The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer md-1

by Michelle Hodkin

  Twelve iron doors slammed shut.

  I slammed them shut.

  And before the blackness, terror. But not mine.

  Jude’s.

  One second, he had pressed me so deeply into the wall that I thought I would dissolve into it. The next, he was the trapped one, inside the patient room, inside with me. But I was no longer the victim.

  He was.

  I laughed at him in my crazed fury, which shook the asylum’s foundation and crushed it. With Jude and Claire and Rachel inside.

  I killed them, and others, too. Mabel’s torturer. Morales.

  The realization slammed me back into Noah’s bedroom, with his motionless body still beneath me. I screamed his name and there was no answer and I freaked the fuck out in earnest. I shook him, I pinched him, I tried to wrestle into his arms but they held no asylum for me. I dove for his headboard and with one hand fumbled for his cell, furious and terrified. I reached it and began dialing 911 while I raised my other arm and backhanded him across the cheek, connecting with skin and bone in a furious sting.

  He woke up with a sharp intake of breath. My hand hurt like a bitch.

  “Incredible,” Noah breathed, as he reached his hand up to his face. The beautiful taste of him was already fading from my tongue.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but there was no air.

  Noah looked far away and hazy. “That was the best dream I have ever had. Ever.”

  “You weren’t breathing,” I said. I could barely get the words out.

  “My face hurts.” Noah stared past me, at nothing in particular. His eyes were unfocused, his pupils dilated. From the dark or something else, I didn’t know.

  I placed my trembling hands on his face, careful to balance my weight above him. “You were dying.” My voice cracked with the words.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Noah said, an amused smile forming on his mouth.

  “Your lips turned blue.” Like Rachel’s would have, after she suffocated. After I killed her.

  Noah raised his eyebrows. “How do you know?”

  “I saw it.” I didn’t look at Noah. I couldn’t. I unstraddled him and he sat up, glancing his hand across the dimmer, brightening the room. Noah’s eyes were dark, but clear now. He stared at me plainly.

  “I fell asleep, Mara. You were sleeping next to me. You pulled me into bed and I was behind you and … God, that was a good dream.” Noah leaned back against the headboard and closed his eyes.

  My head spun. “We kissed. You don’t remember?”

  Noah smirked. “Sounds like you had a good dream as well.”

  What he was saying—it made no sense. “You told me I smelled—like bacon.”

  “Well,” he said evenly. “That’s awkward.”

  I looked at my hands lying limp in my lap. “You asked if you could kiss me, and then you did. And then I—” There were no words to translate it, the dead faces I saw on the insides of my eyelids. I wanted to rub them out, but they wouldn’t leave. They were real. It was all real. Whatever the Santeria priest did had worked. And now that I knew, now that I remembered, all I wanted was to forget.

  “I hurt you,” I finished. And it was only the beginning.

  Noah rubbed his cheek. “It’s all right,” he said, and pulled me back down, curling me into his side, my head on his shoulder and my cheek on his chest. His heart beat under my skin.

  “Did you remember anything?” Noah whispered into my hair. “Did the thing work?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “It’s all right,” Noah said very softly, his fingers brushing my ribs. “You were just dreaming.”

  But the kiss wasn’t a dream. Noah was dying. The asylum wasn’t an accident. I killed them.

  It was all real. It was all me.

  I didn’t understand why Noah didn’t remember what happened seconds ago but I finally understood what had happened to me months ago. Jude trapped me, crushed me against the wall. I wanted him punished, to feel my terror of being trapped, of being crushed. So I made him feel it.

  And abandoned Claire and Rachel.

  Rachel, who sat with me for hours under the giant tire in our old school’s playground, our thighs gritty with dirt, as I confessed an unrequited fifth-grade crush. Rachel, who sat still for my portraits, who I laughed with and cried with and did everything with, whose body was now turned into so much meat. Because of me.

  And not because I went along with the Tamerlane plan, even knowing it could be dangerous. Not because I failed to scratch at some vague tickle of premonition. It was my fault because it was actually, literally my fault—because I crumpled the asylum with Rachel and Claire inside like it was nothing more than a wad of tissues in my pocket.

  I reeled at the delusions I’d invented after murdering Mabel’s owner and Ms. Morales. I was not crazy.

  I was lethal.

  Noah’s hand worked in my hair and it felt so wonderful, so painfully wonderful that it was all I could do not to cry.

  “I should go,” I managed to whisper, even though I didn’t want to go anywhere. I didn’t want to be anywhere.

  “Mara?” Noah leaned up on his elbow. His fingers traced the outline of my cheekbone, stroking my skin awake. My heart did not beat faster. It did not beat at all. I had no heart left.

  Noah studied my face for a moment. “I can take you home, but your parents will wonder why,” he said slowly.

  I said nothing. I couldn’t. My throat was filled with broken glass.

  “Why don’t you stay?” he asked. “I can go into another room. Say the words.”

  The words wouldn’t come.

  Noah sat next to me, the bed shifting under his weight. I felt his warmth as he leaned in, brushed my hair aside, and pressed his lips to my temple. I closed my eyes and memorized it. He left.

  The rain lashed his windows as I buried myself in his sheets and pulled the covers up to my chin. But there would be no shelter in Noah’s bed or in his arms from the howling of my sins.

  51

  SITTING NEXT TO NOAH WHILE HE DROVE ME home the next morning was the worst kind of torture. It hurt to look at him, at his sun-drenched hair and his worried eyes. I couldn’t talk to him. I didn’t know what to say.

  When he pulled into my driveway, I told him I didn’t feel well (truth) and that I would call him later (lie). Then I went to my room and closed the door.

  My mother found me that afternoon in my bed with the blinds shut. The sun slotted through them anyway, casting bars against the walls, the ceiling, my face.

  “Are you sick, Mara?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything.”

  She closed the door and I turned over in the membrane of my sheets. I’d been right; something was happening to me, but I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? My whole family moved here for me, moved here to help me get away from my dead life, but the corpses would follow wherever I went. And what if the next time it happened, it was Daniel and Joseph instead of Rachel and Claire?

  A cold tear slid down my burning cheek. It tickled the skin next to my nose but I didn’t wipe it away. Or the next one. And soon, I was flooded with the tears I never cried at Rachel’s funeral.

  I didn’t get up for school the next day. Or the next. And there were no more nightmares, now. Which was unfortunate, because I deserved them.

  The oblivion when I slept was blissful. My mother brought me food but otherwise left me alone. I overheard her and my father speaking in the hallway but didn’t care enough to be surprised by what they said.

  “Daniel said she was doing better,” my father said. “I should have withdrawn from the case. She’s not even eating.”

  “I think—I think she’ll be all right. I spoke to Dr. Maillard. She just needs a bit of time,” my mother said.

  “I don’t understand it. She was doing so well.”

  “Her birthday had to have been hard for her,” my mother said. “She’s a year older, Rachel isn’t. It makes per
fect sense for her to be going through something. If nothing changes by her appointment Thursday, we’ll worry.”

  “She looks so different,” my father said. “Where’d our girl go?”

  When I went to the bathroom that night, I turned on the light and looked in the mirror to see if I could find her. The husk of a girl not-named Mara stared back at me. I wondered how I would kill her.

  And then I dove back into bed, my legs shaking, teeth chattering, because it was just so scary, too scary, and I didn’t have the guts.

  When Noah appeared in my room later that evening, my body knew it before my eyes could confirm it. He had a book with him: The Velveteen Rabbit, one of my favorites. But I didn’t want him there. Or rather, I didn’t want to be there. But I wasn’t about to move, so I lay in bed, facing the wall, as he began.

  “Long June evenings, in the bracken that shone like frosted silver, feet padded softly. White moths fluttered out. She held him close in her arms, pearl dewdrops and flowers around her neck and in her hair,” he said.

  “‘What is Real?’ asked the boy. ‘It is a thing that happens to you when a girl loves you for a long, long time. Not just to play with,’” Noah said. “‘But really loves you.’ ‘Does it hurt?’ asked the boy. ‘Sometimes. When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’

  “She slept with him, the nightlight burning on the mantel-piece. Love stirred.”

  Hmm.

  “Swayed gently,” he said. “A great rustling. Tunnels in bedclothes, an unwrapping of parcels. Her face grew flushed—”

  So did mine.

  “Half asleep, she crept up close to the pillow and whispered in his ear, damp from—”

  “That is not The Velveteen Rabbit,” I said, my voice hoarse from disuse.

  “Welcome back,” Noah said.

  There was nothing to say but the truth. “That was awful.”

  Noah responded by defiling Dr. Seuss. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, became an instructional rhyme on fellatio.

  Fortunately, Joseph walked into my room just as Noah recited his next title. The New Adventures of Curious George.

  “Can I listen?” my brother asked.

  “Sure,” Noah said.

  Filthy visions of the Man in the Yellow Hat and his monkey desecrated my mind.

  “No,” I said, my face muffled by my pillow.

  “Don’t pay attention to her, Joseph.”

  “No,” I said louder, still facing my wall.

  “Come sit next to me,” Noah said to my brother.

  I sat up in bed and shot Noah a scathing look. “You can’t read that to him.”

  A smile transformed Noah’s face. “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because. It’s disgusting.”

  He turned to Joseph and winked. “Another day, then.”

  Joseph left the room, but he was smiling as he went.

  “So,” Noah said carefully. I was sitting up, cross-legged and tangled in my sheets.

  “So,” I said back.

  “Would you like to hear about Curious George’s new adventures?”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you sure?” Noah asked. “He’s been such a naughty monkey.”

  “Pass.”

  Then Noah gave me a look that broke my heart. “What happened, Mara?” he asked in a low, quiet voice.

  It was nighttime, and maybe it was because I was tired, or because I’d started talking. Or because it was the first time he ever asked me, or because Noah looked so heartbreakingly, impossibly beautiful sitting on the floor beside my bed, haloed by the light of my lamp, that I told him.

  I told him everything, from the beginning. I left nothing out. Noah sat stone still, his eyes never leaving my face.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said when I was finished.

  He didn’t believe me. I looked away.

  “I thought I was mad,” Noah said to himself.

  I snapped my eyes to his. “What? What did you say?”

  Noah stared at my wall. “I saw you—well, your hands, anyway—and heard your voice. I thought I was going mad. And then you showed up. Unbelievable.”

  “Noah,” I said. His expression was remote. I reached out and turned his head to me. “What are you talking about?”

  “Just your hands,” he said, taking my hands in his and turning them over, flexing my fingers as he inspected them. “You were pressing them against something but it was dark. Your head ached. I could see your fingernails; they were black. Your ears were ringing but I heard your voice.”

  His sentences knotted together in a way that didn’t fit. “I don’t understand.”

  “Before you moved here, Mara. I heard your voice before you moved here.”

  The memory of Noah’s face that first day of school arranged itself into an unthinkable shape. He looked at me like he knew me because—because somehow, he did. Any words I could have spoken next vanished from my tongue, from my brain. I could not make sense of what I was hearing.

  “You weren’t the first one I saw. Heard. There were two others before, but I never met them.”

  “Others,” I whispered.

  “Other people I saw. In my mind.”

  His words sunk like a stone in the air around us.

  “I was driving the first time, at night,” he said in a rush. “I saw myself hit someone; but it was on a completely different road, and it wasn’t my car. But I headed straight for her. She was our age, I think. Pinned behind the steering column. She didn’t die for hours,” Noah said, his voice hollow. “I saw everything she went through, heard everything she heard, and felt everything she felt, but was somehow still on my road. I thought it was a hallucination, you know? Like at night when you’re driving sometimes, and you imagine going over the shoulder, or hitting another car. But it was real,” Noah said, and his voice was haunted.

  “The second one was very ill. He was our age as well. I dreamed one night that I was preparing food for him, then fed him, but the hands weren’t mine. He had some sort of infection and his neck hurt so badly. He was so sore. He cried.”

  Noah’s face was drawn and pale. He leaned his head into his hand and rubbed it, then ran his fingers back through his hair, making it stand on end. Then he looked up at me. “And then in December, I heard you.”

  The blood drained from my face.

  “I recognized your voice on your first day at school. I was giddy at the impossibility of it. I thought I was going insane, imagining sick and dying people and feeling it, feeling an echo of what they must have felt. And then you showed up, with the voice from my nightmare, and you called me an ass,” Noah said, smiling faintly.

  “I asked Daniel about you, and he told me, vaguely, what had happened before you moved here. I assumed that’s what I saw. Or dreamed. But I thought if—I don’t know. I thought if I knew you, I might be able to understand what was happening to me. That was before Joseph, obviously.”

  My mouth felt like it was filled with sand. “Joseph?” That wasn’t real.

  “A couple of weeks ago, in the restaurant, I had a—a vision, I suppose,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “Of a document, a deed from the Collier County archives.” Noah shook his head slowly. “Someone—a man wearing a Rolex—was pulling files, photocopying, and he lingered on that document. I saw it like I was the one looking straight at it,” he said, inhaling deeply. “It had a property address, a location. And when I saw it, I got a screaming headache, which is typical. I just couldn’t stand all the sounds. So I left you until it passed.” Noah raked his fingers through his hair. “A couple of days later, when I got home from school, I passed out. For hours—I was just gone. When I woke up, I felt high. And I saw Joseph asleep on the cement, before someone closed a door. And whoever it was wore the same watch.”

  I sat still, my feet tucked underneath me, growing numb as Noah went on.

  “I didn’t know if it was real or if I’d dreamed it, but after what happened to you, I thought it might actually be happening. In real time. L
ooking back, with the others, I’d always seen some indication of where they were—which hospital, which road. But I never realized it was real.” Noah’s eyes fell to the floor. Then he closed them. He sounded so tired. “And so with Joseph, I took you with me—just in case I passed out again, or something else.” His jaw tightened. “When it turned out that he was there, how could I explain that to you? I thought I was mad.” He paused. “I thought I took him.”

  I heard an echo of Noah’s voice from that night. “Do whatever you have to do to wake Joseph.”

  He said that before we even saw him.

  “Holy shit,” I whispered.

  “I wanted to tell you the truth—about me, about this—before he was even taken. But then when he was, I didn’t know what to say. I honestly I thought I was responsible somehow. That maybe I was the one hurting everyone I’d seen, and repressed the memories … or something. But then whose headlights were those in the Everglades? And why would they pull into the drive by the shed?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know. It made no sense. I’d thought I was crazy, but realized I wasn’t. I thought Joseph’s kidnapping wasn’t real, but it was.

  “I didn’t take him,” Noah said. His voice was clear. Strong. But his intense stare was still fixed on the wall. Not on me.

  I believed him, but asked, “So who did?”

  For the first time since Noah started speaking, he turned to me.

  “We’ll find out,” he said.

  I tried to assemble all of this information into something that made sense. “So Joseph never texted you,” I said. My heart beat faster.

  Noah shook his head, but flashed the barest suggestion of a smile at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I can hear that,” Noah said.

  I stared at him, bewildered.

  “You,” he said quietly. “Your heartbeat. Your pulse. Your breath. All of you.”

  My pulse rioted, and Noah’s smile broadened.

  “You have your own sound. Everything does; animals, people. I can hear all of it. When something, or someone’s hurt, or exhausted, or whatever—I can tell. And I think— fuck.” Noah lowered his head and tugged on his hair. “So, this is going to sound mad. But I think maybe I can fix them,” he said, without looking up. But then he did, and his eyes fell on my arm. On my shoulder.