brother looked like he was about to speak again, but Stella wouldn’t let him. “You haven’t been here. You haven’t seen—” She stopped, and flicked a glance in my direction. “Whatever I was hoping for, it’s too late.” She bit her lip, and without looking at him said Jamie’s name.
I hadn’t been expecting that. “You too?” My voice shook.
His eyes bounced between me and Stella, and after what seemed like forever, he said, “I want to figure this shit out more than anyone, but maybe—Mara—”
“Mara’s sick,” Daniel said, and I didn’t correct him, even though I didn’t agree. “We need you to help her. To help us.”
Jamie didn’t answer him. He just stood there as Stella waited for him by the door.
I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.
“Take care of yourselves,” Stella said, in a voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear her. The anger had gone out of her, and she looked tired as she said to my brother, “It was nice to meet you.”
“You too,” he said. “Where are you going to go?”
Stella lifted her shoulders in a shrug and smiled sadly. “Home.”
I didn’t want to watch her and Jamie leave. I slipped past my brother, who didn’t stop me, and ducked into the den, closing the door behind me. Mostly.
“She’s not herself,” I heard my brother say.
“That is an understatement,” Jamie said back.
So he was still there.
Then he said, “She’s getting really scary, man.”
“I know,” Daniel said.
“I don’t think you actually do. That was some cold shit.”
“Look, all we have to do is find the guy responsible for what’s happening to her. This is a problem that has a solution, but we need you to get it.”
To anyone else, my brother probably sounded exasperated. Condescending, even. But I could hear the nervousness in his voice.
“I think we need to at least entertain the possibility that—” Jamie stopped and took a deep breath. “What’s plan B?”
Daniel spoke after what seemed like an eternity. “There is no plan B.”
Jamie stayed, in the end. We were silent as we soldiered on to Columbia as a threesome. Stella’s departure had made everyone uncomfortable, though none of us admitted it. Jamie was particularly shaken. Since fleeing Horizons we had never split up. It was part of his strategy—splitting up gets you killed. But now I kept wondering if he wished he had split with her.
Other than that I had no feelings at all. I blindly searched inside myself for some reaction to what had happened on the subway and I found nothing. Or no, not quite nothing. Before I’d cut myself, before Stella cut the implants out, I could have thought and wished and wanted anything, and nothing would have happened. Dr. Kells had made sure of it.
But after? Now?
I was myself again. Thinking something can make it true. Wanting something can make it real. And I didn’t regret it anymore. I’d wasted so much time wishing I could be different, wishing I could change things, change myself. If given the chance, I would’ve shed myself and become a different girl. Slippe
d on a name like Clara or Mary, docile and gentle and smiling and kind. I thought it would be easier to be someone else than to be who I was becoming, but I didn’t think that anymore. The girl who wanted those things had died with Rachel, buried under the asylum I brought down. And I realized now, for the first time, really, that I didn’t miss her.
It didn’t matter that I was different. I didn’t need to understand why. I didn’t need a cure or even answers anymore, though we were so close to getting them. There was only one thing I needed.
I knew Noah wasn’t dead, because that was something I wouldn’t just feel—that was something I would know. So I would turn everything and everyone inside out until I found him, and I would start with Abel Lukumi today.
Daniel linked his arm in mine as we descended the rain-slick stairs to the train. When you have no one else, you still have your family.
The unmistakable perfume of the subway—a mixture of coffee, bodies, cigarettes, and fish—greeted us as we swiped MetroCards through the turnstiles. It was half past four, and the platform was packed with people: a shy teenage boy holding a cello case that looked like it might topple him, a girl with platinum blond hair woven into a braid crown, wearing patent-leather pants. A lost-looking bird hopped near the information desk or whatever it was, picking at the remains of a grimy sandwich. As soon as I noticed it, I was swept beneath a wave of overwhelming, indefinable sadness. I stopped where I stood, jerking Daniel back.
“What’s up?”
I didn’t know how to answer him because I didn’t know myself. I pointed at a little kiosk, and my brother nodded, unshackling me from his side. I bought a sandwich and dropped it for the bird.
A muggy breeze announced the arrival of an oncoming train, and we shoved our way in behind the braid-crown girl and before a man with dreadlocks down to his waist, who held the hand of a little girl who kept shouting, “I am Spider-Man!” A businessman with a purple birthmark on his face sat with his leg squashed against a pole, eating from a greasy bag of sweet roasted nuts.
Jamie was quiet as we sped through the veins of the city, until a space large enough for the three of us opened up and we slid into it. The Spider-Man girl was still broadcasting her identity when Jamie spoke.
“What if someone had lice on the subway?”
A preteen couple with matching sprays of acne who had been kissing half a second before looked at him with disgust.
“Uh, what?” Daniel asked.
“What if there’s a kid on the train with lice? And you’re sitting next to him and then you get it.”
“That’s disgusting,” I said.
Jamie ran his hand over his scalp. “I bet it happens.”
“Stop!” I yanked at his hand. Just the thought was enough to make me itch.
“Don’t worry, Mara,” he said as he ruffled my head. “Your hair looks luminous.”
We both burst out laughing at the same time. Relief was not a big enough word to explain what I felt. Jamie was my friend still. I might be different now, but I still needed as many of those as I could get.
Feeling lighter, I let my thoughts drift as I watched my reflection blur in and out of the darkened train window across from me. My reflection was obedient and silent, and I felt weirdly peaceful. I was just about to fall asleep when the lights flickered and the train screeched to a jarring stop. The next stop was ours, but we never made it.
48
HI, FOLKS,” A TINNY VOICE announced from the speaker. “There seems to be some sort of service interruption.” He began to say something else, but the words dissolved into static before we heard, “We’ll get you folks moving as soon as we can.”
New Yorkers are pretty unflappable as a group, and the motley crew in our car was no exception. An elderly Asian woman held the hand of an adorable little boy in a blue peacoat, who spoke to her calmly in English, though she spoke to him in something else, maybe Chinese? Next to her a frazzled-looking mother was trying to keep her two children from breaking off in opposite directions after her bag of groceries had fallen to the floor. Her apples scattered across the car like billiard balls. But no one cried. No one panicked. Not until the lights went out.
There was silence at first, then noise. People talking, a child crying. The car wasn’t completely dark—the emergency lights were on in the adjacent cars, just not in ours.
“This stuff happens all the time,” Jamie said. His face was painted in a faint, eerie glow. “They’ll figure it out.”
A burst of static startled Daniel—I felt him jump against my shoulder. Someone’s cell phone buzzed with a text. And then a stranger said my name.
“Mara Dyer?”
The owner of the voice was a twentysomething girl with gauges in her ears, a hoop in her nose, and a bushel of wild, curly hair. She held a book with a leafy green tree on the cover, title obscured, and a cell phone in the other. “Who is Mara Dyer?”
I felt Daniel’s and Jamie’s eyes boring into each side of my face. The stale air seemed to press in on me, slowing my thoughts. “Uh, me?” I said, before Jamie shushed me.
Everyone in the car stared as Curly Girl walked over to me and handed me her phone. “Someone’s texting you.”
“I don’t know you,” I said, pointing out the obvious.
“And I don’t know you. But the person texting me doesn’t seem to care.” She gestured with the phone. “See for yourself.”
I tried to, but realized that my arms were in the iron grips of my brother and Jamie.
“This is bad news,” Daniel said. “Bad news.”
I shook them off and took the phone from the girl.
I HAVE WHAT YOU WANT.
Below that was a picture of Noah. I couldn’t see where he was and didn’t know what he was doing; it was just a close-up of his face. But it was Noah to the life. And there was a newspaper next to him with today’s date.
“Can I have my phone back now?” Curly Girl asked. I ignored her.
“Ask who it is,” Jamie said.
“Like he’s going to answer?” Daniel replied.
“How do you know it’s a he?” Jamie asked.
Daniel rolled his eyes. “It’s a he.”
Who is this, I texted back. A few seconds later, the girl’s phone pinged again.
DOES IT MATTER? OPEN THE DOOR BETWEEN CARS AND GET OUT. LEAVE YOUR BROTHER AND FRIEND BEHIND SO THEY DON’T GET HURT.
“Trap,” Daniel and Jamie said simultaneously.
“Hey,” Curly Girl said, clearly annoyed now. “My phone?”
Jamie looked at her and said, “This isn’t your phone.” Her forehead creased and her eyes glazed over. “You dropped your phone on the tracks.”
“I dropped it?” Her voice wavered as she looked back and forth between Jamie and the phone in my hands.
“Yes. Run along now.” Jamie gestured at her. “Shoo.”
When she walked away, I stood up.
“Oh, come on, Mara,” Jamie said.
Daniel was shaking his head as he spoke. “You’re not going out there.”
“Of course I’m going out there.” More static from the speaker, but no lights and no movement still. Daniel and Jamie were right. Obviously right. And I was in no frame of mind to process the picture other than to seize it as proof that Noah was, in fact, alive. I had to make sure he stayed that way. I had to make sure Daniel and Jamie stayed that way too.
“Sister, I love you, and I would do anything for you, but I really do not want to creep around in the bowels of the New York City transit system for you. Please do not make me.”
“Not only am I not making you,” I said as I reached for the handle of the door between the cars. “I’m not going to let you.”
“You’re not going to stop me,” Daniel said.
Jamie bent over. If he’d had hair, he’d have been pulling it. “Damn it, Mara. We’ve been here before.”
I opened the door and stepped out into the darkness. “True,” I said. “And I was fine before.”
“I
suppose that depends on your definition of ‘fine.’ ”
“Look,” I said to Daniel and Jamie, “what’s the most terrifying thing you can think of in these tunnels? Rats? Mole people?”
“Evil mastermind hell bent on killing you?” Jamie suggested.
“Wrong. The most terrifying thing in these tunnels is me.” I shut the door on both of them and jumped onto the tracks.
The girl’s cell phone buzzed in my hand.
WALK TOWARD THE END OF THE TRAIN UNTIL YOU PASS IT. GO TO THE THIRD NICHE WITH A DOOR.
The curved walls seemed to stretch into infinity, but I started walking, following a miniature creek between the tracks that was choked with garbage. Air ruffled papers taped to the graffitied, wet-looking walls. My pulse began to race as I neared the end of the train, but not from fear. I believed what I’d told my brother and Jamie. I believed in myself. I would find Noah, and I would punish whoever had taken him from me.
I passed the first niche, and then the second. But before I came to the third, I heard my name shouted behind me.
“Mara?” Daniel’s voice echoed in the tunnel. Panic seized me.
“Wherefore art thou, Mara Dyer?” Jamie’s voice this time.
“That means ‘why’, not ‘where,’ ” I heard my brother say. “Just saying.”
“Go back!” I yelled automatically, then cursed myself. Not for giving away my position to my mystery texter but for giving it away to my brother. Marco Polo used to be his favorite game.
Daniel yelled, “No chance! I’m your big brother. It’s my job to protect you.”
And then a shadow peeled itself from the wall, forming the outline of someone I knew, of the person I’d expected ever since I’d seen that first text. Ever since I’d heard the girl on the subway say my name, really.
“Don’t hurt them,” I said to Jude, and I meant it. “Please.”
“I didn’t want to,” he replied, and punched me in the face.
49
BEFORE
Cambridge, England
THERE WAS NO KNOCK ON the professor’s door before it opened, throwing a shaft of dim, gray light into the room.
The Retribution of Mara Dyer Page 21