The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

47

BEFORE

I WOKE UP THE NEXT DAY IN A SKELETAL, INSTITUTIONAL bed inside the Tamerlane State Lunatic Asylum. The mattress beneath me was torn to pieces and filthy. The bed frame groaned as I shifted and I looked down at myself. I was dressed in black. Someone kissed my neck behind me. I whipped around.

It was Jude. He smiled, and snaked his arm around my waist, pulling me closer.

“Come on, Jude. Not here.” I ducked under his arm and stood up, tripping over the debris and insulation on the floor.

He followed me, and backed me up against the wall.

“Shhh, just relax,” he said, as he lifted his hand to my cheek and went for my mouth. I turned my head away. His breath was hot on my neck.

“I don’t want to do this right now,” I said, my voice hoarse. Where was Rachel? Claire?

“You never want to do this,” he mumbled against my skin.

“Maybe because you do it so badly.” My stomach clenched as soon as the words were out of my mouth.

Jude was still. I chanced a brief look at his face; his eyes were vacant. Lifeless. And then he smiled, but there was no warmth in it.

“Maybe it’s because you’re a tease,” he said, and his smile faded. I needed to leave. Now.

I tried to extract myself from between his body and the wall by pushing against his chest with my palms.

He pushed back. It hurt.

How was this happening? I’d learned over the past two months that Jude had his dick moments—entitled, spoiled, obnoxious—typical Alpha male garbage. But this? This was a whole new level of fucked up. This was—

Jude pressed me against the dusty, crumbling wall with the full weight of his body, cutting off my train of thought. I felt the individual hairs rise on the back of my neck and assessed my dwindling options.

I could scream. Rachel and Claire might be close enough to hear me, but they might not. If they weren’t—well. Things would get uglier.

I could smack him. That would probably be stupid, as I’d seen Jude bench-press twice my body weight.

I could do nothing. Rachel would come looking for me eventually.

Door number three seemed the most promising. I went limp.

Jude did not care. He crushed into me with more force, and I fought the swirling hysteria rising in my throat. This was wrong, wrong wrong wrong wrong. Jude crushed his mouth against mine, panting, and the force of him pushed me deeper into the wall, setting loose small clouds of dust that billowed around my body. I felt nauseous

“No,” I whispered. I sounded so far away.

Jude didn’t answer. His pawing hands were rough and clumsy under my coat, under my sweatshirt, under my shirt. The cold of his skin against my stomach made me gasp. Jude laughed at me.

It sparked a cold, rocking fury inside of me. I wanted to kill him. I wished that I could. I pulled one of his hands off my body with a force I didn’t know I had. He replaced it, and without thinking I hauled off and smacked him.

I did not even have the opportunity to register the sting on my hand before I felt it on my face. On my face. Jude’s blow came so fast and so fierce that it seemed to take me minutes, or hours, to realize he’d even hit me back. My eyeball felt like it was dangling from my socket. The pain bit at me from the inside. My whole being was hot with it.

Shaky-limbed and crying—was I crying?—I began to sink. Jude pulled me up, up, and pinned me, trapped me against the wall. I trembled so furiously against it that bits give way against my hands, my arms, my legs. Jude trailed his tongue over my cheek, and I shuddered.

Then Claire’s voice rang out, cutting the charged, silent air. “Mara?”

Jude backed away just a little, only a little, but my feet would not move. My cheeks were cold and itchy with tears and his saliva that I couldn’t wipe away. My breath was ragged, my sobbing silent. I raged at myself for not knowing the hollow stranger standing near me. And I raged at him for hiding himself so well, for tricking me, trapping me, crushing me. I felt something tug at the edges of my mind, threatening to pull me down.

A pair of footsteps a few feet away brought me back. Claire called my name again on the other side of the doorway; I couldn’t see her, but I clung to that voice, tried to shake off the infuriating helplessness and powerlessness that clogged my throat and weighed down my feet.

Her flashlight danced around the room and finally landed on Jude as he stepped out from behind the wall, raising tiny cumulus clouds of dust.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey,” Jude replied with a calm, even smile. It was impossibly more frightening than his rage. “Where’s Rachel?”

“She’s looking for the blackboard room to add our names to the list,” Claire said quietly. “She wanted me to come back and make sure you guys weren’t lost.”

“We’re good,” Jude said and beamed, flashing those all-American dimples. He winked at her.

The shrieking violence inside of me escaped in only a faint, wretched whisper. “Don’t leave.”

Jude stared hard into my face, his eyes reflecting pure anger. He didn’t give me a chance to speak before turning back to Claire. He grinned and rolled his eyes. “You know Mara,” he said. “She’s a little freaked out. I’m taking her mind off of it.”

“Ah,” Claire said, and chuckled softly. “You two kids have fun.” I heard her footsteps retreat.

“Please,” I said, a little louder this time.

The footsteps paused for a moment—one bright, hopeful moment—before picking up again. Then they faded into nothingness.

Jude was back. His meaty hand pushed against my chest, crushing me back into the wall. “Shut up,” he said, and unzipped my coat in one harsh motion. He unzipped my sweatshirt in another. Both garments hung limp from my shoulders.

“Don’t move,” he warned me.

I was frozen—completely, stupidly incapacitated. My teeth chattered and my body shook with anger against the wall as Jude fumbled with the button on my jeans, popping it out of the buttonhole. I had only one thought, just one, that had crawled like an insect into my brain and beat its wings until I could hear nothing else, think nothing else, and until nothing else mattered.

He deserved to die.

As Jude unzipped my fly, three things happened at once.

Rachel’s voice called out my name.

Dozens of iron doors slammed shut in a deafening clang.

Everything went black.