The Retribution of Mara Dyer

I felt the telltale subway rumble beneath my feet. Stella said something to Jamie, but I didn’t pay attention. I was looking at the woman, Maria.

“Stop,” she said quietly, so quietly I wasn’t sure I’d heard it. Then she said it again. “Let them up,” Maria told Jamie.

That was when Jamie’s facade cracked. He was still angry, but it was a different kind of anger. Cold. Resigned. I knew what he was going to say before he said it. “Get out of here. Climb up.” He looked sick when he said it. “She’s a better person than either of you.”

She was, and so was Jamie. But I wasn’t.

Jamie was never going to let them die, I knew. He just wanted to scare them. I wanted to kill them. Their brand of cruelty wasn’t illegal but it was poisonous. They would do worse, someday, and hurt other people, people who didn’t deserve it. I wanted to stop them before they had the chance. I wondered if I was really capable of it.

And as I wondered, Freckles offered his hand to Blondie to help him up. The train was approaching—I could see the light in the distance. But Blondie would be off the tracks by the time it got there. I wasn’t sure what to wish for, what to think, and that made me even more angry. They couldn’t just walk out of here. I wouldn’t let them.

I heard Freckles swear. He was looking at Blondie, whose face was contorted in pain. His nose was bleeding.

“What the fuck!” Freckles shouted, as blood streamed over his lips. He looked up with wild, unfocused eyes as he pinched his nostrils to cut off the flow.

Stella looked at me in horror. “Mara.” Jamie looked at me too. They knew.

When Freckles finally heaved Blondie up the rest of the way, he collapsed. Then he began to bleed, too.

Stella tugged on Jamie’s arm. “Jamie, tell her to—make her stop. Make her stop!”

Maria covered her mouth and looked like she might be sick.

The train rushed into the station, bringing a horde of people with it. A cluster formed around Freckles and Blondie, and I felt a twinge of surprise to see Maria in it. She’d broken away from Stella, from us, and she was gesturing to someone authoritative, trying to help the same people who had made her their victim. I was moved by it. I decided to let the boys live.

For today.

46

JAMIE WAS TUGGING MY ARM out of its socket as he rushed me up the stairs. My heart was pounding in my chest. When we were finally outside, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I needed to calm down. But then I realized something.

“We have to go back,” I said.

He shook his head vehemently. “No, Mara.”

“We left the food.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. Then he hailed a cab, threw me in, and actually paid for the ride with cash he’d gotten from who knew where. Once back on the Upper West Side, he unlocked the door to his aunt’s house and we walked in just as Stella was ascending the stairs. Her face was tear-streaked and pale. She took a step back down, toward us.

“How could you do that?” she asked me.

She didn’t need to be specific. I knew what she meant. “They deserved it.”

She walked calmly down the rest of the steps until she stood at the bottom of the stairs facing me. I didn’t see the slap coming before I felt it across my face.

“Fuck! Jesus, Stella, what is wrong with you?” I asked her.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“The world would be a better place without them,” I said, holding my cheek.

“You don’t know that,” Stella said. “People change.”

I shook my head slowly. “No. No, they don’t. We are what we are.”

“Why all the shouting?” Daniel said, as he descended the stairs. He looked back and forth between me and Stella. “What happened?”

“There was . . . an incident,” Jamie said.

“You don’t feel guilty at all, do you?” Stella shouted, her hands balled into fists at her sides.

“For scaring them?”

“For torturing them,” she said.

No. I didn’t feel guilty. I was tired of feeling ashamed for the things I thought and wanted. “I’ve evolved,” I said.

Her jaw tightened, and she brushed past my brother on the stairs, bumping his shoulder as she climbed them. Then, halfway up, she turned to the three of us and said, “I thought we were better than this. I thought we were the good guys.”

Everyone was silent, until Jamie said quietly, “None of us ever claimed to be the good guys.”

Daniel’s brow furrowed. “I’m a good guy,” my brother said.

But you’re not one of us, I thought.

Daniel followed Stella back up the stairs, probably to find out what had actually happened this afternoon. I wasn’t entirely sure what she’d say, but I was entirely sure that I didn’t want to hear it. And I didn’t want to think about Daniel hearing it.

I sat down in the living room, toed off my shoes, and I looked at my reflection in the flatscreen TV. My face was blank like an empty plate. I caught a flash of movement behind me and turned. Jamie leaned against the door frame. He didn’t speak.

“Are you mad at me too?” My voice sounded dead.

“Mad at you?” He seemed surprised by the question. “No,” he finally said. “I’m not mad at you.”

But he was still standing there, looking at me in a way I couldn’t describe but didn’t like. “Then what?”

“I’m scared of you,” he said, and left the room.

47

I’LL NEVER FORGET THE WAY Stella looked that afternoon, standing at the foot of the stairs with her things.

Her black hair hung in limp waves over her shoulders, and her eyes—there was something wrong with them. I’d seen her worried, and scared, and horrified, but she was none of those things today.

The four of us had been pla

“I’m leaving,” Stella said. She sniffed, but there was steel in her voice, not tears.

“Us too,” Daniel said. “Come with—”

“No, I’m leaving,” she said, cutting my brother off.

Daniel looked stu

“We aren’t,” she said sharply. “I just couldn’t see it till now.” My brother looked like he was about to speak again, but Stella wouldn’t let him. “You haven’t been here. You haven’t seen—” She stopped, and flicked a glance in my direction. “Whatever I was hoping for, it’s too late.” She bit her lip, and without looking at him said Jamie’s name.

I hadn’t been expecting that. “You too?” My voice shook.

His eyes bounced between me and Stella, and after what seemed like forever, he said, “I want to figure this shit out more than anyone, but maybe—Mara—”

“Mara’s sick,” Daniel said, and I didn’t correct him, even though I didn’t agree. “We need you to help her. To help us.”

Jamie didn’t answer him. He just stood there as Stella waited for him by the door.

I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.

“Take care of yourselves,” Stella said, in a voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear her. The anger had gone out of her, and she looked tired as she said to my brother, “It was nice to meet you.”

“You too,” he said. “Where are you going to go?”

Stella lifted her shoulders in a shrug and smiled sadly. “Home.”

I didn’t want to watch her and Jamie leave. I slipped past my brother, who didn’t stop me, and ducked into the den, closing the door behind me. Mostly.

“She’s not herself,” I heard my brother say.

“That is an understatement,” Jamie said back.

So he was still there.

Then he said, “She’s getting really scary, man.”

“I know,” Daniel said.

“I don’t think you actually do. That was some cold shit.”