The Evolution of Mara Dyer

4

HIS WORDS DRAINED THE BLOOD FROM MY FACE.

“They didn’t find complete remains for any of the—for Rachel, Claire, or Jude. But they did find—they found his hands, Mara. They buried them.” He swallowed like it was painful for him, then pointed at the video screen. “This guy? Two hands.” Daniel’s voice was gentle and sad and desperate but his words refused to make sense. “I know you’re freaked out about what’s been happening. I know. And Dad—we’re all worried about Dad. But that isn’t Jude, Mara. It’s not him.”

It would have been a relief to believe that I was that crazy, to swallow that lie and their pills and shake off the guilt that had hounded me since I finally remembered what I was capable of.

But I tried that before. It didn’t work.

I took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m not crazy.”

Daniel closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, his expression was . . . decided. “I’m not supposed to tell you this—”

“Tell me what?”

“The psychologists are calling it a perceptual distortion,” my older brother said. “A delusion, basically. That—that Jude’s alive, that you have the power to collapse buildings and kill people—they’re saying you’re losing the ability to rationally evaluate reality.”

“Meaning?”

“They’re throwing around words like ‘psychotic’ and ‘schizotypal,’ Mara.”

I ordered myself not to cry.

“Mom is hoping that, worst case scenario, this is maybe something called Brief Psychotic Disorder brought on by the PTSD and the shooting and all of the trauma—but from what I think I’m hearing, the main differences between that, schizophrenia, and a bunch of other disorders in between is basically duration.” He swallowed hard. “Meaning, the longer the delusions last, the worse the prognosis.”

I clenched my teeth and forced myself to stay quiet while my brother continued to speak.

“That’s why Mom thinks you should stay here for a while so they can adjust your meds. Then they can move you to a place, a residential treatment facility—”

“No,” I said. As badly as I had wanted to leave my family to keep them safe before, I knew now I needed to stay with them. I could not be locked up while Jude was free.

“It’s like a boarding school,” he went on, “except there’s a gourmet chef and Zen gardens and art therapy—just to take a break.”

“We’re not talking about Fiji, Daniel. She wants to send me to a mental hospital. A mental hospital!”

“It isn’t a mental hospital, it’s a residential—”

“Treatment facility, yeah,” I said, just as the tears began to well. I blinked them back furiously. “So you’re on their side?”

“I’m on your side. And it’s just for a little while, so they can teach you to cope. You’ve been through—there’s no way I could deal with school and what you’ve been through.”

I tried to swallow back the sourness in my throat. “What does Dad say?” I managed to ask.

“He feels like part of this is his fault,” he said.

The wrongness of that idea sliced me open.

“That he shouldn’t have taken on the case,” my brother went on. “He trusts Mom.”

“Daniel,” I pleaded. “I swear, I swear I’m telling the truth.”

“That’s part of it,” he said, and his voice nearly cracked. “That you believe it. Hallucinations—that fits with the PTSD. But you knew when you had them that it was all in your head. Now that you believe it’s real,” Daniel said, his voice tight, “everything you told them yesterday is consistent with—psychosis.” He blinked fiercely and swiped one of his eyes with the back of his hand.

I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. “So that’s it, then.” My voice sounded dead. “Do I even get to go home first?”

“Well, once they admit you they have to keep you for seventy-two hours, and then they reevaluate you before they make a final recommendation to Mom and Dad. So I guess that’ll happen tomorrow?”

“Wait—just seventy-two hours?” And another evaluation . . .

“Well, yeah, but they’re pushing for longer.”

But right now, it was temporary. Not permanent. Not yet.

If I could persuade them that I didn’t believe Jude was alive—that I didn’t believe I killed Rachel and Claire and the others—that none of this was real, that it was all in my head—if I could lie, and convincingly, then they might think my episode at the police station was temporary. That was what my mother wanted to believe. She just needed a push.

If I played this right, I might get to go home again.

I might get to see Noah again.

An image of him flickered in my mind, his face hard and determined at the courthouse, certain that I wouldn’t do what I did. We hadn’t spoken since.

What if I had changed to him, like he said I would?

What if he didn’t want to see me?

The thought tightened my throat, but I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t lose it. From here on out, I had to be the poster child for mental health. I couldn’t afford to be sent away anymore. I had to figure out what the hell was going on.

Even if I had to figure it out by myself.

A knock on the door startled me, but it was just Mom. She looked like she’d been crying. Daniel stood up, smoothing his wrinkled blue dress shirt.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked her.

“Still in the hospital. He gets discharged tomorrow.”

Maybe, if I could put on a good enough performance, I might get discharged with him. “Joseph’s there?”

Mom nodded. So my twelve-year-old brother now had a father with a gunshot wound and a sister in the psychiatric ward. I clenched my teeth even harder. Do not cry.

My mom looked at Daniel then, and he cleared his throat. “Love you, sister,” he said to me. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

I nodded, dry-eyed. My mother sat down.

“It’s going to be okay, Mara. I know that sounds stupid right now, but it’s true. It will get better.”

I wasn’t sure what to say yet, except, “I want to go home.”

My mother looked pained—and why shouldn’t she? Her family was falling apart. “I want you home so badly, sweetheart. I just—there’s no schedule for you at home if you’re not in school, and I think that might be too much pressure right now. I love you, Mara. So much. I couldn’t stand it if you—I was throwing up when I first heard about the asylum. . . . I was sick over it. I couldn’t leave you, not for a second. You’re my baby. I know you’re not a baby but you’re my baby and I want you to be okay. More than anything I want you to be okay.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and smiled at me. “This isn’t your fault. No one blames you, and you’re not being punished.”

“I know,” I said gravely, doing my best impression of a calm, sane adult.

She went on. “You’ve been through so much, and I know we don’t understand. And I want you to know that this”—she indicated the room—“isn’t you. It might be chemical or behavioral or even genetic—”

An image rose up out of the dark water of my mind. A picture. Black. White. Blurry. “What?” I asked quickly.

“The way you’re feeling. Everything that’s been going on with you. It isn’t your fault. With the PTSD and everything that’s happened—”

“No, I know,” I said, stopping her. “But you said—”

Genetic.

“What do you mean, genetic?” I asked.

My mother looked at the floor and her voice turned professional. “What you’re going through,” she said, clearly avoiding the words mental illness, “can be caused by biological and genetic factors.”

“But who in our family has had any kind of—”

“My mother,” she said quietly. “Your grandmother.”

Her words hung in the air. The picture in my mind sharpened into a portrait of a young woman with a mysterious smile, sitting with hennaed hands folded above her lap. Her dark hair was parted in the center and her bindi sparkled between her eyebrows. It was the picture of my grandmother on her wedding day.

And then my mind replaced her face with mine.

I blinked the image away and shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“She killed herself, Mara.”

I sat there, momentarily stunned. Not only had I never known, but . . . “I thought—I thought she died in a car accident?”

“No. That’s just what we said.”

“But I thought you grew up with her?”

“I did. She died when I was an adult.”

My throat was suddenly dry. “How old were you?”

My mother’s voice was suddenly thin. “Twenty-six.”

The next few seconds felt like forever. “You had me when you were twenty-six.”

“She killed herself when you were three days old.”