I struggled to keep my nerves in check. I was alone in the middle of the night. There was a killer loose in Hollow Pines. How could I be so sure that he would only do what he’d done to boys? An image flashed of my body lying faceup, staring at the stars.
Then an even colder thought: I could be out here searching for the killer right now.
I swallowed. I couldn’t think like that. And even if I was, I thought I felt something in my gut click like a lock being latched down, and I knew that even if Adam was responsible, I might still protect him.
My resolve teetered on the edge of a cliff. The swoosh-swoosh of my pants drove me mad. It sounded like someone following me. Each time I stopped so did the swishing. Chill out, I ordered.
Turning back, I realized I could no longer see the house or hear Einstein’s snorting breaths. Goose bumps spread over the back of my neck. I swallowed. “Adam?” This time my voice cracked. “This isn’t funny, Adam.” I tried to sound loud, brave, but my pulse fluttered as fast and light as a hummingbird’s.
Keeping my feet planted in one spot, I revolved around and around, until I lost track of which direction I’d been facing to begin with. Everywhere I looked was darkness and field. Panic bubbled. My ears strained to differentiate sounds—was that the brush of the wind or someone else in the field along with me? Sweat pooled in my armpits.
I made another feeble call of his name. Terror burned through my veins, and I dropped the flashlight to my side. Before I could talk myself out of it, I ran.
A minute later I arrived panting back at Einstein. She heaved her girth off the ground and came to lick the dew that coated my pants.
I gritted my teeth. I had to find Adam. He was my responsibility. I ducked inside the house to grab my keys off the nail but found that they were gone.
I covered up a sharp intake of breath. Then I eased around the corner of the big house to where two cars should have been parked in the drive.
There was only one.
This situation had just gotten worse. Way worse. He could have gone anywhere. He didn’t have a license. He didn’t even know how to drive. Or did he?
I stole my mom’s keys. Tire marks snaked wildly through the dirt road, and there was a deep rut like one of the wheels had spun out. Not good, I mouthed, wanting to kick mud.
I loaded Einstein into the passenger-side seat of Mom’s station wagon and kept the headlights off until I’d pulled out of the drive.
Where would he have gone? My first thought was the obvious one. The football field. It was where he felt most comfortable and competent. I headed back to school, realizing only when I was pulling into the parking lot how crazy this was. It was the middle of the night and no one but Einstein knew where I was.
The hulking green figure of Bert loomed in the parking lot. I experienced a slight loosening in the pinch of worry at finding myself on the right track.
I parked in one of the teachers’ reserved spots alongside the empty car. The deserted stadium loomed up ahead.
A few weeks ago I might have considered this the most rebellious moment of my teenage years, but that was out the window. Now, it’d be lucky to break the top ten.
Elongated shadows spread across the empty parking lot. I leaned into the steering wheel, peering up through the bug-splattered windshield. The lights had been cut like an after-hours merry-go-round. Nearly as creepy, too. Reluctantly, I turned the key in the ignition and the engine died. After another second, the headlights faded as well. Einstein’s breath left little cloud puffs on the window.
“Let me guess? You’re staying here again?” On cue, she lowered her rump to the seat and reclined in a lazy heap against the door panel. “Okay, but next time you can’t find your bacon treats, don’t go looking at me.” I clanged the door shut and pressed the lock button. At least one of us should be safe.
I hugged myself, less because I was cold and more because I didn’t know what to do with my hands. The school building looked on with hooded windows as I cut across the grass. Alone and out in the open, I felt as though anyone could be watching. The familiar prickle crawled over my arms. I tried to rub it away, and a pit solidified in my stomach.
I was still in my pajamas and slippers. Not exactly the outfit I’d prefer to be wearing if caught by the cops … or worse. The creak of metal bleachers and the crisscrossed network of support beams groaned in the wind like an abandoned swing set. I scaled the short stack of aluminum steps to the stands and mounted one of the bleachers.
I kept my footsteps quiet across the beam, spiriting along the length of the football field. Every twenty yards or so, I stopped and listened, too scared to call his name and afraid of what might be lurking out of sight.
When it came to fear, I was a faithful follower of logic. How likely was it that someone would try to break into my house the one time I forgot to lock the door? I was twice as likely to be killed in a car accident as I was to be murdered, though this statistic somehow still felt high, and lately I’d seemed to be gunning for both. But, still, there was no reason to be inherently scared of being in a place alone at night. The odds that something bad would happen were slim. That was the logical answer, anyway.
I tried hard to focus on mathematical probability while I looked under bleachers and up in the announcer’s box. I ventured onto the field, taking hesitant steps onto the turf. Adam was nowhere to be found, and I was beginning to feel that the ghostlike car parked in the lot was a cold lead.
I was picking my way down from the highest bleacher when I saw a rectangular sliver of light. It was faint, nearly hidden, and it was just to the left side of the stadium. I narrowed my eyes and stared hard. There was definitely something there. I rushed the final few rows and used the railing to skip steps onto the track.
I looked around, still fighting off the sensation that someone else was here with me. When I could finally convince myself that I was alone, I cut straight across the fifty-yard line and past the concession stands on the other side, where the signs had turned a dull gray in the faint light of the moon and dried-out mustard stains coated the sidewalk.
As I approached, the light grew brighter, and I could see it was the outline of a door on the side of the main building. My heart raced. I suddenly had sympathy for the horror movie heroine at whom the entire theater audience was screaming, “Don’t go in there!” because I was totally going in. Logic be damned, this would add at least five points to the statistical probability that I would be murdered in the next hour.
I jammed my fingers between the door and its frame and pried it open using the full weight of my body. I then found myself peering into the boys’ locker room. I poked my head inside.
A dying fluorescent light flickered overhead. I inched my way over the threshold. The acrid scent of caked-in sweat and the inside of a jockstrap overwhelmed me to the point I could taste it, sour, on the tip of my tongue. I took each step gingerly, rocking my weight from heel to toe, scared to so much as breathe.
I glanced between each row of lockers. They were eerily empty. The strobe-light effect didn’t help. I felt the distance growing between me and the door. I swiped clammy palms across my pajama bottoms and swallowed.
A little farther, I promised. Someone had been in here. Someone had turned on this light. “Adam?” My voice came out hoarse.
Just then I heard a shuffle beyond the lockers. Past the rows, the room darkened where a row of sinks led to a short line of bathroom stalls.
Another scrape across the floor sent a chill up my arms. I could hardly wrench my legs forward. My footsteps grew shorter. I reached the last bench, where I caught my own spectral reflection in the mirror and rounded a tiled wall, and then I saw it. Him.
His body writhed in the group shower on its side, centered between two drains. The lights hadn’t been turned on here, and it obscured the form. Its—his—back was facing me. His legs twitched, and the shuffling sound they made was louder from here. Barely human.
Adam, my Adam, rocked back and forth. His
breathing sounded tortured and husky against shower walls. I stepped closer. He was hunched into a ball and hidden from view. There was a metal taste in my mouth. Reality shattered over me like broken glass, the pieces of what was happening.
Water hummed through the walls. The building creaked. My hairs stood on end. I switched on the light, then kneeled and placed a hand on his shoulder.
Quieting, he turned his chin to face me.
“Victoria,” he croaked.
“Adam.”
His eyes were colorless. Yellow seeped out into a piss-colored shadow between his cheekbones and lower lashes. The thin layer of skin stretched across his forehead was a vampiric shade of white coated in pearly slime. His cracked lips parted.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered. My voice quaked. I tucked my feet underneath me and scooped his head into my lap. I ran my fingers through dark, sweat-matted hair. My eyes searched his. “What happened?”
His pupils—the only shade in the runny egg whites of his eyeballs—followed my movements. His teeth chattered. The rest of his body fell still, as if he’d been paralyzed.
“Adam.” I patted his cheek. “Adam, stay with me.” The charge. He’d needed the charge after running home and he’d been too stubborn and I’d been too consumed to give it to him. I cradled his head. I was stupid. So stupid. What if a full resurrection could only work once? What if I couldn’t replicate the past results? His jugular swelled with the effort of gulping down his saliva.
“4-0-8.” The numbers were feather-soft when they crossed his lips. I bent my ear down to him. “4-0-8,” he repeated, and this time I was sure I’d heard correctly.
“408?” I shook my head. “I don’t know what that means.” It felt important that I grasped the significance, but every time I tried to reach into my mind and close a fist around them, the numbers slipped through and I came up empty.
“The house.” His head lulled toward me. I put my palm to his forehead, cool from being against the shower tiles. “I saw the house.”
I nodded in that whatever-you-say way I used to have with my grandma right before she died, too. I felt him slipping. It was as if his body actually became lighter in my arms, and I knew that he’d be gone from me and that I’d have nothing to show for that night except for skin and bones and a rotting pile of organs.
I traced the outline of his jaw and the ridge of his brow.
He coughed and it sounded like his lungs were tearing out drywall. “We have…” He sucked air as though a hole had been torn in his rib cage, making the entire effort useless. “… to find…” His tongue pushed against his teeth, leaving behind tiny spit bubbles. “… the house.”
And with that, the darks of his eyes rolled into the sockets, and he was gone.
TWENTY-FIVE
Physical deterioration between recharges seems to compound. Adam’s motor functions visibly slow once the electric half-life in his body has reduced to critical levels.
Purpose of later experiments will be to develop a way to maintain functionality for longer periods of time.
* * *
Wax dripped in fat rivulets down the sides of melting candles. The wicks had sunk into caverns. Each stick was half the size it was when I lit it. I kneeled beside him, listening to every whisper of breath, straining to hear his heartbeat.
“You should get some sleep.” I jumped when Owen’s fingers brushed my arm. “I can keep watch.”
I shook my head. When I called, he’d arrived faster than an ambulance. I now watched as wisps of color returned to Adam’s face and the yellow stains dissipated from underneath his eyes. Dark pools of blood spread out and vanished as his circulation returned. The wires used for the shock lay about like dead snakes.
Eventually an eyelid quivered, and first one, then the other, peeled open. Adam stared up at the ceiling. The deep, chocolate brown had returned to his eyes.
“Oh, thank God,” I said. Without thinking, I threw myself over his chest.
Gentle fingers petted my hair. I wiped my nose on the back of my hand before prying myself away. I hadn’t even realized that tears had slipped from the corners of my eyes. That’s how I was when I was focused on something.
He sat up and cracked his neck, looking somehow more human than before.
“I should have come sooner,” I said.
He frowned. “Thank you.”
“I think it’s safe to say that I have carried your body far more than any other man’s body in my life,” Owen said.
I wanted to tell Adam right then and there that this was all my fault. The second I thought I might lose him, I’d remembered Meg. I didn’t know who she was and I hadn’t tried to find out, but I knew I must have been taking something away from her and, worse, from him. A screw tightened in my chest. Except, I couldn’t help but believe that Adam belonged to me, not her, and that as long as no one knew Adam, there was no one to ask questions. My kneecaps dug into the floor.
“I’ve been seeing something.” His voice was deeper and more sure. He stared straight ahead like Owen and I weren’t even in the room. “When the shocks come, I can make out images.”
My hands slid from my face. “Images?”
He pulled his knees closer to his chest and rested his arms across them. “Only one image, actually. But it’s real. Like something I’m remembering, Victoria.” He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the knotted skin. “The electricity. It’s tearing memories free. I can feel it in here.” He pointed to the breastbone beneath his red tree-branch scars. “And here.” He touched his temple.
I scooted closer. “Tell me about them. What are they like?”
“I saw a house. There was an address painted on the curb in white. 4-0-8.” He recited it carefully like he’d been trying very hard to memorize this exact sequence. “It’s only for a second and then—” I inched forward. “It sucks.”
“What does?”
He held his hands out and shook them. “Bbbzzzzzzzzzzzz,” he said, mimicking being electrocuted. “Everything. It burns and my head feels like it’s being stabbed.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” I should have seen past his stoic routine. Adam wasn’t going to win any awards for self-expression. In fact, he was a locked box when it came to his feelings. All the signs had been there. Clenched jaw. Furrowed brow. I’d ignored them.
“It’s not your fault.”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak. Because the truth was that it really was all my fault. Every single moment of this story was my fault. “I’ll help you find it,” I blurted out. I felt my eyes tighten at the corners. I wasn’t sure I’d wanted to volunteer that. But my heart softened when he sat up straighter. My Adam. I could do this for him. I should do this for him. “The house. I’m sure we can locate it, just give me some time.”
“Really?”
I felt a worm of guilt niggling its way into my stomach. If there was a piece of him that I could help click into place, I knew I’d rather it be shaped like a house than a girl named Meg. Houses, at least, didn’t ask questions.
* * *
I RUBBED MY temples, wishing another mug of coffee would materialize in my hand. Instead, a girl in a band uniform slammed into me with her tuba case. My shoulder throbbed. The stress of Adam’s disappearance, his near re-death, and the knowledge that he was remembering hit me like a bag of bricks to the face.
I looked after the band girl. “Excuse you,” I called, my words drowned out in the hustle and bustle of the hallway. I was an island in a sea of blissful ignorance, and that sea was called Spirit Week.
Everywhere I looked students were tacking up posters. Student council members were selling tickets to the Homecoming dance. Hollow Pines High pride was at its all-time peak. It was such a stark contrast to my night that I felt as if I’d entered a very peppy alternate dimension.
Historically, I dreaded Spirit Week with the fervor of my annual teeth cleaning. It’d be way more interesting if it had to do with spirits of the paranormal variety, but instead
, it looked like a monster had vomited pom-poms and streamers over the entire school.
I ducked under a pennant smeared in puff paint. The energy this year, though, was electric, and that was Adam’s doing. Adam, the most talked-about boy in school and ostensibly my best friend. People I hardly knew waved at me as they went by. They smiled. They called me Victoria instead of Tor. The only thing missing was a soundtrack.
I spun the dial to my locker and pulled out my physics textbook and stuffed it into an already overstuffed book bag when out of the corner of my eye I saw Cassidy dressed head to toe in orange and black. She squealed as soon as she saw me lurking and dragged Paisley over.
“Happy Junior Class Spirit Day!” she said as though this were as natural a thing to say as Merry Christmas!
Bah humbug, I thought while struggling to zip my bag. I was losing track of the days, but if it was the junior class’s day, that must have meant it was Wednesday. Freshmen on Monday, sophomores for Tuesday, seniors on Thursday. Yes, Wednesday. I made a mental note. Each class was in charge of making one of the days of Spirit Week “special.” I didn’t take my duties seriously.
Cassidy spun her bag around and unfastened a giant round pin that read Get Loud in school colors. “Thank God I thought to bring you one, Victoria. We’re selling them for student council. You look the opposite of spirited. You look…” She curled her lip, taking in my fitted black shirt and sneakers. “Apathetic.”
“I’m not apathetic,” I insisted, feeling defensive. “Apathy is for kids pretending to be smart and stoners. I’m neither of those things. I’m an independent thinker. Like, I don’t know, Galileo.” The zipper finally closed, pinching the tip of my finger and causing me to jerk it back. “Or something.”
Paisley sputtered out laughing. “I told you not to waste your time, Cass.”
A heart-shaped pucker formed between Cassidy’s eyebrows. A slight frown creased either side of her mouth.
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