I trotted after him. “But Coach Carlson, don’t you think that he should get settled in first?” I called after him. “Focus on his academics?”
Coach Carlson’s butt cheeks sucked in the fabric of his mesh shorts and trapped it in the little triangle between his crotch, legs, and rear end. “That’s enough, Frankenstein,” he said without stopping. “Maybe you could learn something from your friend there. You know they don’t give out trophies for who can study the most by the end of high school.”
I threw my hands up just as he was disappearing through the open door to his glass-encased office.
“Actually, they do,” I yelled. “It’s called valedictorian.”
He raised his eyebrows and tugged the blind cord, sealing himself off.
I stamped my foot, spun, and marched back to where Owen and Adam were waiting. “For the record,” I said. “I think this is a very bad idea.”
FIFTEEN
Half-life is usually used to reference nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, but anything can have a half-life. It’s the amount of time required for a quantity to fall to half its value from the first time it was measured. I shouldn’t be surprised. Like I said, anything can have one. That includes a charged atom.
* * *
I didn’t ask about football practice the whole ride home. Maybe that made me a jerk. Maybe that was what normal people did. The same kind of people who asked how people’s days were or what was wrong when somebody was crying in the bathroom. Not me.
It was a relief to return home. My nerves felt like frayed wires, sparking with the memory of my broken phone, the tire tracks, and the missing boy. By now, I had a tiredness in my bones over the whole ordeal that made me eager to retreat into my own personal headquarters. Plus, hopefully we’d gotten this whole football thing out of our system. Since Adam didn’t mention it, either, I felt validated in my usual rightness as I unbuckled my seat belt and climbed out of Bert.
Mom worked as a secretary at a small law firm during the day, but she moonlighted as a waitress at the Waffle House, and tonight she had the five-to-ten shift, so I didn’t have to be on the lookout as we traipsed to the hatch. Adam’s steps were heavy on the ground. Without a word, he stepped into the cellar in front of me.
He had taken four steps when he staggered, knocking hard against the railing. “Adam?” I said, alarmed.
He grunted and then pushed himself up. He got to the last few steps. His knee buckled and he staggered. Barely catching himself from crashing to the floor, he careened sideways.
I skipped down after him. “Are you … drunk?” It would be just like the Billys to haze the new guy. Would Adam know any better? He hadn’t smelled like alcohol.
Adam groaned. I reached out a hand and spun him by the shoulder to face me. Upon seeing him, my heart leaped clear into my throat. This was not drunk. I almost wished it were. This was a thing far, far worse.
“Adam, you look…” I knew it wasn’t the best bedside manner, but I couldn’t help it. “… awful,” I finished.
Color appeared to be actively draining from the top of his head downward. Pools of blood could be spotted through the translucent skin on his neck, above his forearm, on the back of his hand. They looked like wine-colored bruises. If I pushed one, it would bubble to the side like a blood blister. His eyes were hollowed out, as if by an ice-cream scooper. In a span of minutes, he’d gone from awkwardly pale to walking dead. The quiet car ride was more than Adam being the strong, silent type, it was him being the near-dead type.
This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. I wrung my hands.
“Victor—” he started, lurching forward. I put my palms on his chest to keep him from falling on top of me. “Victor—” He began again before his eyes rolled back into his head and I caught his arm.
“Adam, come over here.” I guided him closer to the gurney until I could reach over and drag it the rest of the distance to him. The rusted wheels scratched and stuck. I clasped his arms and helped him onto it. “Lie down,” I directed. His elbows crumpled and his head clanged back like a newborn who couldn’t support his neck. In a drawer, I found a flashlight and flicked it on, wiping dust from the glass. I started by aiming it in his ears. The thin skin lit up red with the light. Then I pulled his eyelids apart with my fingers and aimed the flashlight into his pupils. I saw a miniature version of my face reflected in the chocolate-brown irises.
I dropped his lids. “I’m going to try to listen to your heart, okay?” I slid the hem of his football jersey up. The sight of Adam’s body sent a tingly sensation under my fingernails that made me want to peel them off and scratch. Pink branches forked across his chest in intricate patterns. Adam stared down and grazed his fingers over the scar tissue ridges.
The hatch marks of intricate scars somehow only seemed to make him more beautiful, like a snowflake that could never be re-created.
I leaned forward and pressed my ear to the spot over his heart. I closed my eyes, listened. At first, what I heard was the sound of nothingness. People might not think this has a sound at all, but it does. It was hollow, a heavy, vaulted absence. I held my breath. My own heart thumped loudly and pumped blood into my eardrums. A dull thud. Then two more. Soft but there.
“It’s failing,” I whispered. “Do you feel that?”
“Am I … dying, Victor … ia?” His voice was a rasp. “Again?”
I chewed my lip. There was no word in the English dictionary for someone who died when they were already dead. I wasn’t sure I could replicate the experiment. It worked once, but once could mean anything. The success of the experiment could have been a statistical anomaly. No variables had been controlled.
I grabbed a thick research book from a shelf and dusted off the cover before flipping through pages, nose close to the typeface. I dragged my finger line by line. Experiments in Revival of Organisms. No. Soviet Dog Experiment. Electrotherapy. I muttered the chapter titles under my breath, knowing full well that pioneers in a field didn’t get to check their work in textbooks.
I slammed the covers shut and paced the room. On the gurney, Adam’s eyes started to close.
I snapped my fingers under his nose. “Don’t go to sleep,” I said. His eyelashes fluttered and he stared at me dazed, but awake.
Okay, his energy was drained. His systems were shutting down. I thought about closed-circuit systems. When the human body grew tired, a person refueled it with food. Even from the fetal stage, a human was only able to grow by receiving calories and nutrients in utero. But Adam wasn’t brought into existence through calories and nutrients. So more likely, then, was that Adam’s fuel wasn’t food at all.
I crossed the length of the storm cellar three more times. If a car engine sputtered, what happened? Someone had to give the battery a jump to restore it to full capacity. I pulled a long breath of air like I was sucking on the end of a cigarette. I eyed Adam, then the claw-foot tub, then Adam again.
“Adam,” I said. “I think we’re going to have to try to recharge you.” I began pulling wires. “Last time, well, you don’t remember last time, but you’re going to have to trust me.” I selected a red wire and a green wire. Both had worn coating so that the copper wires were exposed.
“I trust you.”
“I’m going to need to make new incisions. Ones that are less visible. You’ll tell me if this hurts?” I dragged the scalpel over the counter into my grip. He didn’t respond. “Adam?”
“I’ll tell you.” His lips were turning blue.
“Good.” I pinched the scalpel hard between my fingers. He didn’t flinch as I sliced an inch in the soft spot behind his ear and before his skull bone. Blood bubbled into the fresh cuts made on either side of his chest. “I’m going to need your help for this part. You’re going to have to focus.” He moaned his agreement. “You’ll have to undress. And then I’ll need you in that tub.” I pointed. Adam’s head lolled to the side. I used the full force of my weight to roll the gurney as close to the dirt-coated tub as I could
. “Okay, Adam. Now, before you’re not able to.” There was urgency in my voice. I worried he’d lose consciousness at any moment.
I supported him as he struggled to sit up, and then together we swung his feet off the edge and deposited him straight into the empty tub. He peeled off his jersey first, and I caught myself staring not at the tree-branch scars but at the swell of his muscles underneath. When he unfastened the button of his jeans, I whirled around. Heat rushed to my cheeks. “Sorry,” I mumbled. This had been so much less awkward when he was dead.
Behind me, I heard squeaks and squawks of skin on porcelain, and once they’d stopped, I announced myself before turning around, feeling more embarrassed than I should have been at the thought of the human anatomy. I was careful where my gaze landed as I reached over to turn the handles on the faucet. The spigot choked, sputtered, and then retched a gush of grimy water. The sound thundered against the sides of the bath.
Adam’s eyelids finally closed and didn’t reopen. I was reliving the night of the accident. To assure myself that not everything was the same, I put my finger below his nose and felt the soft puff of air against my skin. He was alive, if only barely.
I wheeled the kilowatt meter over and gathered a jar of brine water, working up a sweat as I culled together all the necessary supplies. Since I wouldn’t be reanimating a corpse, I reasoned that the power I’d need would be significantly less.
I inserted the wires into the open cuts and applied a short piece of tape to hold each in place. I set the power gauge and, as a final, lucky thought, I pulled ratty old towels and a short stepping stool. I positioned my feet on top of the stool and wrapped the towels around them to stave off the shock. There was no time left to think. Adam was slipping. I had no choice but to flip the dial.
As soon as I did, Adam jerked like a cat dunked in water. The sight paralyzed me. His eyes rolled into his head until all I could see were the whites. He looked possessed. Tremors shot through his body. The water churned. I wanted to hold him but forced my arms to stay pinned to my sides. His jaw clenched and unclenched. Chin stretched up, straining for something. Pain deepened the lines of his face, turning the laugh lines around his mouth into sunken grooves.
I closed my eyes, but I could still hear the enamel clacking together as his teeth chattered uncontrollably in his jaw. This couldn’t be right. The hair on his arms stood on end, dimpling the skin underneath with welted goose bumps. Sparks flew. The acrid scent of burning meat.
He let out a strangled grunt and his head whipped back. Throat exposed. His hands twisted into claws. He moaned again. Deep, guttural groaning. I watched as his shoulders convulsed. A grotesque exorcism jolted through muscle and sinewy tissue, racking his body.
“Four!” he screamed.
Startled, I reached for the switch, heart pounding. The soft hum of electricity faded. It left him in waves. Another one shook him every second or so like the aftershock from an earthquake.
Shallow pants came from both of us. Gradually, the last twitch left his fingers. I got down from my perch. “Adam? Adam, are you all right?”
His chest rose and fell. His fists squeezed into balls.
I tilted my head to read him, but shadows disguised all his features, warping them into something frightening and indecipherable. Four, I repeated silently. What had he meant by that?
“Adam?” My voice grew softer. Slowly, I reached out my hand, realizing as I did so that it was shaking. With one finger, I prodded him in the ribs beneath the milky water.
His head snapped up. Our eyes met, but in that moment, I wasn’t sure he really saw me. His eyes held a glint of hard metal. His top lip quivered over a row of exposed teeth, and a tendon in his jaw pulsated.
I jerked away, finger still outstretched.
“S-s-sorry,” I stuttered. “I—”
But before I could finish my thought, his eyelashes fluttered and he tossed his chin quickly. He looked at me as if seeing me there for the first time.
He stretched out his fingers. Examined his hands backward and forward. He rolled his shoulders. He stood up. Bent his knees.
“Why are you staring at me like that, Victoria?”
I closed my mouth. The sound of my own saliva crackled in my ears. “You … looked different. For a second.” I realized my pulse was still jackhammering the inside of my wrist. I rubbed my neck, trying to shake away the sense of fear that’d overtaken me. Like I’d just escaped a moment that had been teetering on the edge of something very, very dangerous. “How do you feel?” I asked, then cleared my throat. And for some reason the clearest image in my mind at that moment was a faceless missing boy.
“I feel better.”
Almost immediately, the pools of blood began to disperse underneath his skin, and the yellow faded out of the whites of his eyes. The more normal he looked, the more normal I felt. I wanted to laugh at myself for being so uptight. I couldn’t quite laugh, though. Not when the hairs on my arms still stood on end.
“Really? Because that looked like it hurt,” I said with an out-of-place, breathless chuckle that sounded forced even to me. “I don’t want to get too graphic, but I thought you were in choking-on-your-own-vomit territory. Not usually a good sign.”
He cracked his neck. The bones sounded brittle. “It hurt a little, but not now.” I latched onto the word hurt. He’d felt something. Something had come back. He had hurt. “Thank you, Victoria.”
He put his hands on my shoulders. There was a zap of static between us that made me jump. “You saved me. Again,” he said, and my throat closed off, trapping any words that I might have had left. Saved.
Crickets chirped on my short walk back to the main house. As had become my habit, I scanned the open road that ran alongside our lawn, looking for a car and somebody who knew the truth about me and Adam. But the scattered lampposts that dotted the neighbors’ fence lines gave away nothing. The road was empty, and I left it behind to go inside, where Einstein greeted me with her wiggling stub of a tail.
“Come on, girl.” I beckoned her into the kitchen. She snorted and sniffed at the linoleum tiles.
This morning’s skillet still sat on the cold burner, a layer of eggs caked onto the bottom. I tossed it into the sink with the rest of the dishes and ran the faucet for a few seconds. Two empty wine bottles and a heap of red-stained napkins littered the countertop. With a sigh, I brought the trash can around and scraped the counter off into the garbage.
Dusting my hands off on the back of my pants, I wandered into the living room, Einstein in tow. The blue light of the television flickered on, silent. A mess of crocheted blankets draped from the couch, spilling onto the carpet. Einstein circled and plopped down on the edge of a pilling gray one. I picked the remote off the ring-stained coffee table and sank down into the sofa. I recognized the anchorwoman of the late news and flipped on the volume. The events of the day buzzed in my ears, and it felt good to let her voice drown them out. I was just tilting my head back to rest my eyes when I heard a name that I recognized. Trent. Jackson. Westover.
I jolted upright and clicked the volume louder. Einstein stared up with droopy eyes and shook her collar.
“After the break, we’ll give you the tragic latest on Lamar High’s missing teenager,” the woman said from behind the news desk just before the screen faded into a car-insurance commercial. I laced my fingers together and twiddled my thumbs. The next two minutes lasted an eternity. Car-insurance commercial, cereal commercial, commercial for world’s coldest beer. My knee jiggled up and down. I jammed my finger into the fast-forward button even though I knew I was watching the show live.
Headlights swept through the living room, and my heart constricted. I hurried to the window and peeked through the blinds. I let out a long breath when I saw it was Mom’s station wagon pulling into the drive. Behind me, the simple melody of Channel 8’s theme song came on and I abandoned the window.
The anchorwoman appeared behind her desk with her helmet of blond hair and bright red lips. “Good eve
ning again. This morning’s vote on the water bill passed five to two.”
“Who cares, who cares…,” I muttered.
Outside, the engine died, and moments later, the screen door clanged shut. “Tor!” Mom called. “I’ve got pancakes.”
“In here,” I said, and turned up the volume once again. The woman was now describing how the water bill would affect our county in minute detail. The grooves of my teeth wore into one another.
Mom set a Styrofoam box full of pancakes down on the coffee table in front of me. She wore her blue pinstripe uniform with the cuffed sleeves and white tennis shoes. I craned around her to see the screen.
“And now for the heartbreaking case of the missing high school student, Trent Jackson Westover.” My breath froze in my lungs.
“Mom, you’re blocking the screen.” I shooed her away.
Mom shuffled around to the couch beside me and, before I could react, took the remote and flipped it to her nighttime soap operas.
“Mom!” I shrieked. “Turn it back. I was watching that.”
She opened the Styrofoam lid. “My soaps are on,” she said. “Tonight we find out if Eliza was really having an affair with Dr. Lee. Oh, I forgot syrup.” Mom meandered back to the kitchen, and I clicked the button to return to the news program.
A shot of a lakeshore surrounded by reeds and sinking moss lingered on-screen. A yellow ambulance near the edge flashed red and white lights onto the surface. Below the shot the caption read Lake Crook. A team of uniformed men and women were busying themselves around the water.
“The boy’s body was recovered sometime after two this afternoon when a sports fisherman noticed the body being washed against the shore,” the anchorwoman continued solemnly. Body?
I moved to the edge of the sofa and rested my elbows on my knees.
Mom returned with a glass of wine, a fork, and no syrup. “Tor, I told you I was watching that. It’s a very important episode.”
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