The Evolution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #2)(21)

“Great! Today we have someone very special with us,” she said, beaming in my direction. “Would you introduce yourself to the group?”

I raised my arm in an awkward half-wave thing. “I’m Mara Dyer.”

“Hi, Mara,” the chorus replied. Just like in the movies.

“We’re so glad you’re here, Mara. I’m Brooke. Now, just to get to know you a little better, I’d love for you to tell us where you’re from, how old you are, and one special, secret wish of yours. We’ll all go around the room and share after you. Sound good?”

Phenomenal. “I’m from a city outside Providence.” I was met with thirteen glazed stares. “Rhode Island,” I clarified. “I’m seventeen,” I added, “And I wish I didn’t have to be here,” I finished. I couldn’t resist.

My secret wish earned a chuckle from Jamie but he was the only one who shared my sense of humor, it seemed. No one else even cracked a smile. Oh well.

“We understand how you feel, Mara,” Brooke said. “It’s a big adjustment. Now then, let’s move clockwise.” She pointed to a boy sitting in an armchair to my left. He began to speak but I didn’t hear what he said, because Phoebe slid into the seat next to me and I was distracted by the smell of her breath in my face. She slipped a folded piece of paper into my lap.

A love letter, perhaps? Could I be so lucky? I opened it.

Not a love letter. Not a letter at all. The piece of paper was a picture of me, lying in my bed. In the pajamas I wore last night. I faced the camera, but you couldn’t see my eyes.

They’d been scratched out.





14





I WENT SLACK WITH FEAR, AS IF I WERE A PUPPET AND Phoebe had cut my strings.

“It fell out of your bag,” she whispered.

I stared blankly at the picture until I heard my name called. I shoved it in my pocket and asked to use the bathroom. Brooke nodded. I grabbed my bag and fled.

Once inside, I hid in a stall and rifled through it. I took out an old paperback I’d found in the garage and decided to read—one of my father’s, I think, from college—along with the sketchbook I hadn’t been in the mood to draw in and a few charcoal sticks and pens.

And my digital camera. The one my parents gave me for my birthday. I didn’t remember putting that in my bag at all.

My pulse raced as I withdrew the picture from my back pocket and stared at it. I turned on the camera, pressed the menu button, and waited.

The last picture taken appeared on the screen. It was the same photo in my hand.

The picture before that was also of me asleep, in the same clothes I wore last night, my body in a different position. And the picture before that. And the picture before that.

There were four of them altogether.

Horror weakened my knees but I braced myself against the stall. I had to keep standing. I had to see if there was something, anything, any way I could prove that Jude took the pictures, that he was alive and in my room and watching me sleep. I thumbed through the camera’s features as I forced myself to breathe.

The camera had a timer.

My bag had been searched; whoever checked it would have seen the printed picture, but to them, that’s all it would look like. Just a picture of me asleep. They might think I scratched my eyes out myself.

And if I showed the digital camera to them, or to my parents, they might think that I took all of the pictures myself; that I used the camera’s timer to set up the shots. The why didn’t matter; I just came back from an involuntary stay at a psych unit. Why would never matter again.

I stifled the screams I wanted to yell but couldn’t. I put the camera and the picture back in my bag. I went back to the common room and it was all I could do to sit still. Phoebe the psycho stared at me the whole time.

I ignored her. I detached. I was being tested, Mr. Robins said, evaluated to see if I could hack it in the outpatient world, and I needed to prove that I could.

So when the session finally ended, I seized on Jamie—I needed the distraction.

“Do you miss Croyden?” I asked, my voice falsely light.

“Sure. Particularly when they make us do positive self-talk with Chariots of Fire blasting in the background.”

Thank you, Jamie. “Tell me you’re kidding?”

“I wish. At least the food’s good,” he said, as we lined up for lunch.

I was about to ask what we were having when a piercing scream sounded from the front of the line. I was already on edge and that nearly sent me over. I watched, frozen, as a blond girl with a delicate doll face separated herself from the group.

“Megan,” Jamie said in my ear. “The poor kid’s afraid of everything. This happens a lot.”

Megan was now backed up against the opposite wall, pointing at something.

A large, cartoonishly handsome “student” was walking in the direction of her extended forefinger. He crouched down low, just as I rose up on my toes to try and see.

“It’s a ring snake,” he called out. He lifted it with both hands.

I exhaled. No big—

Megan screamed again as the boy ripped the snake apart.

I was paralyzed for a second, not quite believing what I’d seen. The cat last night, and now this—anger rushed in and I seized it. It was better than fear. I couldn’t do anything about the cat, but I could do something about this.