The Retribution of Mara Dyer (17 page)

I couldn’t speak, but I could shake my head.

“You won’t know unless you take a test,” Stella said.

I couldn’t believe this conversation was even happening. How did I get here? I racked my broken brain, desperately searching for a memory, any memory, that could help me answer that question. I forced myself to think about Horizons. They’d done things to me there. But what things?

Stella couldn’t be right. I felt sick. I was going to
be
sick. I covered my mouth with my hand and rushed to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before I threw up.

I crouched on the tile floor, shaking and sweating. I felt the pressure of her hands on my head as she swept my damp hair back.

“It’s still early,” Stella said gently. “You could terminate it.”

I threw up again.

“You need to know, Mara. One way or the other.”

“Oh, God,” I moaned.

When there was nothing left in my stomach, I stood up and washed my face. I brushed my teeth. I said good night to Jamie and Stella. My voice sounded robotic. Alien. It didn’t sound like it even came from me, but that wasn’t really
surprising anymore. My body didn’t feel like
mine
anymore. Sometimes I did things I didn’t want to do, or said things I didn’t want to say. Sometimes I felt like crying for no reason, or snapped at the people I cared about for less. I’d been so worried for so long that I was losing my mind, but now it felt like I was losing my body. I felt like a stranger.

What if I was carrying one?

26

O
UR NEXT STOP SHOULD’VE BEEN
DC, but I made that difficult.

I couldn’t stand being in the car. I was sweating through my clothes, even though Jamie had made the air as cold as it would go. Every hour or so I got sick, and I didn’t always have control over it. Stella and Jamie took turns at the wheel so one of them could sit with me in the backseat.

It was a quiet drive—no one said anything about the night before, least of all me, but by some tacit agreement, Jamie stopped in the middle of the eight-hour drive to switch cars and hole up at another hotel, for my sake, no doubt.
Jamie persuaded the owner of a convertible to lend it to us, thinking the air might make me feel less nauseous. After the owner tossed him the keys, Jamie threw up himself behind a bush.

He was getting more and more confident about using his ability, but I still caught him digging his nails into his palms sometimes, or biting his lip until it bled. Perversely, it made me feel better to see him struggle too. Like I was less of a freak among freaks. Maybe what we had
was
an illness, like Kells had said. Sometimes I caught Stella watching me nervously, like I might be contagious.

But Jamie never acted that way. We talked about it later that night, in my room in one of the motels we’d found clustered by the highway exit, while Stella went off in search of something more palatable than fast food.

“I think Stella’s a little scared of you,” he said, while I changed for bed in the bathroom.

“And you’re not?” I called out.

“Of you? You have the soul of a kitten.”

I popped my head out of the bathroom. “A kitten.”

“An assassin kitten.”

I laughed for the first time in I couldn’t remember how long. The thing about Jamie was that he didn’t seem disturbed enough, sometimes, by the things I’d done. He’d say they were fucked up the way he would point out that the sky was blue. Just a fact, like anything else. But the things I did never
seemed to really bother him.
I
never seemed to bother him. In some ways it made him easier to talk to than even Noah.

“So, what are we going to do with you?” Jamie asked.

“In what sense?”

“In the sense that you go from zero to homicidal in sixty seconds.”

“I’m passionate.”

“You’re manic,” Jamie said.

“Promise to put me out of my misery before an alien erupts from my stomach?”

“No lie, I think Stella thinks that’s a thing that could actually happen. You scare the filling out of her doughnut.”

“I’m
not
pregnant. Not with an alien or anything else.”

Jamie quickly changed the subject. “You know, I’ve been thinking—”

“How novel.”

“About your ability,” he said, ignoring me. “Have you ever tried to, like, make good shit happen?”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“Nothing.” I paused, wondering if I should ask something I’d been thinking about for a while. Oh, why not. “Do you ever think about Anna?”

“Nope,” Jamie said without hesitation, which is how I knew he was lying. But I understood why. Sometimes lies are easier to believe.

Jamie changed the subject. “It’s too bad you can’t just, like, will yourself to win the presidency.”

“At seventeen?”

“Whatever. I just mean—if the stuff you imagine could actually happen, you could change the world.”

“I don’t think I’d want to be president.”

“Really?” Jamie looked incredulous. “God, I’d love it.”

“Why?”

“Someone has to be leader of the free world. It might as well be me.”

“And what would you do with your great power? It comes with great responsibility, you know.”

“New world order,” he said, grinning. “The freaks shall inherit the earth.”

“I don’t think that’s how democracy works.”

“Democracy is overrated.”

“Spoken like a true dictator. If only we could trade abilities.”

“I have an inappropriate amount of enthusiasm for that idea.”

“This whole conversation is inappropriate.” Which was probably why I was enjoying it.

Jamie frowned. “We need some music up in this joint.” He looked around. “Is that Noah’s laptop?”

I had opened his bag, as well as mine, and the computer was sticking out. “Yeah.”

“Have you . . . looked at it?”

I shook my head. “Password protected.”

“You can’t crack it?”

“Nope.”

“Can I try?”

I shrugged. If I hadn’t had any luck, he probably wouldn’t either.

Less than five minutes later his eyes closed and his face fell. As I predicted.

“No luck?”

“No, I got it,” he said. His voice was weird.

“Really?” I felt a nervous thrill in my stomach. “What was it?”

Jamie hesitated before he spoke. Then he said, “Marashaw.”

I couldn’t breathe. I dropped my head between my knees, but when Jamie put his arm around me I flinched.

I had not seen that coming. It was sweet, too sweet for Noah. If he were there, I’d make fun of him for it, tease him about doodling my would-be married name on his binder.

But he wasn’t there. I couldn’t tease him. Suddenly it was just too much. I reached for the laptop.

“Should I go?” Jamie asked. I nodded, not looking at him. I heard him leave the room.

My fingers trembled as I poked around in Noah’s files, looking for something, anything that might tell me where to find him, but nothing stood out. Finally I just started
opening things at random. What I found made me wish I hadn’t.

It was in a folder labeled
MAD
:

Gather my leaves,

Twist them into crowns

Let me be the king of your forest

Climb on my branches,

I will seek out your hide

As you sleep beneath the shade

Of my giving tree

I held my breath as I read poem after poem that Noah had written for me—the old
Velveteen Rabbit
one, a new
Lolita
one, and even the terribly filthy Dr. Seuss one. My hands shook and my throat ached but I didn’t cry. I couldn’t. I felt angry instead. If he could have been with me, he would have been, which meant he couldn’t. I would make whoever kept him from me pay.

I turned on the bathtub faucet and closed the door, breathing in the steam as the tub filled with water, trying to calm myself down. I let myself imagine Noah in there with me as I undressed.

I thought about him lifting his shirt over his head, the way his muscles would tense beneath his skin. How he would climb into the tub first, wearing nothing but a smirk as he
waited for me to join him. I closed my eyes and smiled, but when I opened them, I bit back a scream.

Noah was there, in the tub. The water was red with his blood. His veins were slashed open at the wrists.

I bolted from the bathroom, threw on clothes. I snatched Noah’s laptop from the bed and carried it with me to Jamie’s room. I pounded on the door.

“Put on some music,” I said the second he opened it, thrusting the laptop into his hands.

“Mara—”

“Just do it, Jamie.” Thoughts roared in my brain, none of them good. I had to drown them out.

“You don’t think he’d mind?”

I shook my head without looking up.

I heard Jamie scroll through his music. “What are you in the mood for?”

I closed my eyes. “Something we can dance to.”

Five minutes later I heard the intro for “Sympathy for the Devil.” Jamie stepped up onto the bed and held out his hand. I took it and plastered a smile on my face, but it didn’t reach my eyes. He kicked off his shoes, and I kicked off mine.

When the door opened, we didn’t even hear it—we were screaming along with Mick Jagger at the top of our lungs. It felt good.

“Hate to interrupt,” Stella said, eyeing us both, “but dinner has arrived.”

“Oh, thank God.” Jamie jumped off the bed. “I’m starving.”

The smell of whatever was in the plastic bags she’d brought made my stomach growl. “Me too.” I peered into the bag Stella was holding. “What did you get?”

“Mexican,” she said.

“Perfect.” I plucked a foil-covered burrito out of the bag. We ate together with Noah’s playlist still playing. We talked and laughed about nothing, because if we didn’t, we would give up. Before she and I left Jamie’s room, Stella handed me a plastic bag. “I bought this for you,” she said as she opened the door.

“Um, thanks?”

She was already walking away, and waved at me without turning around. I looked into the bag.

It was a pregnancy test.

27

I
LOOKED AT IT, CRADLED
in the plastic bag telling me to
HAVE A NICE DAY!
, but I couldn’t even seem to take it out to read the instructions. I saw the scene unfold in my mind: me in the bathroom, fumbling to open the package and dropping the instructions on the sodden tile floor. Picking them up and trying to read the blurred letters. Sitting on the toilet, practically forcing myself to pee on the stick. And then, after, waiting for fate to hand down my sentence. I just couldn’t do it.

Stella and Jamie knew I hadn’t taken the test, and the atmosphere in the thousandth stolen/borrowed car was dark and uncomfortable. Every time I gagged, Stella and Jamie exchanged a knowing glance, which made me want to kill them, which
made me feel even sicker. I caught my reflection in the mirrored entry to the Georgetown hotel Jamie checked us into. I looked undead. I was mildly surprised no one had tried to behead me.

“Just wait,” the girl in the mirror said back.

“Shut up.”

Jamie and Stella both turned to look at me. Guess I’d said that out loud.

As soon as I’d dropped my things in my room, Jamie knocked on my door. He brushed past me and then flung himself onto my bed. “Mara, dear, hand me that menu?”

“Make yourself comfortable,” I said, tossing it to him.

“I’m ordering room service,” Jamie said.

I dropped into an armchair. “It’s not even six.”

“I’m a growing boy. Leave me alone.” Jamie changed the TV channel. “Oh, a Tarantino marathon!”

I eyed the television. “
Pulp Fiction
? Not my favorite.”

“Blasphemy.”

“I prefer
Kill Bill
.”

“Hmm. Acceptable,” Jamie said with a nod. “Ugh, I can’t order what I want until seven. Bastards.” He punted the remote, and it bounced off the mattress.

“Temper, temper.”

“Pot, meet kettle. Where’s the minibar?”

I pointed to the other side of the room.

“Fetch me something?”

“Fetch yourself.”

Samuel L. Jackson was reciting the last bit of his Ezekiel 25:17 monologue on the flatscreen TV: “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger, those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.”

Jamie blocked my view. “You didn’t take it, I’m guessing?”

“Take what?” I asked, watching John Travolta and Sammy empty their clips into that sad guy.

“The, uh, test.”

“The—oh.” The pregnancy test. Before I could even answer, Jamie’s focus was diverted.

“Oh,
hello
there.” Jamie tossed a little black cardboard box at me just as Samuel was saying, “And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

I caught it even though I wasn’t looking, and turned the box over. “What is this?”

“It’s, like, a sex kit.” Jamie ripped open a bag of Skittles and tossed a handful into his mouth.