The Evolution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #2)(74)

The sun sings in her hair as her head tilts, dips toward the page. She arches forward, her shape slightly feline as she draws. My heart beats her name. She glances over her shoulder and smirks like she can hear it.

Enough.

I toss the book on the floor—a first edition, I don’t care—and I lean into her. She coyly moves to block her sketchbook. Fine. It isn’t what I want, anyway.

“Come here,” I whisper into her skin. I turn her to face me. She knots her fingers in my hair and my eyelids drop at her touch.

And then she kisses me first, which never happens. It is light and fresh and soft. Careful. She still thinks she can hurt me, somehow; she doesn’t grasp yet that it isn’t possible. I have no idea what’s going on in her mind but even if it takes her years to let go, it will be worth it. I would wait forever for the promise of seeing Mara, unleashed.

I pull back to look at her again, but something is wrong. Off. Her eyes are glassy and blurred, shining with tears.

“Are you all right?”

She shakes her head. A tear spills over, rolls down her cheek. I hold her face in my hands. “What?”

She glances at the sketchbook behind her. Moves out of the way. I lift it.

It’s a sketch of me, but my eyes are blacked out. I narrow mine at hers.

“Why would you draw this?”

She shakes her head. I grow frustrated. “Tell me.”

She opens her mouth to speak, but she has no tongue.

When I wake, Mara is no longer in bed.

I lie alone, staring at the ceiling, then at the clock. Three minutes after two in the morning. I wait five minutes. After ten, I get up to see where she’s gone.

I find her in the kitchen. She is staring at her reflection in the dark window with a long knife pressed against her thumb, and suddenly I’m not in Miami but in London, in my father’s study; I am fifteen and completely numb. I skirt the desk my father never sits in and reach for his knife. I drag it across my skin—

I blink the memory away and whisper Mara’s name in desperation. She doesn’t respond, so I cross the kitchen and take her hand and gently put down the knife.

She smiles and it is empty and it freezes my blood because I’ve seen that smile on myself.

In the morning, she remembers nothing.

It is March 29th.

I couldn’t breathe when I read the date. March 29th is today.





43





I WAS A SEETHING CAULDRON OF THOUGHTS, NONE OF which I could process before I heard Daniel calling my name.

I rushed to put the notebook back where I found it and slipped out of the guest bedroom and into the kitchen. Daniel was twirling his keys.

“We’re going out,” he said.

I glanced at the hallway. “I don’t really feel like—”

“Like staying home. Trust me.” Daniel flashed a cryptic smile. “You’ll thank me later.”

I doubted that. I needed to sit still, by myself, and just think. About what I would say to Noah when I finally saw him. What I would tell him after what I read.

The entries about me were one thing. Noah wrote them for me, meant for me to see them, someday.

But the rest. The rest was his. His. I felt sick.

“I got you out of seeing that awful-looking movie with Mom and Joseph. Come on,” Daniel said with an exaggerated arm-wave. “COME ON.”

He was relentless so I followed him sulkily into the car. “Where are we going?” I asked, trying to sound casual. Trying to sound okay.

“We are going out for your birthday.”

“Hate to break it to you, but you’re a little late.”

He stroked his chin. “Yes, yes, I see how it may seem that way from your unenlightened perspective. But in fact, seeing as how your technical birthday resulted in what we shall henceforth call your ‘Dark Period’, it was discussed and then agreed that you should have a do-over.”

I shot him a sidelong glance as he turned onto the highway. “Discussed and agreed by . . .?”

“By everyone. Everyone in the whole world. There is no other topic of discussion other than Mara Dyer, didn’t you get the memo?”

I sighed. “You’re not going to tell me where we’re going, are you?”

Daniel mimed zipping his lips.

“Right,” I said. It was hard not to smile, even though I wasn’t in the mood. My brother was trying to make me happy. It was my fault that I was miserable, not his.

We eventually stopped at a marina, which, obviously, I did not expect. I got out of the car, my feet crunching on the gravel, but Daniel stayed put. I looped around to his window and he rolled it down.

“This is where I leave you,” he said with a salute.

I glanced back at the entrance. The sky was beginning to change, and silver-pink clouds appeared low over the tall masts. No one was there. “Am I supposed to do anything?”

“All shall be revealed in time.”

There was a plan, clearly, a plan that likely involved Noah, which made me want to smile and cry at the same time. “Does Mom know?” was all I asked.

“Sort of . . . not really.”

“Daniel—”

“It’s worth it, you deserve this. Hey, look behind you!”

I turned. A man in a nautical-ish uniform was walking from a long dock into the parking lot, a garment bag draped over his arms. When I looked back at Daniel, he’d rolled up his window. He winked through it and waved.