He closed his eyes, and I noticed that his hands were balled into fists. The muscles in his forearms flexed. He shot me a dark look.

“Come here,” he said.

I walked over to him.

“Closer.”

I took another step, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. My heart pounded in my chest.

Noah sighed and crossed the remaining distance between us, then stood, his chest against my back. I felt the length of his body pressed tightly behind mine and I shivered. From standing outside in my wet clothes or the feel of him behind me, I didn’t know.

He circled one arm around my chest, aligned with my collarbone, and snaked the other beneath my arm so that his hands were almost touching.

“Hold very still,” he whispered. I nodded, silent.

“Right then. One.” He spoke softly into my ear, tickling me. I could feel my heart beating against his forearm.

“Two.”

“Wait!” I said, panicking. “What if I scream?”

“Don’t.”

And then my left side ignited in pain. White-hot sparks exploded behind my eyes and I felt my knees buckle, but never felt the ground beneath me. I saw nothing but blackness, deep and impenetrable, as I floated away.

I woke up when I felt the car turn wide on the pavement. I looked up just as we passed under the sign for our exit.

“What happened?” I mumbled. My wet hair had stiffened in the artificial air, caked with filth. It crunched behind my head.

“I put your shoulder back in,” Noah said, staring at the brightening road ahead of us. “And you fainted.”

I rubbed my eyes. The pain in my shoulder had simmered to a dull, throbbing ache. I glanced at the clock. Almost six in the morning. If this was real, my parents would be awake soon.

Joseph already was.

“Joseph!” I said.

He smiled at me. “Hey, Mara.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just tired a little.”

“What happened?”

“I guess I just fell into the ditch by the soccer field where you guys found me,” he said.

I cast a furtive glance at Noah. He met my eyes, and gave a slight shake of his head. How could he possibly think Joseph would buy that?

“It’s weird, I don’t even remember going there. How did you guys find me, anyway?”

Noah rubbed his forehead with his filthy palm. “Lucky guess,” he said, avoiding my stare.

Joseph looked directly at me, even as he spoke to Noah. “I don’t even remember texting you to pick me up. I must have hit my head pretty hard.”

That must have been the companion lie to the one Noah told about the soccer field. And I could tell by Joseph’s stare that he didn’t believe either one. And yet he seemed to be playing along.

So I did too. “Does it hurt?” I asked my brother.

“A little. And my stomach feels kind of sick. What should I tell Mom?”

Noah stared straight ahead, waiting for me to make the call. And it was obvious what Joseph was asking—whether he should out me and Noah. Whether he should trust us. Because I knew that if Joseph did tell our parents the lie Noah told him, my mother would lose it. Absolutely.

And she would ask questions. Questions Noah said he couldn’t answer.

I looked behind the seat at my little brother. He was dirty, but fine. Skeptical, but not worried. Not scared. But if I told him the truth about what had happened—that someone, a stranger, had taken him and tied him up and locked him in a shed in the middle of the swamp—what would that do to him? What would he look like then? A memory returned of his ashen, downcast face in the hospital waiting room after I burned my arm, of his body slumped and stiff and small in the waiting room chair. This would be worse. I could think of few things more traumatic than being kidnapped, and I knew from experience just how hard it would be to come back from something like that. If he even could.

But if I didn’t tell Joseph, I could not tell my mother. Not after my arm. Not after the pills. She would never believe me.

So I decided. I looked at Joseph in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think we should mention it. Mom will freak out, I mean—freak out. She might be too scared to let you play soccer any more, you know?” Guilt flared inside of me at the lies, but the truth could break Joseph, and I wouldn’t be the one to do it to him. “And Dad will probably sue the school or something. Maybe just use the pool shower outside, get into bed, and I’ll tell her you didn’t feel well last night and asked me to come pick you up?”

Joseph nodded in the backseat. “Okay,” he said evenly. He didn’t even question me; he trusted me that much. My throat tightened.

Noah pulled onto our street. “This is your stop,” he said to Joseph. My brother got out of the car after Noah shifted it into park. I followed suit before Noah could open the door.

Joseph walked to the driver’s side window and reached in. He shook Noah’s hand. “Thanks,” my brother said, flashing a dimpled grin at Noah before heading to our house.

I leaned down to the open passenger window, and said, “We’ll talk later?”

Noah paused, staring straight ahead. “Yes.”

But we didn’t get the chance.

I met up with Joseph back at the house. All three cars were in the driveway now. Joseph showered outside, then we crept in through my bedroom window so as not to wake anyone. My brother was smiley, and tiptoed down the hallway with exaggerated steps like it was a game. He closed his bedroom door and, presumably, went to bed.

I had no idea what he thought, what he was thinking about all this, or why he let me off so easily. But I ached with exhaustion and couldn’t begin to work through it. I peeled off my clothes and turned on my shower, but found that I couldn’t even stand. I sank down under the stream of water, shivering despite the heat. My eyes were blank, vacant as I stared at the tile. I didn’t feel sick. I wasn’t tired.

I was lost.

When the water ran cold, I got up, threw on a green T-shirt and striped pajama bottoms, and went to the family room, hoping the television could dull the droning non-thoughts in my brain. I sank into the leather couch and turned on the TV. I scrolled through the guide but saw little besides infomercials, while the news hummed in the background.

“Locals reported a massive fish kill this morning in Everglades City.”

My ears pricked at the mention of Everglades City. I closed the guide, my eyes and ears riveted to the plastic-looking anchorwoman as she spoke.

“Biologists called out to the scene are saying it’s most likely due to oxygen depletion in the water. A startling number of alligator corpses are thought to be the culprit.” The video switched to a freckled, blond woman in khaki shorts with a microphone pointed at her bandana-covered mouth. She stood in front of an eerily familiar looking body of murky water; the camera panned in on the white-bellied, dead alligators floating in it, surrounded by hundreds of fish. “An abundance of decomposing matter in the water soaks up a large amount of oxygen, killing off fish in the area in a matter of hours. Of course, in this case, whatever killed the alligators could have killed the fish. A chicken and the egg puzzle, if you will.”

The anchor-mannequin spoke again: “The possibility of illegal dumping of hazardous waste is being investigated as well. Herpetologists at the Metro Zoo are expected to do necropsies on the animals over the next couple of days, and we’ll be sure to report the results right here. In the meantime, tourists might want to steer clear of the area,” she said, holding her nose.

“You aren’t kidding, Marge. That has got to stink! And now over to Bob for the weather.”

My arm shook as I held out the remote and turned the television off. I stood, swaying on alien feet, as I made my way to the kitchen sink for some water. I pulled a cup from the cabinet and stood at the counter, my mind reeling.

The place they showed on camera didn’t look exactly the same.

But I was there in the middle of the night; surely it would look different in the daytime.

But maybe it was somewhere else entirely. Even if it wasn’t, maybe something had poisoned the water.

Or maybe I hadn’t been there at all.

I filled the plastic cup and brought the water to my lips. I accidentally caught my reflection in the dark kitchen window.

I looked like the ghost of a stranger.

Something was happening to me.

I heaved the plastic cup at the dark glass and watched my reflection blur away.

47

BEFORE

I WOKE UP THE NEXT DAY IN A SKELETAL, INSTITUTIONAL bed inside the Tamerlane State Lunatic Asylum. The mattress beneath me was torn to pieces and filthy. The bed frame groaned as I shifted and I looked down at myself. I was dressed in black. Someone kissed my neck behind me. I whipped around.

It was Jude. He smiled, and snaked his arm around my waist, pulling me closer.

“Come on, Jude. Not here.” I ducked under his arm and stood up, tripping over the debris and insulation on the floor.

He followed me, and backed me up against the wall.

“Shhh, just relax,” he said, as he lifted his hand to my cheek and went for my mouth. I turned my head away. His breath was hot on my neck.

“I don’t want to do this right now,” I said, my voice hoarse. Where was Rachel? Claire?

“You never want to do this,” he mumbled against my skin.

“Maybe because you do it so badly.” My stomach clenched as soon as the words were out of my mouth.

Jude was still. I chanced a brief look at his face; his eyes were vacant. Lifeless. And then he smiled, but there was no warmth in it.

“Maybe it’s because you’re a tease,” he said, and his smile faded. I needed to leave. Now.

I tried to extract myself from between his body and the wall by pushing against his chest with my palms.

He pushed back. It hurt.

How was this happening? I’d learned over the past two months that Jude had his dick moments—entitled, spoiled, obnoxious—typical Alpha male garbage. But this? This was a whole new level of f**ked up. This was—

Jude pressed me against the dusty, crumbling wall with the full weight of his body, cutting off my train of thought. I felt the individual hairs rise on the back of my neck and assessed my dwindling options.

I could scream. Rachel and Claire might be close enough to hear me, but they might not. If they weren’t—well. Things would get uglier.

I could smack him. That would probably be stupid, as I’d seen Jude bench-press twice my body weight.

I could do nothing. Rachel would come looking for me eventually.

Door number three seemed the most promising. I went limp.

Jude did not care. He crushed into me with more force, and I fought the swirling hysteria rising in my throat. This was wrong, wrong wrong wrong wrong. Jude crushed his mouth against mine, panting, and the force of him pushed me deeper into the wall, setting loose small clouds of dust that billowed around my body. I felt nauseous

“No,” I whispered. I sounded so far away.

Jude didn’t answer. His pawing hands were rough and clumsy under my coat, under my sweatshirt, under my shirt. The cold of his skin against my stomach made me gasp. Jude laughed at me.

It sparked a cold, rocking fury inside of me. I wanted to kill him. I wished that I could. I pulled one of his hands off my body with a force I didn’t know I had. He replaced it, and without thinking I hauled off and smacked him.

I did not even have the opportunity to register the sting on my hand before I felt it on my face. On my face. Jude’s blow came so fast and so fierce that it seemed to take me minutes, or hours, to realize he’d even hit me back. My eyeball felt like it was dangling from my socket. The pain bit at me from the inside. My whole being was hot with it.

Shaky-limbed and crying—was I crying?—I began to sink. Jude pulled me up, up, and pinned me, trapped me against the wall. I trembled so furiously against it that bits give way against my hands, my arms, my legs. Jude trailed his tongue over my cheek, and I shuddered.

Then Claire’s voice rang out, cutting the charged, silent air. “Mara?”

Jude backed away just a little, only a little, but my feet would not move. My cheeks were cold and itchy with tears and his saliva that I couldn’t wipe away. My breath was ragged, my sobbing silent. I raged at myself for not knowing the hollow stranger standing near me. And I raged at him for hiding himself so well, for tricking me, trapping me, crushing me. I felt something tug at the edges of my mind, threatening to pull me down.

A pair of footsteps a few feet away brought me back. Claire called my name again on the other side of the doorway; I couldn’t see her, but I clung to that voice, tried to shake off the infuriating helplessness and powerlessness that clogged my throat and weighed down my feet.

Her flashlight danced around the room and finally landed on Jude as he stepped out from behind the wall, raising tiny cumulus clouds of dust.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey,” Jude replied with a calm, even smile. It was impossibly more frightening than his rage. “Where’s Rachel?”

“She’s looking for the blackboard room to add our names to the list,” Claire said quietly. “She wanted me to come back and make sure you guys weren’t lost.”

“We’re good,” Jude said and beamed, flashing those all-American dimples. He winked at her.

The shrieking violence inside of me escaped in only a faint, wretched whisper. “Don’t leave.”

Jude stared hard into my face, his eyes reflecting pure anger. He didn’t give me a chance to speak before turning back to Claire. He grinned and rolled his eyes. “You know Mara,” he said. “She’s a little freaked out. I’m taking her mind off of it.”