We were not the only watchers. A cluster of jeering boys rattled long sticks along the biggest cage. A snarling tiger paced inside, its orange and black stripes rippling behind the bars.
The tiger threw its powerful body against the cage, at the boys, but they laughed and danced back.
“Now,” the Man in Blue said, kneeling down. “You must stay here. The animals will entertain you?”
Entertain. I did not know the word.
“I will come back shortly. Do not cause trouble,” he said, then left.
I edged over to a thin boy with small, darting eyes at the fringe of the group.
“Help me,” I whispered to him.
His black eyes considered me warily. Maybe he did not understand? I tried another tongue. “Help me,” I said again.
“Help you what?” he asked.
I pointed to the animals. “Get them out.”
49
WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, I WAS IN MY brother’s bedroom, still holding the notebook as he knocked on his door.
“This is kind of backward,” he said, clearly wondering why I was there.
The contours of the dream-memory-blackout shivered in my mind. I tried to hold on to it.
“Mara?”
I blinked and it blurred away. I couldn’t remember where I’d gone.
“Yeah,” I said, standing woozily. I was still holding the notebook—I couldn’t have been out for long. Maybe minutes? Seconds? I was sweaty, and my clothes stuck to my skin.
“Did you take the book?” I asked my brother, trying to keep my voice even. “I was looking for it.”
“The genetics one? Yeah.” Daniel went to his closet and opened it. “Sorry, I put it in here; I didn’t want it to get mixed up with my things. You okay?” He peered at me.
Fake smile. “Yes!”
Strange look. “You sure?”
I hid the composition notebook behind me. Why had I put that in his room? “No, yeah, I really am,” I said, standing up. “Can I have the—”
“Is that the story?” Daniel said, glancing at the notebook behind my back.
What story? I looked down at it. “Um.”
“How’s the assignment going? Constructive? Cathartic?” He winked.
Ah. He thought it was the Horizons story. The assignment that I invented to get his help. I looked at the notebook, then back up at Daniel. I had no idea why I’d put it in his room or when, but I was lucky he hadn’t noticed it, considering what was inside. My insides twisted. I needed to talk to Noah.
But my brother was waiting for an answer. So I said, “She’s not possessed.”
Daniel waited. Listened.
“Someone else is—there’s someone else with a—a power,” I said. “And he never played with a Ouija board.”
Daniel pondered this for a second. “So the Ouija board was a red herring.” He nodded sagely. “Hmm.”
“Gotta go,” I said, darting for the door.
“The book.” Daniel extended his hand and offered it to me; it dragged down my arm. I smiled before fleeing to dump New Theories and my notebooks in my room. Then forced myself to walk calmly to the kitchen, where I grabbed the phone and took it to my room and dialed Noah’s number with trembling fingers. He picked up on the second ring.
“I was just about to call you—” he started.
I cut him off. “I found something.”
Pause. “What?”
I couldn’t bring myself to open the notebook. “So, at Horizons, they gave me a notebook to use as a journal.”
“All right . . .”
“But I didn’t remember them giving one to me.”
“Okay . . .”
“But I just found it in Daniel’s room. The cover had my name. And I wrote in it, Noah. It was my handwriting.”
“What did you write?”
“‘Help me.’”
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I’ll come straight to you—”
“No, that’s what I wrote, Noah. ‘Help me.’ Again and again for almost a full page.”
Silence.
“Yeah,” I said shakily. “Yeah.”
“I’ll try to get a flight tonight—” He paused. I could imagine his face; his jaw tight, his expression careful and calm, trying not to show me how worried he was. But I could hear it in his voice. “There are only two more flights out of Providence today, and I won’t make either of them now. But there’s one from Boston to Ft. Lauderdale at midnight. I’ll be on it, Mara.”
“I’m feeling—really . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I struggled for words but nothing else came.
Noah didn’t patronize me by telling me not to panic, or saying that everything would be okay. It wasn’t, and he knew it. “I’ll be there soon,” he said. “And John just checked in with no news. Everything else is fine, so just stay with your family and take care of yourself, all right?”
“Okay.” I closed my eyes. This wasn’t new. I had blacked out before. Lost time. Had weird dreams. This wasn’t new. I could live with this.
I could live with it if I didn’t think about it. I changed the subject. “You were going to call me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I just . . . missed you,” he said, a lie in his voice.