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

by Michelle Hodkin

“Someone always says, ‘Kids are mean.’ ‘Kids will be kids.’ Which implies that the kid bullies will grow out of it someday.” The muscles in his jaw tightened. His stare was unfocused and far away. “I don’t think they do. I think kid bullies turn into adult bullies and it pisses me off that I’m expected to feel sad because one of them is gone.

Who trapped me. Pushed me. Forced me. And tortured me, now that he wasn’t dead after all. I wasn’t sorry that I tried to kill him. I was sorry he was still alive. I would kill him again if I had the chance.

The animals will entertain you?” Entertain. I did not know the word.

The address wasn’t wrong. Something else was.

But just when I thought the footage was over, I heard the soft lilt of laughter. Unmistakably mine.

“Your opinion,” I whispered, “means very little to me, Jude.” I opened my eyes.

“What kind of person does that?” he asked, almost to himself. Own yourself. My lips were dry and sour. My tongue was sandpaper, but I found my voice. “What kind of person does this? What kind of person forces himself on someone else?”

Until I looked back at Jude and realized— He knew.

“You’re not listening to me!”

They wouldn’t listen to me. Only one person would.

It was Abel Lukumi, and he was staring directly at me.

I knew she loved me. She just didn’t believe me. I understood why, but it hurt like hell just the same.

“And what if something happens and you’re not there?” I had asked him, miserable and guilty and horrified after we returned from the zoo. “I’ll be there,” Noah had said, his voice clear and sure. “But what if you’re not?” “Then it would be my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Phoebe climbed into bed, wearing a satisfied smile. I wanted to smack it off of her face,

She smiled at me. I wanted to hit her so badly.

“You aren’t the one who hurt me. Stop torturing yourself.“ Noah’s expression didn’t change. “I wasn’t there.”

“I swore I would be there for you and I wasn’t. I swore you would be safe, and you weren’t.”

“You were terrified,” he said, cutting me off. “When you called me, I’ll never forget your voice.”

“I felt you dying beneath my skin,”

I couldn’t comprehend it—that the last time I heard your voice for months, it would be riddled with terror as you begged for your life.” He closed his eyes. “And I wasn’t there.”

Now that we were this close, I could see what I missed before. Noah acted like he felt nothing because he felt everything. He seemed not to care because he cared too much.

“You’re here now.”

“I only pushed someone into her tank.” “You didn’t.” “A little bit, yes.”

began to protest. He hushed me. He lifted my hands to his mouth. His petal-soft lips brushed over my knuckles, then my palms. Noah looked into my eyes and owned me. And then he kissed my scars.

I heard Noah’s voice close to my ear. I half-turned in his lap. Noah brushed my cheek with his thumb. I was shocked to feel that it was wet. I’d been crying. “I’m okay,” I said in a strangled voice. I cleared my throat. “I’m fine.” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Whatever it says in there, it isn’t you.”

And the fact that he was willing to show me meant something.

Noah drew back, searching for something in my eyes. Disgust, maybe. Or fear. “It’s not you,” I said to him, and softly.

We were both right, I decided then. Our files were part of us—the parts that people wanted to fix. But they weren’t all of us. They weren’t who we were. Only we could decide that.

“Everyone’s a little crazy. The only difference between us and them is that they hide it better.”

We were silent. His fingers wandered beneath my T-shirt, drawing invisible pictures on my skin. Distracting me, I realized with a smile. I was grateful.

“She knew he was alive,” I said, my voice sounding dead. “She knew he was alive the whole time.”

Dr. Kells was the Horizons director. And Jude? What the hell was he?

She knew what Jude was thinking. She could hear his thoughts.

That shadow had crept back into Noah’s voice, into his face. I had never, ever seen him lose it, but I had a feeling I was about to. It was frightening.

Jude could heal himself like Noah—by killing things, like me.

I was lethal, but Jude was worse.

He could only think of Jude dead and me safe, not the price he or anyone else would pay for it. If Jude had threatened anyone else, Noah could hold himself back. But he couldn’t not react when Jude threatened me.

Noah, who watched me with an expression that others would take for rage. But I knew better. It was terror.

I was saying good-bye, I realized.

“You’re going to be fine,” he said. I will fix this, he meant.

I met Noah’s eyes and watched as something in him died.

I had been trapped before. And I escaped before. With nothing more than a bruise on my cheek, which wasn’t even from the collapse.

Maybe a hero could see another way out of this, but I was not a hero. You always have a choice, Noah had said once. I made mine.

I could hear nothing but my breath and my heartbeat and pulse and they were loud and fast but not with fear. With pure, cold, rocking fury.

I was stronger than I knew. I couldn’t kill Jude with my mind but I would kill him with my body and he deserved to die.

I felt myself smile.

I would not stop until this thing beneath my grip was dead—I would not allow it to escape or heal. I wanted to watch it die, to turn it to meat.

I would claw at it with my mind and my fingers if I had to. I would get the boy I loved out. I would set myself free.

The other boy, the one with small eyes, had gone white and still. He was not looking at the tiger. He was looking at me, and his mouth formed the shape of the word that would one day become my name. Mara.