Nervous System (The System Series Book 1)

by Andrea Ring

  “Yeah, sperimenting, like a scientist,” she says, nodding.

  “That’s pretty cool. I like to experiment, too. You just have to experiment on things that you won’t ruin. Maybe you could try chalk instead of crayons, because chalk washes off easier.”

  “I have some chalk at home. I got it in my Easter basket.”

  We chat for the rest of recess.

  I can’t say that Abbey’s my favorite person, but maybe I understand her a little bit better.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  My birthday party starts in thirty-four minutes.

  We never did agree on a theme, so Grandma and Dad just planned lots of games and food and treats. Tessa’s mom is making me a cake. She called to ask me my favorite flavor, and I politely told her to surprise me. Though Mom was wonderful, she hardly filled my life with sweets, so I’m not picky.

  I haven’t spoken with Tessa since my outburst with Abbey. I was afraid that means she wouldn’t be coming today, but since Mrs. Halter is bringing the cake, I’m fairly certain Tessa will come with her. I want her to be here. I need her to be here.

  The doorbell rings at 1:42, and Grandma lets Mrs. Halter and Tessa in. I know I should ooh and aah over the cake, but I don’t even notice it. I only have eyes for Tessa. She’s dressed in a bright purple top with jean shorts. She has pink rubber flip-flops on, and blue nail polish on her toes. Her eyes look like Easter basket grass. Her hair shines golden as the sun.

  I have to catch my breath.

  “You came,” I finally manage to say.

  She smiles. “It’s my best friend’s birthday.”

  My eyes sting. “I thought…I thought I lost you.”

  Tessa laughs. “I’m not lost, silly. I’m right here.”

  I feel a tear slip down my cheek.

  “Are you crying?” she asks.

  I wipe the tear away. “Nah. Crying’s for babies.”

  Tessa walks over to stand in front of me and takes my hand. “You wanna see the cake?”

  I squeeze her fingers. They’re sticky. “Yes.”

  We go to the kitchen, where Grandma and Dad and Mrs. Halter are chatting. The cake is on the table.

  It is three layers high. The top is red, the middle white, and the bottom blue. There are chocolate sculptures of different body parts—the ones I’ve done in my presentations—all around the cake. There is a pair of purple lungs. A yellow brain. A green spinal column. A red lump.

  “This is amazing,” I say, walking around the table. “What’s this?” I ask, pointing to the lump.

  “I did that one,” Tessa says, beaming. “Guess.”

  “Uh…a kidney?” I haven’t done a presentation on kidneys, but who knows?

  “No, it’s a heart.”

  I bend down and look at it more closely. I see now what she meant it to be. I look closer. Near the bottom, Tessa has carved her name.

  “See,” she says, pointing at the letters. “I signed it like you taught me. An artist always signs her work.”

  I run my fingers over the letters. Spine, lungs, brain, heart. My heart, tattooed with Tessa’s name.

  “Perfect,” I whisper. “This is absolutely perfect. I couldn’t ask for a better birthday present.”

  Tessa bumps my shoulder with hers. “It was my idea. Mom was gonna do dragons, like the big one with wings you drew at our house. But you never even played that game. I thought this was better.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Halter,” I say.

  “Don’t thank me. Thank Tessa. It was all her.”

  I am so overcome with all these feelings, I can barely get the words out. “Thank you, Tessa.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Thomas, I can’t seem to make the phone work,” Grandma says as she comes into my room. I am researching brain injuries on my laptop.

  “The phone’s not working?” I say.

  “You try it,” she says. She hands me the phone.

  I stare at it. She has handed me the TV remote.

  I laugh. “Grandma, this isn’t the phone.” I hand it back to her.

  She stares at it. “This is the clicker.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  She laughs. “Oh my. Silly me. What a dodo.”

  I go back to my research.

  I run across a series of articles on concussions in the NFL. Apparently, ex-NFL players are suffering long-term effects from their multiple head injuries. Those effects include memory loss, depression, sleeplessness, and mood swings. Some doctors claim that concussions can even lead to dementia and Alzheimer’s.

  I do a search on Alzheimer’s.

  There is no cure, and no definitive test for diagnosis. No one knows exactly what causes it. Early symptoms include confusion, memory loss, loss of balance, and mood swings. Unfortunately, those are the same symptoms for a lot of diseases. The symptoms ring a bell for me, and I immediately think of Grandma. She should have perfect memory, but she left the stove on a few weeks ago. She tried to make a call on the remote. But she can’t have Alzheimer’s. If she had any disease at all, she would know about it and heal herself.

  But what if her disease affected her abilities to sense her own body?

  I’m briefly panicked, so much so that my hands shake too badly to type. I have to regulate just to get control.

  Grandma doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. She is invincible. Well, she might get hit by a car, but barring that, she’ll be fine. Dad and I make mistakes sometimes, don’t we?

  Not like the ones Grandma’s made, I think, but the thought won’t stick. I’ve regulated myself too much. When my eyelids start to droop, I close my laptop and lie down for a brief nap.

  

  Grandma’s friends Earl and Sharon come to stay with us. Earl is a slim stick of a man a head shorter than his wife. He has a graying mustache, a balding head, and a twang in his voice. I like to listen to him talk. He owns four car dealerships in South Carolina, though his son runs them now. He and Sharon drive up there every other month to spend time with their grandkids.

  Sharon is a slight person as well, though tall. She claims that the tallest men in town were already taken, so she had to go for the most charming. “My Earl could charm a pair of panties off a nun,” she says, laughing. And with Earl’s voice, I have to believe her.

  They haul out pictures of their grandkids before they’ve even unpacked. Grandma rolls her eyes at me over their heads, but she politely gushes over all the pictures, and I follow suit. I ask them lots of questions, about the kids’ ages and schools and interests. Sharon and Earl are surprisingly well-versed on their progeny. They even know that Trevor likes Captain Crunch cereal and Miranda hated the movie Tangled.

  I wonder if Grandma knows such information about me.

  The pair has been on a plane all day, but they are still full of energy. The three friends plan to drive down to the beach and meet Ray and Dinah for dinner.

  “Tell me the directions again, Michael,” Grandma says to Dad before they leave. “I don’t want to get lost.”

  Dad gives her a strange look. “I gave you the directions yesterday,” he says.

  Sharon laughs. “Good lord, you can’t expect her to remember them a day later.”

  “Of course not,” Grandma chimes in.

  Dad repeats the directions, even writes them down, and then they leave.

  Dad gets bread, cheese, and butter out of the fridge for our dinner. Has to be for his famous grilled cheese sandwiches, Dad’s go-to dinner whenever Grandma’s not around to cook. You’d think a man who can kill someone with his pinkie finger would be a little more self-sufficient about feeding himself. I say as much as I watch him spread butter on the bread.

  “We can dig up some roots in the backyard if you want,” he says. “Boil some gutter water over an open fire. You can filter water through your t-shirt. Did you know that?”

  “Of course I know that,” I say. “I watch Survivor, remember?”

  Dad grunts. “Real life is a little different from telev
ision.”

  “Not that much, apparently,” I say. Dad ignores me.

  “Do you remember Mom’s grilled cheeses?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “She never made me grilled cheese. Low nutritional value.”

  Dad snorts. “God, she was a pain in the ass sometimes.”

  I gasp. “How can you say that?”

  Dad doesn’t answer me.

  “She’d make them for me on special nights. She wouldn’t use this American crap, either. She’d buy a big block of Swiss cheese, and when we were first married, Swiss cheese was a real treat. It was expensive for us. She’d cut thick slices of it and arrange them perfectly so they peeked out over the outer edges of the crust.” I watch Dad rearrange the cheese slices on the sandwich he’s making. “The cheese would melt out of the bread and crisp up in the pan. She knew I loved the crispy parts. She’d peel them off her own sandwich and feed them to me.”

  A tear slips down his cheek.

  “Do you really think she was a pain?” I ask.

  “She’d get so irritated with me when I came home from leave. I left my dirty socks on the bathroom floor again. Why couldn’t I put a new roll of toilet paper on if I used the last bit? Was it too much to ask that I use a glass instead of drinking milk out of the carton? Couldn’t I breathe a little quieter?” He shudders. “I miss her, Thomas. I freaking miss her.”

  I miss her too. But I’d never say she was a pain, except…she could be. I suddenly remember how angry I was with her the day she died.

  “Do you think…should I go to football games?”

  Dad swipes at his cheeks. “Football games?”

  “Mom thought I should go to football games.”

  “I think you should do whatever you want to do, but I hope you’ll remember what she said. Moms have a lot of wisdom. We don’t always acknowledge that fact when we’re young—we think we know everything. I wish I’d listened to my own mom.”

  That reminds me. “Hey, do you think Grandma’s been acting a little weird?”

  “You mean the directions thing?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  Dad shrugs. “She probably wants to be normal in front of her friends.”

  “She left the stove on the other day.”

  Dad carefully places a sandwich into the hot pan. “She did?”

  “Yes. And she tried to make a phone call on the TV remote.”

  “What?” He looks at me.

  “She thought there was something wrong with the phone. But she was using the remote.”

  “Seriously?”

  I nod. “Yeah. Is something wrong with her?”

  Dad thoughtfully waves the spatula around. “Well, she’s getting up there. Some forgetfulness is normal with age.”

  “Even for people like us?”

  Dad flips the sandwich. “Grandma’s the oldest one of us I know. So who’s to say what’s normal?”

  “The oldest? Grandma’s only sixty-five. She’s not exactly ancient.”

  “Let me finish these and we’ll talk.”

  Dad takes another ten minutes to grill his famous sandwiches. In that time, I think of at least a dozen questions I want to ask him. Then I think about Dad opening up by degrees, and I figure that my questions might actually hinder Dad’s openness instead of encouraging it. I decide to let him take the lead.

  He cooks and cries silently.

  The night is warm and still. We carry our plates onto the back patio and eat in the dusky light.

  “So, documented, there are thirty-two people worldwide with our abilities, from twenty-six separate family lines. We estimate the real total is probably closer to two hundred—a lot of the world is still fairly rural and un-advanced, plus you have a bunch of countries that are not about to share information with us.”

  “Wow. So you know thirty-two people like us?”

  “Not personally. For example, I know you and Grandma, but the others don’t know you two. They know of you, but you haven’t met. I’ve only met twenty-one.”

  “Are they all here in the United States?”

  “They are, but they’re not all from here.”

  “How do you know them?” I ask.

  “Through the military,” he says, and a light bulb goes on in my head.

  “The Attic?” I say.

  He nods.

  God, I want to talk! I want to ask him a million questions about the Attic, but I don’t. I force myself to remain silent.

  “When I was eighteen, I joined the Navy. Colleges all over the country and all over the world were bending over backwards to recruit me, and Grandma wanted me to get a degree. She did not want me in the military. She thought they’d use me for some nefarious purpose. But I couldn’t picture myself in school. School had always been boring for me…well, you know.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Dad smiles. “I couldn’t take another minute of it, of trying to pretend I needed to be there. I wanted to travel. I wanted to see the world. But Grandma and Grandpa didn’t have a lot of money. So I joined the Navy, against her good advice. Changed everything.”

  I nod and bite into my sandwich. A string of cheese sticks to my chin, and I pick it off and pop it into my mouth.

  “Right away, they do a physical. Test you in every way possible. Not even halfway through Boot Camp, they isolated me. Didn’t say why. They asked me to do impossible things—500 sit-ups in a minute, 200 push-ups, bench-press 500 pounds.”

  “Yow,” I say.

  Dad takes a bite and nods. “Of course I couldn’t do them at first. We’re skilled, but we’re not the Hulk. So they pushed me. Yelled. Threatened. Threw me in the brig. Told me I’d be dishonorably discharged and my whole life would be ruined if I couldn’t pass their tests. I was eighteen and naïve, so I bulked up my muscles, increased my lung capacity, did whatever it took. And in two weeks, I passed.”

  “You must have been sore,” I say.

  Dad laughs. “I couldn’t even get out of bed, but they forced me to. So I shut down my nerves and trudged on. They put me on a special diet, forced me to drink these God-awful concoctions. As you know, I should have lost weight. I should have been incapacitated. But I wasn’t. I didn’t miss a day of training. Went off to Officer Candidate School, and I was ready.

  “So there I was, eighteen, lean as a whip but stronger than Arnold Schwarzenegger, and thinking I was pretty much the biggest badass who ever lived. I thought I owned the place. I knew they were going to send me on some elite mission, right into the heart of a war zone. I mean, I was a weapon. I was a super-soldier. Strong and smart and couldn’t even feel pain.”

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Yep. So I get my orders after OCS. I’m thinking Iraq. I’m thinking Kuwait. I’m thinking freaking China, who knows. But guess where they send me?”

  I think about it. “North Korea?”

  “Nope.”

  “Cuba?”

  Dad shakes his head.

  “Nicaragua? Israel? Iran?”

  “Good guesses. Those would have been mine. But I got orders to report to Naval Medical Center, San Diego.”

  “A medical center?” I say. “Not a base?”

  “Nope. Not even a base. A lot of guys who were in Boot Camp with me were assigned to Naval Base, San Diego, or even the Marine base, Camp Pendleton. But I was the only one who got assigned to the medical center.”

  “So what did you think?” I ask, finishing off my sandwich and dusting my hands off under the table.

  “I didn’t think, I knew. I knew I’d been had. They were using me for research. The sad thing was, at that point, I still believed I would be the researcher, not the researched.”

  I gasp.

  Dad chews, swallows, and nods. “They call it the Attic. Eight guys were there at the time, and one woman. Her name was Vivian.”

  Dad’s voice softens when he says her name.

  “You loved her,” I say. I want him to stop talking at this point. I’ve never thought about my parents’ lives bef
ore they met each other. I love Tessa and I’m only six, so it stands to reason that Mom and Dad loved other people, too. But I don’t want to know about it. I want to go on believing that all his love went to Mom, period. Just a few minutes ago, he was missing her.

  Dad looks at me, surprised, and then smiles. I realize that he does miss Mom, and maybe that makes him vulnerable, a little more human. Maybe he needs to remember the good things in his life.

  “First love,” he says. “She was eighteen, too, had only been there a few weeks. When I walked in, she was lying there on a cot, motionless. I thought she was dead. One of the doctors told me she was trying to build up her lung capacity, see how long she could hold her breath. So I stood there and watched her. The clock crawled, and as the minutes passed, I grew more and more anxious. She wasn’t visibly breathing. She wasn’t moving. I watched her for twenty-two minutes, and then I just couldn’t stand it any more. I pounced on her and tried to give her mouth-to-mouth.” Dad chuckles, thinking about it. “She was furious. Screaming and yelling and pushing me off her. I didn’t care. She tasted like whipped cream.”

  I try to imagine that. But whenever I think of kissing, I think of peanut butter.

  “Took her two days to calm down, but we became inseparable. And the doctor there, Dr. Raymond Sykes, he noticed. And he used us. He decided we should try to have a baby.”

  “A baby?” I say. “You have other children?”

  Dad shakes his head. “No. We didn’t have a child. But Dr. Sykes made us try. Normally, males with our abilities cannot father children. Only females pass on our abilities. But something about my body was different. Dr. Sykes was sure we could produce a child.”

  “Well,” I say, “as far as experiments go, you lucked out. I mean, you were probably crying in your milk over that assignment.”

  Dad sighs. “You’d think. But you have to understand the Attic. It was a place of research. Every experiment was done out in the open, in front of the other Dwellers.”

  “Dwellers?”

  “Attic Dwellers. That’s what we called ourselves. Nothing was hidden. Everything was shared. Imagine it from Viv’s point of view. She was being forced to become a mother when she was barely an adult herself. Sure, I was being forced to become a father, but it’s just different for women. All Viv’s choices, her important life choices, were being taken away from her. And…”