The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

of rain onto the dashboard. He grinned, and it was infectious. Maybe ice cream was a good idea after all.
    He started the car and began to pull out of the parking lot. Reflexively, I checked my refection in the side mirror.
    My hair was plastered to my face, and I was pale. But I looked okay. Maybe a little thin. A little tired. But normal.
    Then my reflection winked. Even though I hadn’t.
    I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes. I was seeingthings because I was stressed. Afraid. It wasn’t real. I was fine.
    I tried to make myself believe it. But when I opened my eyes, a light flashed in the mirror, blinding me.
    Just headlights. Just headlights from the car behind us. I twisted in my seat to see, but the rain was so heavy that I couldn’t make out anything but the lights.
    My father pulled out of the lot and onto the road, and the headlights followed us. Now I could see that they belonged to a truck. A white pickup truck.
    The same one from the strip mall parking lot.
    I shivered and huddled into my hoodie, then reached out and turned on the heat.
    “Cold?”
    I nodded.
    “That New England blood is thinning out fast,” my father said with a smile.
    I offered a weak one of my own in return.
    “You okay, kid?”
    No. I glanced into the fogged glass of the side mirror. The headlights still hovered behind us. I twisted around to see better through the rear window, but I couldn’t see who was driving.
    The truck followed us onto the highway.
    I felt sick. I wiped my clammy forehead with my forearm and squeezed my eyes shut. I had to ask. “Is that the same truck from the parking lot?” I tried not to sound paranoid, but I needed to know if he saw it too.
    “Hmm?”
    “Behind us.”
    My father’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. “What parking lot?”
    “At Horizons,” I said slowly, through clenched teeth. “The one we left ten minutes ago.”
    “Dunno.” His eyes flicked back to the road. He obviously hadn’t noticed, and didn’t think it was a particularly big deal.
    Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the stress of the pictures, of the interview, triggered the fainting, which triggered my hallucination of a disobedient reflection in the mirror. Maybe the truck behind us was just an ordinary truck.
    I checked the side mirror again. I could’ve sworn the headlights were closer.
    Don’t think about it. I stared ahead at nothing in particular, listening to the hypnotic, mechanical swoop of the windshield wipers. My father was quiet. He reached to turn on the radio when we heard a squeal of tires.
    Our heads jerked up as we were bathed in light. My father spun the steering wheel to the left as the pickup truck behind us swung into the right lane, nearly swiping the rear passenger side.
    My father was yelling something. No, telling me something. But I couldn’t hear him because when the truck pulled up next to us, my mind blocked out everything but the sight of Jude behind the wheel.
    I screamed for my father. He had to look. He had to see. But he was screaming too.
    “Hold on!”
    He’d lost control of the car. A black wave of panic threatened to pull me down with it as the car spun out beneath us on the rain-slick pavement. The truck cut across several lanes and raced ahead. My heart thundered against my rib cage and I gripped the center console with one hand. Bile rose in my throat—I was going to throw up. We were going to crash. Jude followed us and now we were going to crash—
    The second I thought it, we were plunged into silence.
    “Asshole!” my father yelled. I glanced over at him—sweat had beaded up on his forehead, the veins in his neck were corded.
    That’s when I noticed we weren’t moving.
    We weren’t moving.
    We didn’t crash.
    We sat motionless in the far left lane—the carpool lane. Cars veered around us and honked.
    “No one knows how to drive in this goddamned city!” He slammed his fist on the dashboard and I jumped.
    “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “Mara—Mara?”