The Evolution of Mara Dyer (3 page)

It would have been a relief to believe that I was
that
crazy, to swallow that lie and their pills and shake off the guilt that had
hounded me since I finally remembered what I was capable of.

But I tried that before. It didn’t work.

I took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m not crazy.”

Daniel closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, his expression was . . . decided. “I’m not supposed to tell you this—”

“Tell me what?”

“The psychologists are calling it a perceptual distortion,” my older brother said. “A delusion, basically. That—that Jude’s alive, that you have the power to collapse buildings and kill people—they’re saying you’re losing the ability to rationally evaluate reality.”

“Meaning?”

“They’re throwing around words like ‘psychotic’ and ‘schizotypal,’ Mara.”

I ordered myself not to cry.

“Mom is hoping that, worst case scenario, this is maybe something called Brief Psychotic Disorder brought on by the PTSD and the shooting and all of the trauma—but from what I think I’m hearing, the main differences between that, schizophrenia, and a bunch of other disorders in between is basically duration.” He swallowed hard. “Meaning, the longer the delusions last, the worse the prognosis.”

I clenched my teeth and forced myself to stay quiet while my brother continued to speak.

“That’s why Mom thinks you should stay here for a while
so they can adjust your meds. Then they can move you to a place, a residential treatment facility—”

“No,”
I said. As badly as I had wanted to leave my family to keep them safe before, I knew now I needed to stay with them. I could not be locked up while Jude was free.

“It’s like a boarding school,” he went on, “except there’s a gourmet chef and Zen gardens and art therapy—just to take a break.”

“We’re not talking about Fiji, Daniel. She wants to send me to a
mental hospital.
A mental hospital!”

“It isn’t a mental hospital, it’s a residential—”

“Treatment facility, yeah,” I said, just as the tears began to well. I blinked them back furiously. “So you’re on their side?”

“I’m on
your
side. And it’s just for a little while, so they can teach you to cope. You’ve been through—there’s no way I could deal with school and what you’ve been through.”

I tried to swallow back the sourness in my throat. “What does Dad say?” I managed to ask.

“He feels like part of this is his fault,” he said.

The wrongness of that idea sliced me open.

“That he shouldn’t have taken on the case,” my brother went on. “He trusts Mom.”

“Daniel,” I pleaded. “I swear, I
swear
I’m telling the truth.”

“That’s part of it,” he said, and his voice nearly cracked. “That you believe it. Hallucinations—that fits with the PTSD. But you knew when you had them that it was all in your
head. Now that you believe it’s real,” Daniel said, his voice tight, “everything you told them yesterday is consistent with—psychosis.” He blinked fiercely and swiped one of his eyes with the back of his hand.

I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. “So that’s it, then.” My voice sounded dead. “Do I even get to go home first?”

“Well, once they admit you they have to keep you for seventy-two hours, and then they reevaluate you before they make a final recommendation to Mom and Dad. So I guess that’ll happen tomorrow?”

“Wait—just seventy-two hours?” And another evaluation . . .

“Well, yeah, but they’re pushing for longer.”

But right now, it was temporary. Not permanent. Not yet.

If I could persuade them that I
didn’t
believe Jude was alive—that I didn’t believe I killed Rachel and Claire and the others—that none of this was real, that it was all in my head—if I could lie, and convincingly, then they might think my episode at the police station was temporary. That was what my mother
wanted
to believe. She just needed a push.

If I played this right, I might get to go home again.

I might get to see Noah again.

An image of him flickered in my mind, his face hard and determined at the courthouse, certain that I wouldn’t do what I did. We hadn’t spoken since.

What if I had changed to him, like he said I would?

What if he didn’t want to see me?

The thought tightened my throat, but I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t lose it. From here on out, I had to be the poster child for mental health. I couldn’t afford to be sent away anymore. I had to figure out what the hell was going on.

Even if I had to figure it out by myself.

A knock on the door startled me, but it was just Mom. She looked like she’d been crying. Daniel stood up, smoothing his wrinkled blue dress shirt.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked her.

“Still in the hospital. He gets discharged tomorrow.”

Maybe, if I could put on a good enough performance, I might get discharged with him. “Joseph’s there?”

Mom nodded. So my twelve-year-old brother now had a father with a gunshot wound and a sister in the psychiatric ward. I clenched my teeth even harder.
Do not cry.

My mom looked at Daniel then, and he cleared his throat. “Love you, sister,” he said to me. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

I nodded, dry-eyed. My mother sat down.

“It’s going to be okay, Mara. I know that sounds stupid right now, but it’s true. It will get better.”

I wasn’t sure what to say yet, except, “I want to go home.”

My mother looked pained—and why shouldn’t she? Her family was falling apart. “I want you home so badly, sweetheart. I just—there’s no schedule for you at home if you’re not in school, and I think that might be too much pressure
right now. I
love
you, Mara. So much. I couldn’t stand it if you—I was throwing up when I first heard about the asylum. . . . I was sick over it. I couldn’t leave you, not for a second. You’re my baby. I know you’re not a baby but you’re
my
baby and I want you to be okay. More than anything I want you to be okay.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and smiled at me. “This isn’t your fault. No one blames you, and you’re not being punished.”

“I know,” I said gravely, doing my best impression of a calm, sane adult.

She went on. “You’ve been through so much, and I know we don’t understand. And I want you to know that this”—she indicated the room—“isn’t you. It might be chemical or behavioral or even genetic—”

An image rose up out of the dark water of my mind. A picture. Black. White. Blurry. “What?” I asked quickly.

“The way you’re feeling. Everything that’s been going on with you. It isn’t your fault. With the PTSD and everything that’s happened—”

“No, I know,” I said, stopping her. “But you said—”

Genetic.

“What do you mean, genetic?” I asked.

My mother looked at the floor and her voice turned professional. “What you’re going through,” she said, clearly avoiding the words
mental illness
, “can be caused by biological and genetic factors.”

“But who in our family has had any kind of—”

“My mother,” she said quietly. “Your grandmother.”

Her words hung in the air. The picture in my mind sharpened into a portrait of a young woman with a mysterious smile, sitting with hennaed hands folded above her lap. Her dark hair was parted in the center and her bindi sparkled between her eyebrows. It was the picture of my grandmother on her wedding day.

And then my mind replaced her face with mine.

I blinked the image away and shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“She killed herself, Mara.”

I sat there, momentarily stunned. Not only had I never known, but . . . “I thought—I thought she died in a car accident?”

“No. That’s just what we said.”

“But I thought you grew up with her?”

“I did. She died when I was an adult.”

My throat was suddenly dry. “How old were you?”

My mother’s voice was suddenly thin. “Twenty-six.”

The next few seconds felt like forever. “You had me when you were twenty-six.”

“She killed herself when you were three days old.”

5

W
HY DIDN’T
I
KNOW THIS
?

Why wasn’t I told?

Why would she do it?

Why
then?

I must have looked as shocked as I felt, because my mother rushed to apologize. “I never meant to tell you like this.”

She never meant to tell me at all.

“Dr. West and Dr. Kells thought it was the right thing, since your grandmother had so many of the same preoccupations,” my mother said. “She was paranoid. Suspicious—”

“I’m not—” I was about to say that I wasn’t suspicious or paranoid, but I was. With good reason, though.

“She didn’t have any friends,” she went on.

“I have friends,” I said. Then I realized that the more appropriate words were “had” and “friend,” singular. Rachel was my best friend and, really, my only friend until we moved.

Then there was Jamie Roth, my first (and only) friend at Croyden—but I hadn’t seen or heard from him since he was expelled for something he didn’t do. My mother probably didn’t even know he existed, and since I wasn’t going back to school anytime soon, she probably never would.

Then there was Noah. Did he count?

My mom interrupted my thoughts. “When I was little, my mother would sometimes ask me if I could do magic.” A sad smile appeared on her lips. “I thought she was just playing. But as I grew older, she would ask every now and then if I could do anything ‘special.’ Especially once I was a teenager. I had no idea what she meant, of course, and when I asked her, she would tell me that I would know, and to tell her if anything changed.” My mother clenched her jaw and looked up at the ceiling.

She was trying not to cry.

“I wrote it off, telling myself that my mother was just ‘different.’ But all of the signs were there.” Her voice shifted back from wistful to professional. “The magical thinking—”

“What do you mean?”

“She would think she was responsible for things she couldn’t possibly be responsible for,” my mother said. “And
she was superstitious—she was wary of certain numbers, I remember; sometimes she’d take care to point them out. And when I was around your age, she became very paranoid. Once, when we were on the way to move me into my first dorm room, we stopped to get gas. She’d been staring in the rearview mirror and looking over her shoulder for the past hour, and then when she went inside to pay, a man asked me for directions. I took out our map and told him how to get where he wanted to go. And just as he got back in his car and drove away, your grandmother ran out. She wanted to know everything—what he wanted, what he said—she was wild.” My mom paused, lost in the memory. Then she said, “Sometimes I would catch her sleepwalking. She had nightmares.”

I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say.

“It was . . . hard growing up with her, sometimes. I think it’s what made me want to be a psychologist. I wanted to help . . .” My mother’s voice trailed off, and then she seemed to remember me sitting there.
Why
I was sitting there. Her face flushed with color.

“Oh, sweetheart—I didn’t mean to—to make her sound that way.” She was flustered. “She was a wonderful mother and an incredible person; she was artistic and creative and
so
much fun. And she always made sure I was happy. She cared so much. If they knew when she was younger what they know now, I think . . . it would have turned out differently.” She swallowed hard, then looked straight at me. “But
she
isn’t
you
. You’re
not
the same. I only said something because—because things
like
that can run in families, and I just want you to know that it’s nothing you did, and everything that happened—the asylum, all of it—it is
not
your fault. The best therapists are here, and you’re going to get the best help.”

“What if I get better?” I asked quietly.

Her eyes brimmed with tears. “You will get better. You
will
. And you’ll have a normal life. I swear to God,” she said, quietly, seriously, “you’ll have a normal life.”

I saw my opening. “Do you have to send me away?”

She bit her lower lip and inhaled. “It’s the last thing I want to do, baby. But I think, if you’re in a different environment for a little while, with people who really know about this stuff, I think it’ll be better for you.”

But I could tell by the tone of her voice, and the way it wavered, that she wasn’t decided. She wasn’t sure. Which meant that I still might be able to manipulate her into letting me come home.

But it wouldn’t happen during this conversation. I had work to do. And I couldn’t do it with her here.

I yawned, and blinked slowly.

“You’re exhausted,” she said, studying my face.

I nodded.

“You’ve had the week from hell. The
year
from hell.” She took my face in her hands. “We’re going to get through this. I promise.”

I smiled beatifically at her. “I know.”

She smoothed my hair back and then turned to leave.

“Mom?” I called out. “Will you tell Dr. West that I want to talk with her?”

She beamed. “Of course, honey. Take a nap, and I’ll let her know to stop by and check on you in a bit, okay?”

“Thanks.”

She paused between the chair and the door. She looked conflicted.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“I just—” she started, then closed her eyes. She ran her hand over her mouth. “The police told us yesterday that you said Jude assaulted you before the building collapsed. I just wanted—” She took a deep breath. “Mara, is that true?”

It
was
true, of course. When we were alone together in the asylum, Jude kissed me. Then he kept kissing me, even though I told him to stop. He pressed me into the wall. Pushed me. Trapped me. Then I hit him, and he hit me back.

“Oh, Mara,” my mother whispered.