The Evolution of Mara Dyer

57

WE HAD NO TIME ALONE THE rest of the day. Noah was shuttled from pointless thing to pointless thing with Adam, Stella, Megan and the other temporaries as I was left to endure more talk therapy and generally languish in solitude. I met a few permanents, who didn’t seem obviously disturbed. Not as bad as Phoebe, anyway, by a long shot.

When we finally sat down for dinner, I dropped down into a seat across from Noah. A few boys I didn’t know well shared the table, but they weren’t too close.

I was desperate to talk to him. I had so much I wanted to say.

He was so close, but too far away to touch. My fingertips ached with the need to feel him, solid and warm and real under my hands.

I said his name, but Noah gave a single shake of his head. I bit my lip. I could scream from frustration and I wanted to. I felt like I was drifting and needed him to tether me to the earth.

But then he scribbled something on a napkin with a crayon—he must have stolen it from the art studio they had here—and handed it to me.

I glanced up, then around, then down at the message as discreetly as I could.

Music studio. 1 a.m.

“But—” I whispered.

Trust me, Noah mouthed.

I did.

I wished the sunlight away as I finished dinner that evening across from a silent, unusually sullen Stella. She picked at her food and every now and then, her eyes would sweep the room. When I asked her what was wrong she excused herself, leaving me alone.

I couldn’t wait for night to fall and I gazed out the thick, distorted windows at every opportunity. The darkness nipped at the heels of the sunset, waiting to swallow it.

The sounds of silverware clinking against ceramic dishes died away as the sun sank below the horizon. Counselor Wayne came around with everyone’s evening meds in tiny little paper cups, just like in Miami.

Stella swallowed hers in front of me, her white T-shirt riding up slightly with the movement. I glanced up and saw Jamie, who downed the contents of his makeshift shot glass too. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and Wayne moved on.

Then it was my turn. There were two additional pills inside my cup today. Oval and blue.

“You know the drill, Mara,” Wayne said.

I did. But I couldn’t have been more unenthused about taking them. What if they made me tired? My eyes flicked up, trying to find Noah in the small sea of faces in the dining room. He wasn’t there.

“Mara,” Wayne said, warmly but with a touch of impatience.

Damn it. I took the cup in my hands and swallowed the pills, chasing them with a gulp of water.

“Open,” he said.

I opened my mouth and showed him my tongue.

Wayne smiled and moved on to the next person. I grudgingly stood and brought my dishes over to the counter, then followed the line of girls walking down the hallway to their respective rooms. I grabbed my little tote with my shampoo and soap in it, helpfully packed by my mother as if she’d sent me off to summer camp, and headed to the girls’ bathroom for a shower. There were stalls, thankfully, but we had to avail ourselves of the spa-like bathroom in groups or pairs. My other half was Phoebe, of course. At that point, I was too used to my life sucking to care.

When I finished, my limbs felt weak with exhaustion and I almost dropped my towel before slipping on my robe. I managed not to embarrass myself, barely, then followed Phoebe’s stupid steps out of the bathroom and back down the hall. She opened the door to our unadorned white room, occupied by a pair of identical white twin beds. Phoebe sat on one at the far end of the room, leaving me the bed closest to the door.

Perfect.

Phoebe was quiet. She hadn’t said anything to me all day, in fact, and I counted myself fortunate. She watched me for a minute, then stood and turned out the main light while I rummaged in my recently-filled dresser for something to wear to bed, even though I had no plans to sleep. I shot her an annoyed look, which she either didn’t notice or ignored. Then she slipped under her covers and I changed and slipped under mine.

Each room had a schoolhouse clock positioned on the wall between both of the beds. Ours read ten o’clock, then ten thirty, then eleven. The seconds ticked away as I listened to Phoebe snore.

Then, in the darkness, two words:

“Get up.”

A harsh, female voice reached into my brain. I wanted to stab it.

My eyes opened slowly. Phoebe hovered near my bed. I started to sit up, but was surprised to find I was already sitting.

I was more surprised to find that my feet were on the floor, the slick tile surface cool beneath them.

“You were getting out of bed,” Phoebe said mechanically.

“What?” My voice was thick with sleep.

“You woke up,” she said to me. “You were going to get out of bed.”

I rested my forehead in one hand. My eyes traveled to the clock.

Four a.m. I missed it. Missed Noah. I was too late.

“Want to get some water?” Phoebe asked.

My throat was sour, my mouth and tongue coated with film. I nodded, not quite sure why Phoebe was being so uncharacteristically nice but not really with it enough to ask. I stood on unsteady feet and followed Phoebe out into the dimly lit hallway. We made our way soundlessly to the bathroom, passing Barney who was now at his console desk.

“We’re going to the bathroom,” Phoebe announced. He nodded at us, smiled, and returned to his book. Silence of the Lambs.

Once inside, Phoebe turned on the faucet. I was desperate for water; I lurched forward to the sink and cupped a handful, raising it to my mouth. I drank deeply, though most of the liquid spilled through my fingers, and quickly darted to catch another mouthful, and another. I didn’t think I could ever drink enough until, finally, the staleness in my throat softened, and the burn died away. I looked up in the mirror.

I was pale and my skin was damp. My hair hung limply around my face, my eyes staring blankly into the silvered glass. I didn’t look like myself. I didn’t feel like myself.

“Bloody Mary,” Phoebe said.

I jumped. I’d almost forgotten she was next to me. “What?” I asked, still focused on the stranger in the glass.

“If you say ‘Bloody Mary,’ three times after midnight, she’ll come to you in the mirror and scratch your eyes and throat out,” Phoebe said.

I stared at her in the mirror. She was looking at the ceiling.

“I just said her name twice.” She smiled. The faucet dripped.

“She had miscarriages,” Phoebe continued. “They said it made her crazy, so she would steal other women’s babies. But then they would die too. She killed them.” Phoebe met my eyes in the mirror, thoroughly creeping me out.

What was I supposed to say? I cupped one last handful of water and splashed it on my face instead of in my mouth.

“Who did you kill?” Phoebe said. Her voice was chilling and clear.

I froze. The water dripped from my face and my fingers onto the tiled floor.

“When you got out of bed, you said you didn’t mean to kill Rachel and Claire. But you weren’t sorry about the others. That’s what you said.”

“It was a nightmare.” My voice was shaky and hoarse. I turned the faucet off.

“It didn’t seem like a nightmare,” she said.

I ignored her and turned to leave. Phoebe stepped in front of me.

“Who are Rachel and Claire?” she asked, piercing me with her eyes. They looked hollow in her white moon face.

“It was just a nightmare,” I said again, staring back at her. I tried hard not to give any outward sign that what she repeated had any basis in reality, but inside?

Inside I was crumbling.

“You said you were glad you killed the man, that you wished you could have crushed his skull with your own fingers.”

“Stop it,” I said, starting to tremble.

“You told me about the asylum,” she said, backing up slightly. “You told me everything.” The corners of her mouth turned up in a disturbed smile. “I know about him,” Phoebe said, her grin spreading. “How much you want him. How much you love him. How desperate you are. But he doesn’t love you back,” she said in a singsong voice.

Did I tell her about Noah? I closed my eyes and my nostrils flared. I wanted to scream in her face, to tell her to shut her too-wide mouth, but I couldn’t. Not without giving myself away. “I’m going back to bed,” I said, stepping around her. My voice trembled when I spoke. I hoped she didn’t notice.

Phoebe followed close behind me. Too close.

We made our way back to our room without speaking. Phoebe climbed into bed, wearing a satisfied smile. I wanted to smack it off of her face, but in the back of my mind, I knew that the person I was most furious with was me.

Losing time, writing in notebooks—it was frightening, yes, but it hadn’t hurt me. Not yet. And as long as I didn’t tell anyone, maybe this would just be temporary, and I could get out.

And find Jude. Make sure he could never hurt me again.

But Phoebe couldn’t know those things she said unless I told her. Which meant that my already tenuous self-control was slipping.

I drew the blanket up to my chin and stared at the wall. My mind wouldn’t quiet, and I couldn’t sleep.

And so I laid awake until the darkness turned to daylight, and then at seven a.m., stood up to face the day.

Phoebe started to scream.

“What is wrong with you?” I hissed at her.

She wouldn’t stop.

Residents began to cluster by the door. A counselor broke through just as I met Noah’s eyes.

Wayne squeezed by until he stood just inside the doorway to our room. “What’s going on here?”

Phoebe somehow seemed to shrink back against the wall and lurch forward with her accusation at the same time. “She was standing over me while I slept!”

Wayne’s shifty eyes shifted to me.

I raised my hands defensively. “She’s lying,” I said. “I was just getting up to change.”

“I woke up and she was standing right there,” Phoebe keened.

I fought off a wave of fury.

“She was going to hurt me!”

“Calm down, Phoebe.”

“She’s going to hurt me if you don’t stop her!”

“Can everyone just back up a second? Barney! Brooke!” Wayne called, his eyes on me the whole time.

“We’re here,” Barney’s deep voice boomed from somewhere behind me.

They entered. I was rooted to the spot, just a foot away from my bed.

“All right, Phoebe, try and relax,” Brooke said, floating over to her and sitting beside her on the bed. Phoebe had started to rock back and forth. “I want you to do the breathing exercises we talked about, okay? And the counting.”

I heard Phoebe begin to count to ten. Meanwhile, Wayne and Barney were both focused on me. Wayne had taken a step closer.

“What happened, Mara?” Wayne asked.

“Nothing happened,” I said, and I was telling the truth.

“I can’t live with her!”

“Phoebe,” Wayne said, “if you don’t stop screaming, we’re going to have to take you to the room.”

She shut up instantly.

Brooke looked up at me from Phoebe’s bed. “Mara, please just tell me what happened last night? In your own words?”

I fought the urge to lift my eyes to the doorway and search for Noah. I swallowed. “I ate dinner with everyone else.”

“Who did you sit with?” she asked.

“I—” I didn’t remember. Who did I sit with? “Stella,” I said finally. I looked to the doorway and she edged in next to Noah. He looked down at her and a strange expression passed over his face.

Brooke said my name and drew my eyes back to hers. “So you had dinner with Stella. Then what happened?”

“I took a shower and then we came back to our room. I put on my pajamas and went to bed.”

“Both of them got up at about four,” Barney said.

I nodded. “Phoebe came with me.”

“Don’t say my name,” she murmured quietly. I rolled my eyes.

“That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever sleepwalked before?” Brooke asked me.

I didn’t answer her, of course, because the answer was yes.