The Evolution of Mara Dyer

59

THERE WAS A DEFINITE ADVANTAGE TO PHOEBE’S sedation: For the rest of the day, I wouldn’t have to listen to her talk. And tonight?

I wouldn’t have to worry that she would wake up.

I passed Noah a note, mimicking his from yesterday:

Tonight at one by the music studio? Make it happen?

When I caught his eye during dinner, he nodded yes. Each second fell away as the clock slipped forward. I wished, I needed, everyone to sleep. I conjured mental images of empty hallways. Of Barney in the common room, asleep in front of the television with his headphones on. Of Brooke in bed. No one needed to use the bathroom. No one felt like they had to monitor the halls. I imagined I could hear the sounds of everyone else turning over in their beds, rustling in their sheets, breathing quietly into their pillows.

And then it was time. I slipped off my blanket and slipped on my hoodie. I pulled it over my head and zipped it up to quiet the sound of my ferociously beating heart. When I shifted to stand, the mattress groaned and my eyes darted to the other side of the room.

Phoebe was sleeping.

I tiptoed to the door and opened it as softly as I could. The second I did, someone somewhere coughed and my heart leapt into my throat. I waited there in the doorway for what felt like hours.

Nothing.

I left the room. I walked down the hallway. And each time I passed another doorway, my heart stopped. When I rounded the corner by the common room, directly in front of the counselor’s desk, I mentally prepared myself to be directed back to bed.

But no one was there.

I practically ran the rest of the way to the studio. Where was everyone? The bathroom? Sleeping?

It didn’t really matter and I didn’t really care, because Noah stood in the silent corridor waiting for me, and I wanted nothing more than to fly into his arms.

I didn’t. I stopped.

“You made it,” he said with a smile.

I returned it. “You too.” I reached for the door to the music room, but I noticed the keypad.

“Are you serious?” I whispered through gritted teeth.

Noah hushed me, then pressed a series of numbers on the pad. I looked up at him incredulously.

“Everyone has a price,” he said, as the door in front of us clicked open. He held the door open for me, and I walked through.

The dark was impenetrable. Noah’s fingers twined around mine as he led me forward, and then down to the carpeted floor.

My eyes began to adjust somewhat to the darkness in the room. There was a small window at the far corner, letting in a sliver of moonlight that illuminated the planes and angles in his expressionless face.

He sat with his back against the wall, statue-still and cold. He withdrew his hand from mine.

I reached out to take it back, but he said, “Don’t.” His voice was laced with contempt. Poisonous.

“Don’t what?” I asked flatly.

His jaw locked, and he stared at me with empty eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t—” he started. “I don’t know what to—” He glanced down.

At my wrists.

So that’s what this was about. Noah wasn’t furious with me. He was furious with himself. It was hard to recognize still, because I was the opposite. I turned outward with anger. Noah turned in.

I put my hands on either side of his face, not gentle and not soft. “Stop it,” I said, my voice harsh. “You aren’t the one who hurt me. Stop torturing yourself.“

Noah’s expression didn’t change. “I wasn’t there.”

“You were trying to help,” I said. “You were trying to find answers—”

His slate blue eyes looked like iron in the darkness. “I swore I would be there for you and I wasn’t. I swore you would be safe, and you weren’t.”

“I’m—”

“You were terrified,” he said, cutting me off. “When you called me, I’ll never forget your voice.”

“Noah.”

“You told me about the notebook you didn’t remember writing in and I had never heard you—I’d never heard you sound like that.” His voice grew distant. “I scrambled to get to Boston to make the other flight the second we hung up. I did, and I was trapped on that fucking plane while he forced you—”

Noah didn’t finish his sentence. He nearly vibrated with rage, with the effort it took not to scream. “I felt you dying beneath my skin,” he said, his tone hollow. “I called Daniel from the plane—I dialed again and again until he woke up.” Noah met my eyes. “I told him you were going to kill yourself, Mara. I didn’t know how else to explain—what I saw.” His face was drawn in fury.

I wanted to draw something else.

My fingers traced the fine, elegant bones in his face. “It’s okay.”

“It is not okay,” he snapped. “They had you committed. They sent you here because of what I told them.”

“Because of what Jude did.”

He laughed without humor. “Your mother said I couldn’t see you—that you had to deal with this as a family now, and that they were going to send you somewhere for proper help. I couldn’t comprehend it—that the last time I heard your voice for months, it would be riddled with terror as you begged for your life.” He closed his eyes. “And I wasn’t there.”

“You were at the hospital,” I said, brushing my thumb over his beautiful mouth. “Daniel said you didn’t leave.”

Noah opened his eyes but avoided mine. “I managed to see you, once.”

“Really?”

He gave a short nod. “You were unconscious. You were—they had you in restraints.” He said nothing for what seemed like a very long time.

We didn’t have enough of it. There was so much he still didn’t know.

“I saw Abel Lukumi,” I said.

Noah’s brows drew together. “What?”

“In the hospital. On the second day, I think. When I woke up—my mother told me why I was there and I . . .”

Freaked out. I freaked out, and they sedated me. “I tried to explain to her what happened, with Jude, but I—I lost it,” I said. “Before the drugs kicked in, I saw Lukumi by the hospital room door.”

Noah was silent.

“It wasn’t a hallucination,” I said firmly, because I was afraid he was thinking it. “You didn’t see him in the building, did you?”

“No” was all he said.

Of course not. I went on to tell Noah about everything else that happened that night—about finding the unmarked disc in my room, and what was on it. I told him about seeing Rachel, watching her through the lens of Claire’s video camera. Watching the asylum collapse.

I left out the part about hearing my laughter after it did.

When I finished, Noah said, “I should never have left you.” He shook his head. “I thought John would be enough.”

“You trusted him. He watched the house for days, and everything was fine.” I paused, then asked, “What happened?”

“He had a stroke. Just sitting there, in the car.”

I felt like I’d been bathed in ice. I tried not to sound as freaked out as I felt. “So did the officer.”

“What officer?”

“When Jude—at the dock,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “At the marina, before I passed out—there was a man, an off-duty cop, who came to help when he saw me hurt. He tried to call for help but then Jude—”

Jude stabbed himself in the side.

I still couldn’t make sense of it—the images in my memory bled into one another, and the feelings, too. Terror and rage, fear and panic. So I described what happened on the dock to Noah—he had seen it, but from a different perspective. Maybe together, we could connect the points.

“There were dead fish under the dock,” I said to him as his eyes sharpened. “Just floating in the water.”

Like the Everglades, I thought, remembering Noah’s words. We had been trapped in the creek. I had to get to Joseph but couldn’t. There were only two choices: fight or flight, and I couldn’t flee. I was backed into a corner. So without thinking, my mind fought.

My fear killed everything in the water around us. Alligators. Fish. Everything. And I was afraid at the marina, too. I was terrified of Jude. He didn’t die, but in trying to kill him, did I kill everything around me too?

Did I kill the police officer? The one who tried to help?

My throat burned with the thought and my stomach twisted with guilt. But then I remembered—

John. He also died of a stroke. And I hadn’t even seen him that night. I might be responsible for the rest of it, but not him.

My mind churned, trying to work through it. I glanced up at Noah, wondering what he was thinking, so I asked.

“I wasn’t there,” he answered, with that same vacant look.

I moved toward him then. Slid my arms around his neck and drew him against me. Noah winced at the contact. I ignored it. Now that we were this close, I could see what I missed before.

Noah acted like he felt nothing because he felt everything. He seemed not to care because he cared too much.

I smiled against his lips. “You’re here now.”