The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer md-1

by Michelle Hodkin

  What happened?

  “Call Leon Lassiter, then. Ask him to fire you. Tell him you’ll get him a referral. The judge might allow a continuance if he does. He’d want that, right?”

  “I doubt it. He’s keen to get this over with.” I heard my father sigh. “You really think Mara’s that bad?”

  Daniel and I locked eyes.

  My mother didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

  “Nothing’s happened since the burn,” Dad said.

  “That we know about.”

  “You think there’s something going on?”

  “Have you seen her lately, Marcus? She’s not sleeping. I think things are worse for her than she lets on. You being in the middle of a murder trial is not helping.”

  “Is it worth me being disbarred?”

  My mother paused. “We can move back to Rhode Island if that happens,” she said quietly.

  I expected my father to laugh. Or to give an exasperated sigh. Or to say anything except what he actually said.

  “All right,” my father said, without pause. “I’ll call Leon and let him know I’m out.”

  My stomach twisted with guilt. I made a move toward the kitchen, but Daniel grabbed my arm and shook his head silently. I narrowed my eyes to slits.

  Trust me, he mouthed. We both stood stone-still as my father spoke.

  “Hello, Leon? It’s Marcus, yes, how are you? I’m not so great, actually.” He then proceeded to give him the rundown. I caught the words “unstable,” “traumatic,” and “psychiatric care.” My eyes bored into Daniel’s head.

  After a few minutes, my father hung up the phone.

  “Well?” My mother’s voice.

  “He’s thinking about it. He’s a good guy,” my father said in a low voice, as my mother banged some cabinets open.

  Daniel beckoned me close. “Listen to me,” he whispered. “We’re going to go in there, and you are going to act like this has been the best day of your life. Say nothing about Morales, okay? I’ll handle it.”

  I didn’t even have a chance to respond before Daniel closed the door behind us in one exaggerated movement. People probably heard the slam in Broward.

  My mother’s head popped out of the kitchen. “Hey, guys!” she said all too cheerfully.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said, plastering a false smile on my face myself. I was queasy and upset and guilt-ridden and having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that this was my life. We walked into the kitchen to find my father sitting at the table. His eyes were ringed with dark circles, and he looked thinner than usual. “Well, if it isn’t my long-lost children,” he said, smiling.

  I wiped my clammy forehead and moved to give him a kiss on the cheek.

  “How was your day, kid?”

  Daniel gave me a loaded look from over his shoulder.

  “Great!” I said, with too much enthusiasm.

  “Mara’s been helping me plan Sophie’s surprise party,” Daniel said, opening the refrigerator.

  Oh?

  “Oh?” my mother said. “When is that?”

  He withdrew an apple. “Tonight,” he said, taking a bite. “We’re heading out in a couple of hours. You guys have any plans?”

  My mother shook her head.

  “Where’s Joseph?” I asked.

  “At a friend’s house,” Mom said.

  I opened my mouth to suggest they go out, but Daniel beat me to it.

  My mother eyed my father. “Your Dad’s pretty busy, I think.”

  He looked back at her. There were a thousand unsaid words in their glance. “I think I could take the night off.”

  “Awesome,” Daniel said. “You deserve it. Mara and I are going to go plan a bit, and then I’m going to take a quick nap before the party.”

  God, I could kiss Daniel right now. “Me too,” I said, following his lead. I pecked my mother on the cheek, and whirled around quickly, before she could notice the thin sheen of sweat on my skin. I made my way to my bedroom.

  “So you guys are set for the night?” my mother called after us.

  “Yup!” Daniel yelled back. I nodded and waved behind me before turning the corner into the hallway. We met up there.

  “Daniel—”

  He raised his hands. “You’re welcome. Just … relax, okay? You look like you’re going to throw up.”

  “Do you think they bought it?”

  “Yeah. You did good.”

  “But what about Dad’s case? He can’t drop it, not because of me—” I swallowed hard, and tried to steady my balance.

  “I’ll make a huge deal about how great you’re doing tomorrow before Noah gets here. How much help you were with the party.”

  “You’re amazing. Seriously.”

  “Love you too, sister. Go lie down.”

  Daniel and I departed for our respective rooms. It had grown dark out, and the hair prickled on the back of my neck as I passed the family pictures. I turned the other way, toward the French doors that looked out on our backyard. With the hall light on, the darkness outside seemed opaque and oddly, each time I approached the glass, I was seized with the sense that there was someone, something right outside—something slinking, something creeping, something—no. Nothing. Nothing there. I made it to my bedroom and darted over to my desk, to the bottle of Zyprexa sitting on it. After a week, my mother trusted me enough to keep the whole bottle in my room. I didn’t remember if I’d taken one this morning. I probably hadn’t. That’s why the whole Morales thing—it was a coincidence that she died. Choked. A coincidence. I shook out a pill into my trembling hand, then tossed it to the back of my throat and swallowed without water. It went down slowly, painfully, leaving a bitter aftertaste on my tongue.

  I kicked off my shoes and climbed into bed, burying my face in my cool cotton sheets. It was well after midnight when I awoke, for the second time in my life, to someone pounding on my bedroom window.

  Déjà vu settled over me like a wet wool blanket, prickly and uncomfortable. How many times was I going to have to relive this? I was blind and nervous as I stepped out of bed and crept to my window. My heart lodged in my throat as I reached to open the blinds, readying myself to see Jude’s face.

  But Noah’s fist was raised mid-knock.

  44

  HE WORE A RATTY BASEBALL CAP WITH THE brim pulled low over his eyes, and I couldn’t see much of his face except to tell that he looked exhausted. And angry. I opened my blinds and the window and warm air gushed in.

  “Where’s Joseph?” he asked immediately, a note of panic in his voice.

  I rubbed my aching forehead. “At a friend’s house, he—”

  “He’s not there,” Noah said. “Get dressed. We have to go. Now.”

  I tried to arrange my thoughts into a coherent order. The panic hadn’t set in yet. “We should tell my parents if he isn’t—”

  “Mara. Listen to me, because I’m only going to say this once.” My mouth went dry, and I licked my lips as I waited for him to finish.

  “We’re going to find Joseph. We don’t have much time. I need you to trust me.”

  My head felt thick, my brain cloudy with sleep and confusion. I couldn’t form the question I wanted to ask him. Maybe because this wasn’t real. Maybe because I was dreaming.

  “Hurry,” Noah said, and I did.

  I threw on jeans and a T-shirt, then I glanced at Noah. He was looking away from me, toward the streetlight. His jaw tensed as he chewed on the insides of his cheek. There was something dangerous beneath his expression. Explosive.

  When I was ready, I placed my hands on the windowsill and launched myself onto the damp grass outside my bedroom window. I swayed on my feet, off-balance. Noah reached out to steady me for half a second, then hurried ahead. I jogged to catch up with him. It took effort—like the swollen, humid air was pushing back.

  Noah had parked in the driveway. He was the only one. Daniel’s car was gone, my father’s car was gone, and my mother’s was missing too. They must have gone out separately.

/>   Noah flung his door open and started it. I’d barely sat down before Noah floored the gas pedal. The acceleration pushed me back against the seat.

  “Seat belt,” he said.

  I glared at him. When we pulled on to I-75, Noah still hadn’t lit a cigarette, and he was still silent. My stomach curdled. I still felt so sick. But I managed to speak.

  “What’s going on?”

  He inhaled, then ran a hand over his rough jaw. I noticed then that his lip seemed to have healed in the past few days. I couldn’t see his eyes from this angle at all.

  When Noah spoke, his voice was careful. Controlled. “Joseph texted me. His friend canceled and he needed a ride home from school. When I showed up, he wasn’t there.”

  “So where is he?”

  “I think he’s been taken.”

  No.

  When I saw Joseph last it was at breakfast this morning. He’d waved his hand in front of my face and I said, I said …

  Leave me alone. Oh, God.

  Panic coursed through my veins. “Why?” I whispered. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening.

  “I don’t know.”

  My throat was full of needles. “Who took him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I pressed the heels of my palms into my eye sockets. I wanted to claw out my brain. There were two options, here: first, that this wasn’t real. That this was a nightmare. That seemed likely. Second, that this wasn’t a nightmare. That Joseph was really missing. That the last thing I said to him was “leave me alone,” and now, he had.

  “How do you know where he is?” I asked Noah, because I had only questions and out of all of them, that was the only one I could voice.

  “I don’t know. I’m going where I think he is. He might be there, he might not. That has to be enough for now, all right?”

  “We should call the police,” I said numbly, as I reached in my back pocket for my phone.

  It wasn’t there.

  It wasn’t there because I smashed it against the wall yesterday. Just yesterday. I closed my eyes, reeling as I lost my mind.

  Noah’s voice pierced through my free fall. “What would you think if someone told you they thought they might know where a missing child was?”

  I would think that person was hiding something.

  “They’d ask me questions I couldn’t answer.” I noticed for the first time that there was an edge to his voice. An edge that scared me. “It can’t be the police. It can’t be your parents. It has to be us.”

  I leaned forward and put my head between my knees. This felt nothing like a dream. Nothing like a nightmare. It felt real.

  Noah’s hand ghosted the column of my neck. “If we don’t find him, we’ll call the police,” he said softly.

  My mind was a wasteland. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think. I simply nodded, then looked up at the clock on his dashboard. One in the morning. We passed some cars as we sped on the highway, but when Noah turned off at an exit after over an hour of driving, the sounds of Miami died away. The few streetlamps we passed bathed the car in a yellowish light. We drove in silence and the lights became less and less frequent. Then they stopped altogether, and there was nothing but highway stretching in front of us, poorly illuminated by our headlights. The yawning darkness curved over us like a tunnel. I glanced over at Noah, my teeth clenched so I wouldn’t cry. Or scream. His expression was grim.

  When he finally parked, all I could see was tall grass in front of us, swaying in the hot breeze. No buildings. Nothing.

  “Where are we?” I asked softly, my voice almost drowned out by the crickets and cicadas.

  “Everglades City,” Noah answered.

  “Doesn’t look like much of a city.”

  “It borders the park.” Noah turned to me. “You wouldn’t stay here, even if I asked you to.”

  It was a statement, not a question but I answered anyway. “No.”

  “Even though this is supremely fucking risky.”

  “Even then.”

  “Even though both of us might not—”

  Noah’s mouth didn’t finish forming the sentence, but his eyes did. Both of us might not make it, they told me. Some nightmare. Bile rose in my throat.

  “And if I—don’t,” Noah said, “do whatever you have to do to wake Joseph. Here,” he said, thrusting his hand into his pocket. “Take my key. Type your address into the GPS. Just keep driving, all right? Then call the police.”

  I took Noah’s key ring and shoved it into my back pocket. I tried to keep my voice from trembling. “You’re freaking me out.”

  “I know.” Noah moved to get out of the car and I did the same. He stopped me.

  The smell of rotting vegetation assaulted my nostrils. Noah faced the sea of grass in front of us and pulled out his flashlight. I noticed then that his cuts were still there; they’d healed somewhat, but the bruise on his cheek made one side of his face look sunken. I shivered.

  I was terrified. Of the swamp. Of the possibility that Joseph was actually in it. Of the chance that we might not find him. That he was missing, gone, had left me alone like I’d wanted, and that I would never get him back.

  Noah seemed to sense my despair, and he took my face in his hands. “I don’t think anything is going to happen. And we don’t have that far to go, maybe a half kilometer. But remember—key, GPS. Get to the highway and keep going until you see your exit.”

  Noah dropped his hands and stepped into the grass. I followed him.

  Maybe he knew more than he was sharing with me and maybe he didn’t. Maybe this was a nightmare and maybe it wasn’t. But either way, I was here in some dimension. And if Joseph was here too, I would get him back.

  The water soaked through my sneakers immediately. Noah didn’t speak as we trudged through the mud. Something he’d said teased my mind, but it melted into nothingness before I could catch it. And I needed to watch my footing.

  Hordes of croaking frogs created a bass rumble all around us. When the gnats weren’t biting me alive, the sawgrass attacked my skin. I itched everywhere, my nerve endings alive with it, my ears filled with buzzing. I was so distracted, so consumed by it that I almost walked straight past Noah.

  Into the creek.

  45

  TANGLED ROOTS OF MANGROVE TREES SANK unseen into the black liquid, and on the opposite side, grass stretched in front of us for infinity. A sliver of moon hung in the sky, but I had never seen so many stars in my life. I could just make out the faint outline of a building close by in the darkness. Noah faced the body of still water.

  “We need to cross it,” he said.

  It did not take a genius to figure out what that meant. Alligators. And snakes. But really, they could have been lurking in the distance between Noah’s car and where we stood all along. So why not cross the creek? No problem.

  Noah skimmed his flashlight over the surface of the water. It reflected the beam; we could see nothing beneath it. The creek was maybe thirty feet wide across, and I couldn’t tell how far it extended in each direction. The grass turned to reeds and the reeds turned to roots, obscuring my view.

  Noah faced me. “You can swim?”

  I nodded.

  “All right. Follow me, but not until I’m across. And don’t splash.”

  He walked down the steep bank and I heard him break the surface of the water. Noah carried the flashlight in his right hand and walked a good length before he had to swim. But then, he was easily six feet tall. I wouldn’t make it that far. My stomach clenched in fear for both of us, and my throat was tight with anxiety.

  When I heard Noah pull himself up out of the water, my knees almost buckled with relief. He shined his flashlight up, illuminating his face in a freaky glow. He nodded, and I descended.

  I slipped and slid on the bank of the creek. My feet sank into the weedy water until they hit mud. It was oddly cool, despite the steamy temperature of the air. The water reached my knees. I took a step. Then my thighs. Another step. My ribs. The sur
face tickled the underwire of my bra. I waded cautiously, my feet tangling in the weeds at the bottom. Noah pointed his flashlight at the water ahead of me, careful to avoid my eyes. It was brown and murky under the beam, but I swallowed my disgust and kept moving, waiting for the bottom to drop out from underneath me.

  “Don’t move,” Noah said.

  I froze.

  His flashlight skimmed the surface of the water around me. The alligators appeared out of nowhere.

  My heartbeat pounded in my ears as I noticed several disembodied points of light floating in the darkness on either side of me. One pair of eyes. Three. Seven. I lost count.

  I was paralyzed; I couldn’t go forward but I couldn’t go back. I looked up at Noah. He was about fifteen feet away, but the water between us might as well have been an ocean.

  “I’m going to get back in,” he said. “To distract them.”

  “No!” I whispered. I didn’t know why I felt like I had to be quiet.

  “I have to. There are too many, and we have no time.”

  I knew I shouldn’t have, but I tore my eyes from Noah’s shadow and looked around me. They were everywhere.

  “You have to get Joseph,” I said desperately.

  Noah took a step toward the bank of the creek.

  “Don’t.”

  He slid down over the edge. The beam of light bounced on the water and I heard him splash. When he held the flashlight steady, several pairs of eyes disappeared. Then they reappeared. Much, much closer.

  “Noah, get out!”

  “Mara, go!” Noah splashed in the water, staying close to the bank but moving away from me.

  I watched the alligators swim toward him, but some of the eyes stayed with me. He was making it worse, the idiot. Soon both of us would be trapped, and my brother would be alone.

  I felt one of them approach before I saw it. A wide, prehistoric snout appeared three feet in front of me. I could make out the outline of its leathery head. I was trapped and panicked but there was something else, too.

  My brother was missing, alone, and more frightened than I was. He had no one else to help him, no one but us. And it looked like we might not get the chance. Noah was the only one who knew where to look, and he was going to get himself killed.