The Retribution of Mara Dyer Read online

Jamie and Stella were quiet. Then, “Here,” Jamie said, reaching into his bag. He handed me a black T-shirt with the word TROPE upside down in white, and a pair of baggy carpenter shorts.

  Stella frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  “Subverted trope,” Jamie said.

  “Wouldn’t that be inverted?”

  “You’re so literal. Jesus.” He marched off to let me change.

  The ocean air chilled my skin as I stripped off my clothes and dipped into the water, the sand slimy between my toes. It felt like a lake, not the ocean. You couldn’t see the bottom, even though the water was shallow. I rinsed my arms and legs, pulling goose bumps from my flesh. A memory of the warmth of Dr. Kells’s blood came to me unbidden, drawing a spike of pleasure in its wake. I felt sick and gleeful at once.

  “Oh no. No, no, no, no!”

  It was Stella. I stumbled into the shorts Jamie had given me and rushed over to see what had happened. She and Jamie were looking out at the water.

  No. Not at the water. At a massive column of smoke, rising from No Name Island into the sky.

  The three of us looked at one another, thinking the exact same thing.

  “All right. Let’s have a vote,” Jamie said. “Jude—misunderstood good guy, or bad guy with unknown motives? I vote bad guy.”

  “Bad guy,” Stella said.

  I paused before I spoke. “Undecided,” I finally said. “You think he did it?”

  “WTF, Mara? Of course he did it.”

  “He helped us get out of there.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “He said Noah was alive.” But he also said Noah would be waiting for me and he wasn’t. I shook my head to clear it. I needed to believe he was telling the truth. I didn’t forgive him. Far from it. I looked down at my wrists, at the scars from where Jude had made me slit them, faded but not gone, after Noah had healed them. I would never forgive Jude for what he’d done to me, for what he’d done to Joseph, but right now I had to believe him, because I had to believe Noah was alive.

  “Hey,” Jamie said softly.

  Stella ignored him. “Right now it doesn’t matter what he is. How are we supposed to get out of here if we can’t go back to find out how Kells did it herself?”

  “Hey!” Jamie said again, snapping his fingers in Stella’s face to get her attention. He pointed at the ocean. “Is that a boat?”

  I followed his gaze, shading my eyes.

  “That’s convenient,” I said.

  “Too convenient,” Jamie said. “What if someone’s been sent to come get us? Like a Horizons person or something?”

  “Like one of the counselors?” Stella asked. “Doubt it. Maybe the police?”

  “Could they really take us anywhere worse than where we’ve just come from, though?” I asked.

  Jamie pretended to think for a moment. “Um, jail?”

  I shot him a glare. “Would that be worse?”

  He shrugged. “I’d rather not find out. I have plans.”

  Stella shaded her eyes and peered out at the water. “It’s a fishing boat, I think.” She bit her lip, thinking. “We could ask it to take us to No Name Key, or Marathon,” Stella said. “But from there?”

  “Hitch a ride?” I offered. Jamie looked at me like I was crazy. “I don’t know! I’m new to the fugitive thing.”

  Stella turned to us. “One of us is going to have to swim to it. Any volunteers?”

  Jamie shook his head. “Not it. Sharks, first of all, and second of all, sharks.”

  Stella was already unzipping her jeans and pulling them down off her hips. “I was on the swim team, once upon a time.”

  “You shouldn’t go by yourself,” I said.

  “Why? You think the fisherman could be a psychopath?”

  “Everyone’s a little crazy. Some people just hide it better than others.” I glanced at Jamie, who was smiling, before I offered to go with Stella. Honestly, I thought we should all go. I didn’t like the idea of splitting up.

  She shook her head. “You’ve done more than enough. It’s fine, I’ll be okay. Just stay in the trees with Jamie, all right?” She waved at us and then stepped into the water. As she waded farther out, she yelled, “I’ll be right back.”

  14

  I REALLY, REALLY WISH SHE hadn’t said that,” Jamie said.

  “What?”

  “ ‘I’ll be right back.’ Now she definitely won’t be right back.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s the rules.” Jamie peeked through the mangroves as Stella swam toward the boat.

  “She’s fast,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Jamie said. “But a massive shark fin is going to appear behind her any second.”

  “Don’t say that!” I punched him not so lightly in the arm. “Asshole.”

  He was silent for a few minutes¸ and then he smacked my arm.

  “Ow.”

  “You had a mosquito.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Hey, look.” While we’d been talking, the boat had drawn nearer, the motor loud enough to drown out all our efforts at stealthy conversation. A grizzled, gray-haired old man was behind the wheel, or the helm, or the prow, or whatever it was. His hair hung down way past his shoulders, and a bunch of teeth from indeterminate animals dangled from a leather necklace he wore. He pulled the boat up much closer to the sand than I’d expected he would, and Stella hopped off it and into the water, wading toward the beach. Two guys in polo shirts and khaki shorts followed behind her. One of them wore a plastic visor. Both openly ogled her ass.

  Stella motioned for me and Jamie. We walked out into the sun.

  “Some friends you’ve got,” Grizzly Man said to us.

  “Yeah,” Jamie said slowly. “Some friends, all right . . . ?”

  “I told him about the practical joke,” Stella said smoothly. “About Wayne and Deborah leaving us while we camped here overnight, and taking almost all of our stuff.”

  Ah. I got it now. “Total assholes,” I said. “I’m so pissed.”

  “Can we, uh, get a move on?” Visor Guy said. “We have only, what, six hours left on the charter?”

  “Hold your horses,” Grizzly said to him. “I’ll take y’all back out after we drop ’em off at the key.”

  “We’re in town only until tomorrow,” Visor Guy whined, looking annoyed with the whole enterprise. “We don’t have time to go back out.”

  “I’ll give you your money back,” Grizzly snapped. Visor Guy visibly cheered up at this. “You kids want something to drink?”

  God, yes. I nodded fiercely. Jamie was nodding too. Grizzly looked at him a bit longer than he looked at me. “You’re not twenty-one, are you?”

  Both of us shrugged at the same time.

  “Well, beer’s all we got. Don’t tell no one.”

  I smiled. “Our secret.”

  Grizzly handed me a sweating can of beer. I was dying of thirst, so I popped the tab and guzzled it—then almost choked. Who would actually want to drink this? I looked over at Stella. I must’ve been making a weird face, because she was smirking at me.

  It took us only about twenty minutes to get to No Name Key. Jamie chatted up Grizzly, whose actual name was Leonard, surprisingly, while the polo men tried to chat up me and Stella. She actually managed to be friendly. I couldn’t get there.

  The boat pulled up to a small dock, and Grizzly-Leonard hopped off with us. Stella had put her jeans and T-shirt back on, and I looked down at what I was wearing. Jamie’s clothes would do for now, but not for long. They were sandy and sort of damp. And I badly needed a shower—a real one.

  “Is there anywhere to get food around here?” I asked.

  “No Name Pub,” Grizzly-Leonard said, pointing at a little bright yellow building ahead of us, shaded by palm trees and with an old-timey sign out front. “They open at eleven. The key shrimp pizza’s a winner.”

  “And an ATM?” Stella asked.

  At this, Grizzly-Leonard laughed. “The pub is pow
ered by a generator. There’s no electricity grid on the island—the residents don’t want it.”

  Perfect.

  “You’ve got no cash on you at all?”

  Stella shook her head. “It was in our things.”

  “Which your friends ran off with.”

  “Exactly,” Jamie said.

  “With friends like that, who needs enemies?” Then Grizzly-Leonard called out to a woman at the far end of the dock whom I hadn’t noticed until just then. “Pizza’s on me, Charlotte—”

  “No,” I said. “We couldn’t ask you to—”

  “It’s no problem,” he said, grinning. A few of his teeth were missing.

  “We really want to get back out on the water,” Visor Guy said. The other one was still staring at Stella. Gross.

  “Chill your tits,” Grizzly-Leonard said. “You kids gonna be okay?” he asked me.

  We said yes and thanked him, and he took his useless, middle-aged cargo back out onto the water to kill some trophies. My stomach growled.

  “What time is it?” Jamie asked.

  I pulled Jude’s Rolex out from the front pocket of Noah’s bag, where I’d hidden it. “Ten-thirty.”

  “At least when we get to an actual city, we can pawn that thing,” Stella said.

  Jamie shook his head. “No pawnshops. No credit cards. No ATMs. We’re going to have to figure out an alternative. But let’s wait till we get inside.”

  The three of us basically watched the minute hand tick by as we waited for the pub to open. My stomach was downright angry. When the clock struck eleven, I practically dove into the pub, which was entirely plastered with dollar bills. They hung from the ceiling, papered the walls—every inch of every available surface was covered with them, except for the tables. The woman from the dock showed us to a table near the back.

  “What can I do you for?” She handed us three menus. “Any drinks?”

  “Water,” Jamie and I said at once. My mouth felt spoiled after the beer. Stella ordered water too, and the waitress disappeared.

  Jamie glanced at the menu. “I’m starving. I want everything.”

  “Co-signed,” Stella said. “Maybe the key shrimp pizza?”

  “Treif,” Jamie said, not looking up.

  Stella raised an eyebrow. “Gesundheit?”

  “It’s not kosher, I mean. No shrimp.”

  “Oh,” Stella said. “The Hawaiian pizza, then?”

  Jamie shook his head, still looking at the menu. “Nope. Ham.”

  “Pepperoni?”

  “Same.”

  “Okay, you’re impossible.”

  “Vegetarian and plain cheese. That’s what I can have.”

  The waitress returned, and we placed an order for two pies with extra cheese. Before she left, Jamie asked her, “Is there, like, any way to get a cab or anything from here?”

  She laughed heartily. We guess that meant no.

  “Can’t go back the way you came?”

  “Not exactly,” Jamie mumbled.

  “How’d you get out here?”

  “We came with . . . friends. On a . . . boat. We took a ride out to an island to . . .” He was floundering.

  “Camp out under the stars,” Stella said. She was good at this game. It would come in handy.

  Charlotte tucked her pencil behind her ear. “That’s romantic.”

  “It was supposed to be,” I said, lying smoothly, “but then they stole away in the night with our things.”

  “Practical joke,” Stella added.

  “Some joke.” Charlotte shook her head. “I’ve got a phone. You can call your parents to come and pick you up, and you’re welcome to stay here until then, as long as you need to. Sodas on the house.”

  “That’s the thing—we’re not from here,” Stella said.

  “Where are you from?”

  “New York,” Jamie said. I raised an eyebrow at him. What was that about?

  “Well, you’re a long way from home,” Charlotte said.

  She had no idea.

  The waitress left us and I thought we might eat each other in the time it took her to bring our order. The three of us reached for the pizzas at once; the slice in my hand was steaming, but I was so hungry, I didn’t care. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d tasted food. I had no memory of eating at all in Horizons, and I didn’t know if it was because the drugs were messing with my memory or because I actually hadn’t eaten at all.

  Jamie held a slice in each hand and was looking back and forth between them. “I want to double-fist the shit out of this pizza.”

  Stella paused from blowing on her slice. “That’s not going to work out the way you think it will.”

  I didn’t even bother blowing on mine. I just took a huge bite, burning my tongue and throat in the process. But that wasn’t what made me gag.

  “Mara?” Stella looked worried.

  “I’m okay,” I said after I caught my breath. The aftertaste was like cement. “I can’t—I can’t taste it or something? It tastes weird. Doesn’t it taste weird?”

  Two pairs of eyes stared at me.

  “It doesn’t taste weird to you?”

  They shook their heads.

  “You should try to eat,” Stella said gently.

  “Yeah, you look pretty terrible,” Jamie added, not at all gently.

  Stella’s brown eyes were warm. “You’ve been through a lot. More than us, probably.”

  Jamie took alternating bites of pizza. “I’m reserving judgment until I hear your story.”

  I supposed it was time to tell it.

  I looked over my shoulder, eyeing the other people in the pub. There was a woman wearing a fanny pack, and her husband in a golf shirt. A man with a handlebar mustache wearing a Hawaiian shirt sat at the bar, following the fishing channel with an abnormal amount of interest. It didn’t look like anyone was listening to us, but even if they were, no one in their right mind would believe what I was about to say.

  15

  I TOLD JAMIE AND STELLA everything, from the Ouija board to the asylum, from Rachel to Jude and Claire. From Mabel’s shitty owner to Morales. Jamie’s brows drew together as the words left my mouth.

  And then I told them about Noah. Why he couldn’t be dead.

  “Because he can heal,” Jamie said.

  “Himself or other people?” Stella asked.

  “Both.” I told them about Joseph, and how he’d been taken by Jude and rescued by Noah, and about my father, and how he’d been shot because of me but had survived because of Noah. I didn’t mention the “love him to ruins” thing. That wouldn’t exactly help my case. And it felt too private to share.

  “But you’re not saying he could survive a gun to his head, right?” Jamie asked.

  Stella elbowed him sharply. “Jamie.”

  “I’m not trying to be insensitive—”

  “No, you’re not trying,” I said.

  “I’m just saying—”

  I leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands flat against it. “I know what you’re just saying. I know. But there’s too much we don’t know to just decide that he’s—” I didn’t want to say the word. “Have you guys even seen proof that Horizons collapsed?”

  They shook their heads.

  “But there was still the fire,” Jaime said.

  I clenched my jaw. “He wasn’t there when it happened.”

  “Then where is he?”

  That was what I was going to find out.

  Stella shared her tale of woe next. Once upon a time she was a gymnast and a swimmer. Then puberty hit, and her hips and breasts grew, and when she was sixteen, she stopped eating—because of her coach and her mother, her psychologists said. But they didn’t know about the voices.

  To her they sounded like other people’s thoughts. But that was impossible, obviously. She grew more and more panicked, and the voices grew louder and louder in response—keeping her awake at night and distracted during the day. She couldn’t swim or train or eat, but then she not
iced something curious. The longer she went without eating, the weaker the voices became. She was down to ninety pounds and losing her hair by the time her father finally overrode her mother (who had insisted Stella was just “watching calories”) and forced Stella to get help. And she got it. After months of therapy and several stints in rehab, her doctors finally seemed to settle on a wonder drug that helped her—until it was suddenly recalled by the FDA. She backslid fast, but Dr. Kells contacted her parents just in time.

  “Lucky me.” Stella took a bite of pizza. “But I had a feeling there was something up with you guys the moment you walked into the program. Like when we were together for group stuff, I couldn’t hear either of you, even when I could hear everyone else—but my meds make it sort of confusing. They shut out most of the voices most of the time, but when I’m stressed or anxious, it gets worse.”

  “Or angry?” Jamie said.

  “Is that how it happens with you?” I asked him.

  Jamie shrugged and avoided my eyes. “Before I was expelled and shipped off to Crazytown, I would notice sometimes that if I told people to do things, they would actually do them. But not like, ‘Hey, man, would you mind handing me the keys to your Maserati?’ It’s more like, ‘Tell me that secret’ or, ‘Drive me here.’ It seemed so random, and the stuff I was telling people to do wasn’t crazy. Like, it could have been a coincidence,” he said, “except that it didn’t always feel like a coincidence. Sometimes it felt real.” He met my eyes, and I knew he was thinking about Anna.

  Anna, our former classmate, who had bullied him since fourth grade, and whom he had told to drive off a cliff. She drove drunk off an overpass after that.

  “And I felt crazy for thinking it,” Jamie said.

  I looked up at him. “We all have that in common.”

  “What in common?” Stella asked.

  Jamie got it. “That what’s wrong with us, the gene thing, G1821 or whatever—the symptoms make us look like we’re crazy.”

  Or maybe it actually made us crazy. I thought about my reflection. About the way it talked back to me.

  “That explains why no one’s discovered the gene,” Jamie said, refocusing my attention. “If someone appears to be hallucinating, or delusional, or is starving themselves, or hurting themselves, the most obvious explanation would be mental illness, not some bizarre genetic mutation—”