“One more.” Cassidy held up a finger. “Pretty please? For me?” What was it about attractive girls that made pouting an acceptable means to an end after the age of four and a half? “White shirt with this one,” she said.
“I thought the black shirt looked nice,” I added hastily. “Maybe keep it on.”
“With pinstripes?” Cassidy gave a small shake of her head. Adam clomped back into the dressing room, where a pinstripe suit awaited. I drummed my finger on my knee. I would have ripped the mirror off the wall if I could have, but it would have been hard to come up with an excuse for Cassidy. Only vampires and ghosts were afraid of mirrors. Maybe I could claim he was one of those.
Cassidy, Owen, and I fell quiet. I imagined that we all felt like intruders listening to the struggles of man versus fabric taking place within the tiny confines of that fitting room. I heard the rip of a seam and a frustrated growl. Owen’s eyes went wide. A heavy crash. Then the din of cracking glass like a fault line traveling through an iced-over pond.
When Adam bellowed, it sounded like a trapped animal. Fibers split and scraps of black fell to the floor. The door flew open and banged against the wall. That was the moment the shards of mirror lost their hold and clattered to the ground around Adam’s bare feet.
“Adam,” Cassidy gasped.
A river of blood flowed from his knuckles. Red spotted the white tails of his untucked shirt, which had been ripped at the shoulders and collar. Adam’s eyes were hard, as if they’d died two weeks ago along with the rest of him. But this time for good.
Unseeing, he shoved past the three of us, just in time for the store manager to see him break into a run out of the store. “Sir!” the manager called. “Sir, you haven’t paid for those.”
Cassidy hadn’t seen this side of him. Neither had Owen, not really. Only I had. “Get his things,” I ordered Owen. “I’m going after him.”
The bell attached to the door jangled on my way out. I knew they’d expect us to pay for the damage. I also knew I didn’t have the money and my list of repairs—phone, car, Adam—was already long enough as it was.
I found the nearest exit to my left and sprinted toward it. Orange light seeped out of the horizon, turning the sky’s clouds into an inverted map of the world. Below, the dimming parking lot was empty. I ran both ways, searching. “Adam!” I called. “Adam! Wait!” I wheezed the last few words before I had to hunch over and put my hands over my knees.
“What the hell was that?” Cassidy demanded. She marched to the edge of the curb and looked at the same thing I was looking at, which was a bunch of cars and nothing.
Owen had Adam’s shoes in one hand and his jeans and shirt in the other. “Yeah, what was that, Tor?” he asked flatly.
The only option was the truth. Or at least some version of the truth. I scanned the parking lot one last time for Adam. Cars whizzed by on the adjacent road.
“Adam doesn’t like his scars,” I said. “He … he was in an accident. He never likes to look at them. You have to promise me, you won’t ever try to look,” I told Cassidy.
Her lower lip trembled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me. What kind of accident?”
My eyes flitted over to Owen. “A car accident.” The more truth I told, the fewer lies I had to keep up with. “He doesn’t like to talk about that either, though. You can’t ask him.”
“I won’t,” she answered quickly, then traced a cross over her heart with her fingernail. “Cross my heart. Can we go find him?”
No, I wanted to scream. We can’t go find him. Not while my creation was in a self-examinatory tailspin of epic proportions, but instead I just said, “I think it’d be better if it was just us.”
A thin line of water sprung from her lower eyelid and balanced there. She nodded. “I’ll go deal with the manager in there, I guess.” She placed her hands on my shoulders and said, “Just take care of our boy, okay?”
After that, I couldn’t get away fast enough. It sure wasn’t Cassidy slicing open his chest and stitching it back together, so I couldn’t grasp what her claim to him might be. She made out with him? From what I gathered, she’d done that with plenty of boys and never claimed any sort of ownership over them.
Owen drove, so we found his car in a sea of SUV crossovers. He dumped Adam’s belongings in my lap.
“That’s it. We’re screwed.” He thumped the steering wheel and then rested his forehead on it. “I knew this would happen. Elvis has left the building, people.” Owen was still wearing the powder-blue blazer and ascot.
I slid the seat belt across and clicked it into place. “We’re not screwed,” I said. “Just drive, okay?”
Shaking his head, Owen obeyed, removing his forehead from the steering wheel, which had left a red indent on his skin. He reversed his Jeep out of the spot and guided it out of the lot and onto the road. “Which way?” He sounded resigned.
I scanned the roads. “That way.” I pointed down a long stretch of road lined with half-full rain ditches on either side. “Toward my house.”
Owen pressed the accelerator, and the car lurched onto the road. “We’re three miles from your house.”
“Just do it.” We followed a minivan with one taillight out. The driver of the minivan must have been ninety years old because she—or maybe he—was driving slower than a sloth with cement bricks for feet. “Go around them.”
“I can’t go around them. It’s a double yellow line.”
I slammed back against the headrest, then thought better of it and reached over to honk the horn. “Get out of the way!”
Owen swatted my hand. I leaned closer to the windshield and tried to make out what was farther down the road. I thought I saw something bobbing along the side.
“I told you we would get caught.” Owen shook his head. “Didn’t I tell you?” Owen looked deranged in his evening clothes. “My face is way too innocent for prison, Tor. Look at it. It’s the face of a child. Someone will shank me with a knife made from toilet paper rolls and bedsheets before I can even learn how to make moonshine out of rotten fruit.”
I grabbed Owen’s arm too hard and he swerved. “That’s him.” I scooted to the edge of my seat. “That’s him!”
Owen nudged the brakes so that we could drive at the same speed as Adam was running. I rolled down the window. “What are you doing?” I asked. Blood covered his hand and the torn shirt. What he looked like he was doing was running from the scene of an ax murder. He grunted but kept running. His bare feet slapped the pavement. “Adam, will you please get in?”
“I’m hideous.” Sweat soaked the tattered white dress shirt. “Why did you not tell me I’m hideous, Victoria?”
“You’re not hideous. You’re special.” His breaths came in powerful huffs. “This is crazy, Adam. You knew what—I mean, you knew who you were. Why are you running?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t stop, either. Nothing we said or did persuaded him to get into the car. And so it was blood-splattered and sticky that he finally finished the three-mile run to my house. He didn’t speak. Instead, he retreated into the depths of his lair and was gone.
When I moved to climb out after him, Owen caught my wrist and held me in place. “Tor, hold on.” His eyes darted between mine. “There’s … something I haven’t told you. I didn’t think it mattered. Just stupid high school stuff.” With my seat belt off, the door began to chime. “Until today, that is.”
A prickle worked its way up the back of my neck. “What?” And I could hear the distrust creeping into my own voice.
Red crept into Owen’s pale cheeks and splotched his neck. “It’s about Adam. See, I’ve been keeping tabs on any mention of his name in Hollow Pines. I know it’s not his real name, but I figured if anyone, I don’t know, said anything about him, we should know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I snapped.
Owen let go of my wrist and ran his fingers through this hair. “Well, first of all, you’ve been pretty busy trying to turn h
im into a ‘real boy.’” He curled his fingers into air quotes. “But, I—look, I didn’t think it’d matter, but something came up. People—only a couple people, really—are saying that he might have had something to do with those two boys.” I sucked in a mouthful of air and let it sit in my lungs. “Look it up for yourself. The Lie Detector. They’re these web-sleuthing forums where people discuss their theories on all these crimes. It’s kind of sick, but…” He looked down at his lap. “Check it out.”
“You think it’s true,” I said. “I can tell.” The hatch through which Adam had disappeared was still.
Owen lifted his chin. “All I’m saying is, how much do we really know about him?”
TWENTY-THREE
Possible neurobiological sources of violence include chronic traumatic stress, testosterone, or dysregulated serotonin. The most common sources of violence, though, are developmental neglect or traumatic stress during childhood. I will plan to test hormone levels to measure possible concerns surrounding impulse control.
* * *
Darkness had descended over my house. I knew this sounded melodramatic topped with a generous helping of teen angst, but it was true. Adam wouldn’t speak. Not in words, anyway. He hugged his arms around his knees and rocked and tuned me out like I was a staticky channel on an old television set. So the only sentence that I bothered him with was to tell him that I’d be in later tonight after Mom had gone to bed to administer his electrotherapy, the euphemism I’d adopted for the shock. I wished I were better with words, but I was hardly any better than Adam.
Now, with my toes tucked into the comforter of my bed with the squishy, sinking, quicksand middle, my mind turned to the broken mirror, and I ran the search for the Lie Detector. A dated blue-and-white message board appeared on the screen, loading in slow motion, one piece at a time. I read through the long list of topics. The Black Dahlia. Lizzie Borden. Amanda Knox and the murder of Meredith Kercher. The list went on. It was an inventory of the grisliest crimes.
Outside my window, I heard the shrill screech of the weather vane twisting on its pole. I checked my watch. Mom must have fallen asleep in front of the TV. If it woke her, she’d be furious I hadn’t gotten around to fixing it yet. I plugged my ears against the spine-scratching sound, hoping for the wind to die.
Halfway down the screen I noticed a title topic: the Hunter of Hollow Pines. Ominous, I thought darkly, as I selected the new thread. I was surprised to find that there was already more than a page of responses to the original entry.
Hollow Pines wasn’t famous for much of anything. Our two sources of industry were feminine pads and canned soup and hardly anyone cared where those things came from.
But here it was causing strangers to sit up and pay attention—or at the very least, take a break from playing their Xbox. I was part of it, I realized. I was there when they found the second body. And I felt this messed-up flutter of achievement. I squashed the wings on it when I remembered why I was digging around the bowels of the Internet in the first place.
The static post at the top cataloged the two known deaths. The moderator emphasized the “known,” and I felt a shiver run down my back to think about what exactly that meant. Right away, I could tell that the overwhelming majority thought there’d be more.
Escalation. That appeared to be the word du jour. The unsub’s—after a quick search I determined this meant the unknown subject or killer—pattern was escalating. A poster with the username DeadBunny pointed out that he was growing more confident. He’d refined his method. A bear trap to capture his victim and a souvenir limb.
All but one of the users were certain that the unsub was male. Apparently almost all unsubs were men. Women were rarely serial killers. But the fact that this unsub targeted teenage boys made it different from most cases, more likely that a woman could have been the attacker. But how would a woman overpower a teenage boy? DeadBunny wanted to know. The user, DiadeMuertos, spit back that DeadBunny was just being sexist. Call me crazy, but a stronger disposition to become a murderer was something I was okay letting the XY chromosomes take.
When I’d combed through the responses, I flipped to the next page. This one was shorter. Not as many responses. I skimmed. There was one poster who believed that it was a vagrant oil-rig worker and that the concentration of crimes was a usual part of his modus operandi, only he wasn’t at one place for long, so the cops never pieced it together. This added to the fact that as a rig hand, he would prey on small towns, ones with incompetent police forces, which by the other comments, incompetence seemed to be the prevailing opinion with regard to all police forces, anyway.
I was buying into this theory hook, line, and sinker until DeadBunny swooped in with another of his fatal counterpoints. The unsub had stashed the bodies in two completely independent areas, signaling a comfort level with the area. It couldn’t have been a nomad. It had to be a local job. I chewed through a flake of dead skin on the side of my thumb and swished it off my comforter.
Hollow Pines, Texan here, an anonymous post began. I’ve been following these events with interest and I’ve carefully drawn out the timeline and I’ve noticed one thing. A new student started at Hollow Pines High the very day before the first body was found and he was even present when the second body was found. Coincidence? Could be. His name is Adam Smith.
I snapped my laptop closed as though it might bite me. Or worse. My chest rose and fell. Shallow breaths. Nothing felt real. I clumped my blankets into my fists and squeezed just to feel grounded. Buzzing filled my ears. I looked around, unable to process what I’d read. Everything seemed normal. Posters, books, college paraphernalia. I slid my legs out from under Einstein. She looked up at me through wrinkled lids and sneezed into the soft cotton.
“Come on.” I scooped her up in my arms and set her down on the carpet. She shook her hide, jangling her collar. I held my finger to my lips. “Shhhh.” I didn’t know if she understood, but she waddled after in silence, completely content to have been allowed to come along.
I tippy-toed across the living room’s shag carpet and through the kitchen all the way to the back door. I jiggled the doorknob until it opened without a creak. Einstein rolled off the ledge, onto the driveway, and I closed the door behind her. She shuffled ahead and scratched at the cellar door.
I paused. It was one user. One person’s harebrained theory about what could have happened to those boys. None of it was true. Adam was mine. I knew him. I created him. And I could trust him.
But if that were true, what was I doing? I’d recognized the cold, metal glint in his eyes as something dangerous. I’d wondered. I’d felt my own blood run cold when he screamed beneath the shock. I’d heard him call himself a monster.
With my heart pounding, I pushed Einstein away with the side of my leg. Tonight held the first real hints of fall. There was a coolness that had been hidden all summer by the ferocious blaze of the Texas sun. That warmth had disappeared like a shower with all its hot water used up, and I slipped my hands into my sleeves before descending into the dark cellar.
TWENTY-FOUR
The brain stem includes the medulla, the pons, and the midbrain. These three parts control autonomic processes like breathing and digestion. The cerebellum sits at the back, underbelly of the brain anatomy. It controls motor skills, balance, and other cognitive functions like language and procedural memories. The medial temporal lobe near the divide of the left and right hemispheres holds the brain’s declarative and episodic memory. Finally, the hippocampus possesses the ability to store long-term memory and the adjoining amygdala processes emotional and sexual behavior.
* * *
“Adam?” I flicked on the lights. The glass jars magnified the specimens bobbing inside them. I quickly scoured the room. The open-jawed skeleton standing in the corner mocked me. “Adam? Come out.” I sounded angry. I imagined him cowering, scared. But he wasn’t there. The room was empty and, for the first time since Adam had taken up residence in it, it felt abandoned.
&nb
sp; I made a promise to myself not to be mad. I’d ask questions, give him a chance to explain. I grabbed a flashlight from the workbench and left. I ventured back up to the surface and around the back of the house, casting the beam of my flashlight over the open field. The thing about small-town darkness was that it had the consistency of molasses. Thick and sticky, it sucked up everything below until what was left felt like outer space. Not far away, the light was eaten up entirely. I couldn’t see past the initial wall of high grass and wire fences.
I moved to the edge and tried holding my flashlight up high. “Adam?” I said as loudly as I dared without waking Mom. It was silly being scared of the dark. Childish. But that didn’t stop my heart from taking up residence at the top of my throat. I looked back at the house and then, with a show of being ten times braver than I actually was, I took my first step into the field. “You coming?” I patted my leg for Einstein to follow. For once, the clumsy, thick-jowled mutt would have been a welcome companion.
She whined and scooted her back end, but she didn’t cross into the field. I slapped my thigh again. “Come.” Once more, she whimpered and pawed at the dirt, but she didn’t come any farther. “Fine, stay there,” I grumbled. “Some guard dog you are.”
She flattened her belly to the ground and rested her head between her paws, looking guilty. Her jagged underbite made it look like she was actually pouting. I rolled my eyes and tried to convince myself that it didn’t matter, but the flashlight handle was slippery in my hand, and I had to keep telling my legs to go forward.
The crumbly clay soil under my feet grew softer. The breeze blew the scent of young sweetgrass. Soon, it was soaking the shins of my plaid pajama pants. I waded in farther, thinking that I should have changed. Moisture seeped through my slippers. I swept the beam over the field. Everywhere it touched, it turned the green grass a golden yellow.
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