After going for her impromptu early morning run, Mara attends her English class where we learn that Noah is super smart despite not doing any work at all.  What a lazy cop-out.  Much like Mara’s “I already covered this in an earlier class,” we get characters who have all the props but without anything that might make them personable, like an actual interest or work ethic.

Afterwards, Mara runs into Anna, who makes a snide comment about Mara smelling sweaty.  Noah comes up to make snide comments about Anna wearing too much perfume.

“I vastly prefer the unshowered to the overperfumed, don’t you, Anna?”

That voice could only be Noah’s. I turned around. He stood behind me wearing an almost imperceptible smile.

Anna’s blue eyes went wide. Her face transformed from evil to innocent. Like magic, only more nefarious.

 “I guess if those are your only two choices, Noah, then yes. But I’m partial to neither.”

 “Could have fooled me,” Noah said.

That did not seem to be the response she’d been expecting from him. “Wh-whatever,” she stammered, refocusing her gaze in my direction and staring daggers before she walked away.

I would like to point out here that

1. “Evil” is not a facial expression.  It just…isn’t.  How do you even?
2. Noah just did exactly what Anna did.  He was, if anything, more “evil” than Anna, because he responded to her aggression with an insult as opposed to Anna’s reaction.
3. Anna responded to Noah’s attack in a very neutral way that did not counter-attack anyone, then left.  WooooOOOoooOOOooOOooOooOo so evil, amiright?

Also, pointing out that someone who is sweaty smells sweaty is not exactly topping the charts of evil behavior here.  Rude, yes, but unimpressive considering she has done jack-all else so far and Mara has been in school for like a week at this point.

Noah insists on walking her to her next class despite Mara’s repeated signals, both covert and overt, that she wants to be left alone.  But Anna, she of the “leave Mara alone for most of a week and then walks away pretty easily” ilk, is the evil one.

Noah continues to pester Mara and ignore all of her wishes and invade her personal space and generally behave like those creepy assholes who think “persistence” is sexy.

Noah even followers her into her class, which he doesn’t take, and when the teacher protests his presence he leaves to get a note of permission and then continues to sit next to Mara and creepily stare at her despite her protests and ignoring. 

Congratulations, book, you have successfully created a bully character.  Too bad you miscast him as the romantic interest.

Mara’s thoughts become a mix of “ugh, that guy” and “I’m sooo toooootally not noticing how well his shirt fits, nope, not me” and I’m kind of torn because on the one hand I want to say it’s okay to be distracted by pretty and still hate someone and on the other hand this is YA and I know it’s leading to nowhere good.  I wish we could get a story where the creepy asshole gets these kinds of thoughts but remains a creepy asshole who is treated as such.  Mara even has to hide out in the bathroom after class just to escape this guy.

Mara has also been thinking about the abused dog all morning, and after several improbable rescue scenarios, she finally settles on calling Animal Control to report the abuse.  I approve of this whole sentence.

After school, she’s all fidgety to check on the dog, so she runs back over there only to find that there’s police all over the place and an ambulance on scene.  Then she sees the dog’s owner is dead and lying in a pool of blood in the exact same manner that she’d imagined that morning. 

Which is a nice ominous line for us to end on, but come on, no one put a sheet over that guy?  There was no police line to keep back inquisitive passers-by?  I thought that was pretty common practice, especially given there was enough time for multiple police cars and an ambulance to show up.

THE TREES, SIDEWALK, AND THE FLASHING lights spun around me as I felt it: the first unmistakable snarl in the delicate fabric of my sanity.

…really, the hallucinations don’t count?

Mara goes into shock and throws up, drawing the attention of the police on scene who want her to talk to the paramedics.  Mara is so anti-medical-help at all that she protests even that (why?  I don’t understand the depth of her aversion here.) but they ignore her.

The detectives talk around her while the medic checks her out, and they think that the guy’s death was an accident and mention the dog will probably be euthanized because it’s a pit bull.  Poor pittie.  Then they ask Mara a few basic questions and she says she was just here to check on the dog.  They take her information, offer to walk her back to school, but don’t seem to concerned when she wants to go on her own.  These detectives are the most realistic thing in the book so far.

Mara doesn’t leave but eavesdrops on them some more and finds out that guy died around the same time she met him.  Then after the cops go into the house she runs into the yard to steal the dog.  And…what, there were no uniform cops outside to control the crime scene?  The paramedics didn’t notice?

She takes the dog back to her car slowly (poor thing can’t move very fast) while kerfluffling in her head about how to break the news to her parents and how to take care of the dog and OMG stole from a crime scene and that guy is so totally dead just the way I imagined and I bet I can guilt trip the parents into keeping the dog.

Frankly, the times Mara is supposed to be mentally rattled are actually pretty good.  There’s always a feeling of racing, disordered thoughts without going overboard in any way.  I like it.

Noah is apparently waiting for her in the parkinglot, and once again he ignores Mara point-blank telling him to leave her alone.  Instead he offers to take her to a vet he knows.  Because once again we have a book where the girl telling the guy to leave her alone ends up wrong and better off because of his presence.  This is always brought about by circumstances (if she hadn’t had an injured dog in tow, Noah’s presence would be less than useless, and it’s not like she’s incapable of finding a vet on her own anyway) but the implication always ends up being “if he’d done what you told him you’d be screwed; aren’t you glad he didn’t leave when you asked?”  It paints the girl as being foolish and not realizing what’s needed, even though to realize something like that you’d have to be fucking psychic.  Granted, this instance isn’t laying it on as thick as other books, but it’s still one in a trend.