The corn dog burned my mouth, and I handed it off to Adam to devour. “We should do something that combines a strong physical sensation with a strong emotional one,” I said.
“Relax.” Owen pulled a wad of tickets from his pocket. “I know exactly where to go.” Sometimes, I could swear Owen had never met me at all. I didn’t do relaxed. Especially when I wasn’t in control of all the variables.
Still, we followed Owen past the food stalls and the fair games. He doled four tickets out to Adam and me and tore off two more for himself and, at the front of the line, handed them to the Ferris wheel operator.
We piled into a three-person bench with me crammed into the middle. The operator pulled the bar down over our laps, and the ride lurched to life, jolting us back into our seats. “Hey, I remember this,” I said. “My dad took me on this Ferris wheel when I was a kid.”
“See?” Owen’s eyebrows shot over the rims of his glasses. “It’s working already.”
The ground swept out from underneath us. The pull of gravity planted me to the bench. We arced clockwise, out and up. Our feet dangled. Adam’s hands tightened around the bar and twisted. He pushed as far back into his seat as he could go.
“How far into the sky are we going?” he asked.
Below us, the fairgrounds shrank to a pocket-sized scale. “All the way to the top,” I said.
He grunted.
I leaned forward. I liked the view looking straight down where the angle was the sharpest and most thrilling. Adam reached his arm in front of my chest and pushed me back into my seat. The bench swayed in response.
“Be careful, Victoria,” he said. His voice was strained.
“I’m with him,” Owen said. “Don’t rock the proverbial boat, please.”
“This was your idea,” I reminded him.
The horizon sank lower and lower as we soared over the tree line. Our trajectory began taking us backward as we began to reach the crest. At the top, the ride jerked to a halt.
“Adam?” I glanced over again and found that his eyes were squeezed shut so tightly that wrinkles reached all the way to his temples. “Adam, open your eyes.” He shook his head violently and the trolley car swayed. “Adam, this won’t work if you don’t open your eyes.” But I already knew that the experiment was working, because the emotion he was feeling was fear. Fear was useful. Fear was good. Fear kept people from running out in front of buses and diving off cliffs. My mind raced with the possibilities of what else I might be able to evoke in Adam. Were the primal responses easier to unearth? If I tried, could I make Adam very angry?
I brought my thoughts back into the bench dangling high above the ground. One thing at a time.
Hands still wrapped in a death grip around the safety bar, Adam peeled open an eyelid, followed by his other. He stared out of the chairlift. Up here, the music couldn’t reach. The metal creaked and groaned. Our bench swung gently in the breeze.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I—I don’t know,” he said.
I put my hand on his. “You do know. Tell me what you see,” I coaxed him. “Describe it to me.”
He shifted his weight in the seat. “I see,” he paused, “dark.” Another pause. “With little lights.”
“And how do you think they look?”
He focused on them. “I think … they look pretty.” I leaned over and gave Owen a meaningful look. “Which reminds me of your hair.” He fidgeted again. “At school, even from far away, I can spot your hair and know that you’re close and will come to get me. So it reminds me of that. And I like that.”
My heart pulled at the arteries that attached it to my chest. I looked down and let my auburn hair fall around my face to hide my grin. Adam was mine. He would always be mine.
“You should write for Hallmark, man.” I could feel—though not hear—Owen laughing beside me, and I elbowed him in the gut. “Hey, watch it!” He rubbed at his rib.
Just then, the Ferris wheel motor began to whir, and we were being taken on a slow, controlled fall to the bottom. Adam closed his eyes again, and his knuckles turned whiter than normal.
I had to assure him twice that it was okay to let go of the bar once we’d reached the bottom. He wobbled sideways when he got off the ride, and Owen and I caught his arms.
“Victoria?” he said as we exited the gates of the Ferris wheel. “I learned another thing to add to things I do not like.” He craned his neck and stared up at where we’d experienced our bird’s-eye view. “Heights.”
After the Ferris wheel, I decided we should try to test our hypothesis by evoking a more positive emotional response in the subject. The three of us traipsed over to the petting zoo, which I figured had a good chance of making him happy. This turned out to be a serious miscalculation since the pigs and miniature horses seemed to have a sixth sense about Adam. He spent ten minutes trying to chase them into corners to pet them, and the goats kept trying to nibble his jeans. No sooner than I’d written it, I scratched “interaction with animals” off my list.
It was when leaving the petting zoo that I spotted four people who had the capability of ruining our entire evening. Cassidy, Knox, Paisley, and William were making their way toward the Ferris wheel, which went to show how little there was to do in Hollow Pines on the weekends.
Paisley had a large plush bear straddled over her shoulders. It was pink and was wearing a sombrero and was probably taller than her. Cassidy spotted us first. She squealed when she saw Adam.
“You guys! I didn’t know y’all were here.” She came running over. Her face turned grave. “It’s so nice to get out and do something normal after…” She lowered her voice. “You know.”
“I don’t know.” Owen shrugged, even though she clearly hadn’t been talking to him.
Her eyes were wide as if she were seeing it all over again in her head. “The body. Victoria, surely you told him. My mom is making me be home by ten thirty tonight. Emily’s and Mason’s parents are going to make them see a shrink. Paisley, look who it is.” She turned around to Paisley, who was walking up at a much slower, less enthusiastic pace.
“Well, who would have thought we’d have run into a real, live celebrity,” Paisley said. She looked ridiculous parading around with a sombrero-sporting bear. But that was the thing about being popular. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Popular kids didn’t do cool things. Things were cool because they did them.
Adam looked behind him and to the sides.
“She means you.” Cassidy laughed. “Haven’t you seen? The papers are already reporting you as Hollow Pines High’s resident football savior.” She clasped her hands together in a mock prayer. The fact that the papers were reporting anything about high school football practice when there was a killer on the loose was a miracle. Then again, that was the Hollow Pines religion.
Adam stopped searching and stared blankly at her.
“Well, it was nice running into you,” I said, wanting to extract myself. “We should be getting home early, too. We all like having two legs and our hearts still beating, if you know what I mean.” A joke about a murder. That was a classy touch.
Knox narrowed his already squinty eyes. “Hold on a minute,” he said. “You’re not too good for hanging out with your teammates for a second, are you?”
Adam’s eyebrows squished together. “Too good? I’m a good guy. I’m Adam.”
Knox’s canines caught the light, and I could just make out the shadows of acne scars in the hollows of his cheeks. “Maybe a little friendly competition?”
“We should really be going,” I said, remembering how I’d said something similar to Knox two nights earlier.
“One game.” Knox held up his finger. “Live a little, Torantula.” The guy did not seem to understand the word no. I clenched my teeth. Fine then. He could have it his way. This time.
“Great,” I said, rolling back my shoulders and cracking my knuckles. “How about that thing?” I pointed to the “Test Your Strength” booth that we’d passed earlier. The tatt
ooed carny was pacing the perimeter, holding his top-heavy mallet.
Knox and William turned to check. William pushed up his sleeves and nodded.
I looked at Owen and then at the twenty-foot-high tower. If the lever at the bottom was struck hard enough, a puck would shoot up the tower and ring the bell.
The group started to cross the distance to the game. “Wait,” I called. “How about a wager?”
Knox crossed his arms. “What’d you have in mind?”
I glanced at William. His biceps were bigger than one of my legs. “Twenty bucks if either of you win. Twenty bucks if we win.”
William cracked his knuckles. He spit on the ground and grinned.
Knox dug into the back of his jeans and pulled out a wad of bills. “How about a hundred?”
I stared at the crisp green cash. I didn’t have twenty bucks let alone a hundred. Adam was big, but William was thicker with a neck like a pit bull. Then again, Adam was Adam.
I stuck out my hand. “Deal.” We shook on it.
I tore off two more tickets and handed them to the operator after Knox and William had done the same. An intricate dragon rippled off the carny’s forearm as he handed the mallet over to Knox. Fire and smoke breathed down the back of the man’s hands and down to his knuckles.
“Batter up,” said the carny.
Paisley whistled at Knox, and he made a show of flexing his muscles. “Watch and learn, ladies.” He bowed and swung the mallet onto his shoulder. Then, with both hands cupped around the end of the handle, he took a giant lunge forward and brought the mallet head down on the lever with a springboard crash.
The puck traveled just over halfway up the tower, a trail of blue lights following in its wake.
He stuck out his lower lip. “That’s harder than it looks.”
He tipped the handle over to William. In William’s strong grip, the mallet looked much thinner and lighter. When he swung it into position, it appeared to be no heavier than a household hammer. I bit my lip. When it came to brute strength, William must have Adam beat. I shifted my weight, my stomach clenching and unclenching.
He twisted his grip, then, like a warrior bringing down an ax, he wielded the mallet straight over his head and slammed it onto the lever. The puck shot up. It kept going, past the blue lights, past the red, one foot from the top, the lights turned yellow. The momentum petered out, and the puck fell back down to earth.
William ran his tongue along his teeth. “Not too shabby.” He strutted. “Not too shabby at all. You’re up, Smith.”
“Adam.” I grabbed him by both arms. “Just swing that hammer thing as hard as you can, okay? You’ve got this.” I held my breath. All I could do now was bet on my horse.
“Will it help me remember things?” he said.
I held out a flat hand and wobbled it from side to side. “Eh. Probably not. But it’d make me awfully happy.” My eyes twitched in the direction of Knox and his I know something you don’t know grin.
He hiked the mallet up. “Okay then,” he said flatly. “I’ll do it.” He walked over and, casually, without stopping, thwacked the lever. He dropped the mallet in the dirt right away and walked over to me.
I slapped my hand over my eyes, and just as I was getting ready to mutter a curse word under my breath, there was a brassy clang up above and then the “Test Your Strength” booth erupted into loud sirens that flashed pink and yellow lights.
“Adam! You did it!” Cassidy squealed. She turned to Paisley and stuck out her tongue and then spanked her backside, teasing. “Told you.”
I jumped up and down. Knox and William reluctantly fished for their wallets and handed me fifty dollars each.
I snapped the bills between my fingers. “Thanks, boys.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Knox said. But he reached out to shake Adam’s hand. “Come sit with us tomorrow, Smith,” William said as the group began trickling away.
Cassidy grabbed my arm and squeezed it. I could smell the faint hint of alcohol and Slurpee on her breath. “You too, Tor.”
I skipped over to Adam and Owen. “A contribution to the Tor needs a new phone fund,” I said, stuffing it into my front pocket. “Now let’s take a victory lap.” I felt lucky, glowing. A sudden rush of energy pulsed through me.
“You guys take your lap of victory,” Owen said. “I’ve got to find a bathroom. I’ll meet you back at the car.”
I offered my arm to Adam. “Five minutes,” I said, and then Adam and I went back into the maze of rides and fairground stalls.
We’d been walking only a short distance when I spotted a familiar ride. “Oh! I loved this one as a kid.”
“The Old Mill,” Adam read the western-themed sign. “What is it?”
“It’s awesome. Or, well, actually maybe it was only one of those things that was awesome because I was a kid, but basically, you get on these little floating boats and you’re pulled along a waterway through an old mill and you wind up at a mine shaft.” Two of us would barely fit on one boat, but the thought of Adam and me riding the Old Mill together sounded so silly to me that I had to try. “We’re making new memories, remember? And if we want to get you to feel the feels, trust me, this is a good one. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”
I led him up the short flight of steps, forked over my last few tickets, and lowered myself onto the bench of one of the miniature boats. It was shaped like a mill chute, and when Adam followed in after me, the water splashed up around us. He caught himself on the sides for balance and, once settled, peered down into the murky river below.
There was a click, and then the boat dropped down a couple inches, and we began floating into a tunnel.
We were quiet for a moment. The air became dank and musky, and we were immersed in total blackness. I listened to the calming churn of the water.
“What are you feeling right now?” I asked as the boat slid from pitch-black into a well-lit portion of the ride decorated with cheesy animatronic farm animals that greeted us. We passed a bunny waving his carrot. “First thing that pops into your head, go.”
“Nothing.”
I sighed. “Think, Adam. You have to be feeling something. You just need to learn to express it, okay?”
He dipped his finger over the side of the boat and let it trail through the water. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. People can feel all kinds of things. Happy, sad, angry, in love, nervous, scared.”
“I was scared earlier.”
“And now?”
We floated into a room littered with trees with trunks that had faces and waterwheels that scooped up buckets of water and poured them out the other side.
“Now, I’m not scared anymore.” He paused. “Because we’re off the big sky wheel.”
I pinched my lips together. Nothing, nothing, nothing, we kept running up against this great big wall of nothing. We may as well beat our heads against it. After only a couple minutes, we were nearing the end of the ride. I knew because at the entrance of a dark cave was a white and pink sign that read TUNNEL OF LOVE. I scrubbed a hand over my face. I needed something momentous—no—better yet, something memorable.
We passed beneath it and the light disappeared. The tunnel was so dark, the hand in front of my face went missing.
I turned in my seat to face him. “Adam, this is purely for academic purposes, okay? And for the furtherance of science.”
Before he could ask questions, I reached up and put my hands on either side of his face, and in the name of science, the most noble of pursuits for truth and knowledge known to man, I squished his cheeks together and pushed my lips firmly onto his.
It was then that I made an important discovery. All those stories about couples getting hot and heavy in the Tunnel of Love had been grossly exaggerated. The word tunnel itself was generous. Even if I’d wanted to, there would have been no time to get hot or heavy, let alone both. No sooner had I planted my lips, which I realized way too late probably felt like snakeskin, than our tiny vessel had floated clear of t
he tunnel.
The carnival lights hit my face, and my eyes snapped open. Adam’s eyes were round saucers an inch in front of my own. He yelled and jerked away. The boats of the Old Mill were not deep-sea vessels, it turned out, and they weren’t made for the pitches and waves of the ocean. The boat tilted with Adam’s weight. Dirty water rushed over the side. I shrieked. Adam tumbled overboard, and when the boat tipped back the other way, I was next.
TWENTY
Progress. Real-world memory creation and emotional stimuli appear to have stimulated at least a portion of the neocortex whereby the subject has exhibited signs of nuanced human interaction such as good humor, increased verbal context, and self-expression.
* * *
Last night I had a dream that I came across a dead body while walking in a cotton field. The cadaver stared at me through hollowed-out eyes, its bald scalp glowing in the moonlight. It reached its hands out for me, scratching my jeans with the exposed bones in its fingers. I didn’t scream. I didn’t even run. Instead, just before I woke, I dropped to my knees and kissed it.
I couldn’t avoid Adam forever.
Could I?
I stared down the long hallway where he was shoving textbooks into his locker like I was staring down the barrel of a gun. I took a deep breath and clenched the strap of my bag. Okay, so maybe I’d taken the experiment too far. I could admit that. It was too soon, too weird. Oh god, the look on his face. I might as well have caught him on the toilet. That face.
Trust me, if I had any ego about such things, it would be officially obliterated. But there was no rewinding time and no amount of silent car rides and eye contact avoidance was going to fix it. Besides, we weren’t twelve.
I came to a deliberate stop at his locker. “Hello, Adam.” He jumped and dropped his book bag. Balanced books splattered to the floor. “Let me help.” We both bent down at the same time and knocked heads. “Ooof!” I nursed the spot on my forehead.
“Did I do that?” Adam reached to touch the mark but poked me in the eye as I was already staging my recovery to collect a book.
“Ow!” I cried.
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