Michelle Hodkin: The Evolution of Mara Dyer

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.”

WHY 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.

The truth must have been evident on my face because before I decided how to answer her, she rushed back to me. “No wonder this has been even harder—the dual trauma, you must have felt so—I can’t even—”

“It’s okay, Mom,” I said, looking up at her with glassy, full eyes.

“No, it isn’t. But it will be.” She leaned down to kiss me again and then left the room, flashing a sad smile before she disappeared.

I sat up straight. Dr. West would be back soon, and I needed to get it together.

I needed to convince her—them—that I only had PTSD, and not that I was dangerously close to having schizophrenia or something equally scary and permanent. Because with PTSD, I could stay with my family and figure out what was going on. Figure out what to do about Jude.

But with anything else—this was it for me. A lifetime of psych wards and medication. No college. No life.

I tried to remember what my mother had said about my grandmother’s symptoms:

Suspicion.

Paranoia.

Magical thinking.

Delusions.

Nightmares.

Suicide.

And then thought about what I knew about PTSD:

Hallucinations.

Nightmares.

Memory loss.

Flashbacks.