The bell rang and the crowd, already thinned, evaporated with a loud banging of lockers, sneakers squeaking on fresh-waxed floor and the usual calls and jokes and promises to hook up later.
“Where is she? I want to see her. They’re going to announce it, aren’t they? They always do when there’s something awful that’s happened, they do, over the PA, Ms. Seabury, she’ll . . .”
I was breathing hard, though I wasn’t moving fast enough to warrant it. I moved with an ease I would have found impossible to believe days earlier, right through doors, into and out of classes, hurrying, searching faces for Kayla. AP Comp, that’s where she would be, first period.
I was panting now, my heart pounding madly in my chest, hurrying, a blur as I passed through solid objects, a ghost in my old school, because yes, it was my old school, my school, and there was J.P., as usual, clowning in the back of the Chem Lab, and I knew him. I knew Alison DeBarge, twirling her hair sullenly over close to the window in French. They were both part of my circle of friends.
My group. My friends. We weren’t the coolest of the cool, maybe, but the group around me, the ones who sometimes called me M-Todd.
M-Todd. Mara Todd.
M-Todd.
How had that gotten started, that stupid nickname? Someone . . . Shannon, yeah, it was her, Shannon, my best friend, who had come up with that and for some stupid reason it stuck, even though it was stupid, as stupid as K-Mack.
I stopped suddenly. Stopped and stuck out my hand to hold myself up against a wall that avoided my touch.
Dread. It was coming for me. I felt it looming behind me, before me, all around me. Dread.
“No,” I whispered.
Messenger waited, knowing, waited. Waited, and I hated him for that patience, hated him for already knowing what I could only feel as a terrible beast coming to devour me.
“Where’s Kayla?” I demanded.
And he said nothing.
“Where is Kayla?” I cried out. “Where is she? Where is Kayla? Where is Kayla?” My whole body trembled. I shook like I was seized by fever chills.
“Where is Kayla?” I screamed.
And only then did Messenger say what I knew he must say. “There is no Kayla.”
SOMETHING INSIDE ME BROKE. CAN A SOUL break? I was hollowed out. I was nothing.
“No,” I pleaded.
And he said nothing.
“No,” I begged again.
“Mara . . .”
“No,” I said, but flat now, knowing at last that the moment had come for truth. Still, though, I bargained for some better answer, any other answer besides what I now felt as truth. “I saw her. We both saw her. We both heard her, Messenger. She has blond hair.” I grabbed a handful of my own black hair and held it out as evidence. “She’s white, I’m Asian. She’s . . . not me. Not me.”
“You were not ready for the truth,” Messenger said. “I hid it from you, with illusion and misdirection. With the face of a girl who looked nothing at all like you. You had things to learn first. You had things to understand. First.”
“Did I miss it? Am I too late?” Oriax. She was there, this time dressed head to ankle in a single, shiny black leotard. I looked down and saw that she no longer wore boots to cover her too-small feet. I saw there the truth, the glossy black hooves.
She was bending down to bring her face level with mine. “Oh, good. Oh, such lovely tears,” she said. She licked her green lips. “I would lick them off if Messenger would let me. Delicacies to be savored. The tears of remorse.” She shuddered like a person fantasizing about some imagined pleasure. “I’ll bet they are ever so bitter.”
“Leave me alone,” I said, my voice weak, my whole body sick and unsteady.
“Alone?” Oriax mocked. “Oh, little mini-Messenger, you have so much still to learn. You and I are going to be BFFs. Sooner or later, you’ll break, little girl. And I will laugh as you are carted away to the Shoals. Shall I tell you about the Shoals? Would you like me to show you around that happy, happy place? You’ll end there eventually.”
She laughed. It was a sound full of glee and madness, rage and lust. But it faded mercifully as the scene changed again. The school was gone, as was Oriax. I felt a chill breeze on my face. There was salt in the air. I knew even before I looked that I was on that beach, the one from my dream. The one from my memory.
We were alone, Messenger and me. The sand crescent was abandoned, and the sun was dropping toward the horizon, touching the thin clouds with fire.
Messenger did not rush me. He asked nothing and said nothing, content to wait. He knew what I would have to say, the words that would be wrung from me as though by some terrible torture. And finally, I said them.
“I killed Samantha Early.”
He did not speak, but he had heard, and he then released the last of his hold on my memory.
My name is Mara Todd. My birthday is July 26. I was born in the maternity ward of Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. My father had been stationed there at the time.
We had moved around, like many military families. I had lived in Hawaii, Virginia, the panhandle of Florida, and when my father was deployed overseas for the last time, we moved to San Anselmo, California, because it was near where my paternal grandparents lived. My mom and dad thought it would be good for me to be close to family for a change.
Middle school had been hard for me, but when we moved to San Anselmo, I found a place for myself at Drake. It was a humane school. San Anselmo was a good place to live. Steep, wooded hills in the shadow of Mount Tamalpais—Mount Tam, to everyone who knew it. We were just north of San Francisco and south of wine country.