The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #1)(29)

My sketchbook was gone.

Tears threatened my eyes, but a bunch of students walked into the locker niche and I refused to cry in public. Sluggishly, I put my books back into my locker and removed the flier that was now stuck to the front of my Algebra textbook. A costume party on South Beach hosted by one of Croyden’s elite, in honor of the teacher workday tomorrow. I didn’t bother reading the rest of the details before letting it fall to the ground again. Not my scene.

None of this was my scene. Not Florida and its hordes of tan blonds and mosquitoes. Not Croyden and its painfully generic student body. I’d made a friend in Jamie, but I missed Rachel. And she was gone.

Screw it. I ripped a flier off of another locker and shoved it in my messenger bag. I needed a party. I jogged to the back gate to meet Daniel. He looked uncharacteristically cool in the Croyden uniform, and happy until he saw me—then his face transformed into a mask of brotherly concern.

“You’re looking unusually glum this afternoon,” he said.

I got in the car. “I lost my sketchbook.”

“Oh,” he said. And after a beat, “Was there anything important in it?”

Other than the several detailed sketches of the most infuriatingly beautiful person in our school? No, not really.

I changed the subject. “What were you looking so happy about before I curdled your good mood?”

“Did I look happy? I don’t remember looking happy,” he said. He was stalling. And speeding. I glanced at the odometer; he was doing over fifty miles per hour before we got to the highway. Living dangerously for Daniel. Very suspicious.

“You looked happy,” I said to him. “Spill.”

“I’m going to the party tonight.”

I did a double take. It definitely wasn’t Daniel’s scene. “Who are you going with?”

He blushed and shrugged. No way. Did my brother have a … crush?

“Who?!” I demanded.

“The violinist. Sophie.”

I stared at him, mouth agape.

“It’s not a date,” he added immediately. “I’m just meeting her there.”

The beginnings of an idea sprouted as we turned off the highway. “Mind if I tag along?” I asked. Now it was Daniel’s turn to double take. “I promise not to interfere with your amorous advances.”

“You know, I was going to say yes, but now…”

“Oh, come on. I just need a ride.”

“All right. But who are you going to see, pray tell?”

Huh. I hadn’t planned to see anyone. I just wanted to dance and sweat and forget and—

“What the hell?” Daniel whispered, as we rounded the corner of our street.

A massive gathering of news vans and people lined the pavement in front of our driveway. Daniel and I looked at each other, and I knew we shared the same thought.

Something was wrong.





19


THE SEA OF REPORTERS PARTED FOR DANIEL’s car as he pulled into the driveway. They peered at us as we rolled by; the cameramen seemed to be packing up their equipment, and the satellites on the vans had been retracted into the vehicles. Whatever had happened, they were getting ready to leave.

As soon as Daniel came to a stop, I rocketed out of the car toward the front door, passing both my mother and father’s car. My father’s car. Which didn’t belong here this early.

I was ready to be sick when I finally burst into the house with Daniel behind me. Electronic machine gunfire and video game music met my ears, and the familiar shape of our little brother’s head stared up at the screen from his cross-legged position on the floor. I closed my eyes and breathed through flared nostrils, trying to slow my heart before it exploded in my chest.

Daniel was the first to speak. “What the hell is going on?”

Joseph half-turned to look at Daniel, annoyed at the interruption. “Dad took on some kind of big case.”

“Can you turn that off?”

“One sec, I don’t want to die.” Joseph’s avatar bludgeoned a mustachioed villain into a thick, oozing puddle of goo.

My parents appeared soundlessly in the door frame of the kitchen.

“Turn it off, Joseph.” My mom sounded exhausted.

My brother sighed and paused the game.

“What’s happening?” Daniel asked.

“A case of mine is going to trial soon,” my father said, “and I was announced as the defendant’s new counsel today.”

A shadow of comprehension passed over my older brother’s face, but I didn’t get it.

“We just moved here,” I said. “Isn’t that, like, unusually fast?”

My mother and father exchanged a look. There was definitely something I was missing.

“What? What’s going on?”

“I took over the case for a friend of mine,” my father said.

“Why?”

“He withdrew.”

“Okay.”

“Before we moved here.”

I paused to absorb what I was hearing. “So you had the case before we moved to Florida.”

“Yes.”

That shouldn’t matter, unless …

I swallowed, and asked the question I already knew the answer to. “What is it? What case?”