“Cell phone signal?” Owen asked.
I pulled out the clunky prepaid phone I’d purchased at the mall. “Check.”
“Meet back here at the Arc de Triomphe if we haven’t found him in thirty minutes.”
I nodded, and then, without a backward glance, I disappeared into the mass of people. Even though I was a slight person, slipping through a horde of dancing bodies wasn’t easy. It was tougher still since the definition of dancing seemed to be grinding one’s rear end against the front end of someone else. I searched faces for anyone who had been at the party. “Have you seen Cassidy Hyde?” I yelled into a girl’s ear. She shook her head and kept dancing. At the center of the throng, I knew I’d reached the fifth circle of hell, where all the people who were coupled up came to make out beyond the reach of the chaperones’ watchful eyes.
I wedged my way through to the other side, where I was, at last, able to take a breath of fresh air.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I looked up to find that I had stumbled into Cassidy and Paisley, who were halfheartedly dancing in a clear space close to the stage that had been set up at the far end of the gym.
Cassidy peered down her nose at me. “I didn’t think this night could get any worse,” she said, turning her cheek. She wore a shimmery green dress and teardrop earrings that made her look like a fancy mermaid.
I guess in her eyes I deserved that. In any event, I wasn’t there to clear the air. “Have you seen Adam?”
She pulled her shoulders back and tossed her hair over them. Behind her, there was a backdrop of velvety black curtains borrowed from the auditorium. They were pulled shut across half of the stage. Silver, decorative balls hung from the hidden rafters along with a gold cutout of a crescent moon that, put together, were supposed to represent the Paris sky. “Not since I caught him naked in a room with you.”
My guts made a fist. The key was to stick to the script. The rest wasn’t important. “Not after that, though?” I asked evenly.
Tears sparkled in her eyes, and for a second I actually felt sorry for Cassidy Hyde. All she had wanted was her small-town, balloon-arch fairy tale, and it had been shattered by a boy who was shattered before she ever met him. “Oh, you mean when he attacked my best friend’s boyfriend?”
“He wouldn’t have had to if your best friend’s boyfriend wasn’t such a creep,” I muttered.
Paisley, who was half listening while crossing her arms and tapping her foot to the beat, snapped to attention. “What did you say? You know all of this is your fault. Knox probably won’t be able to play for the rest of the season, and now he’s got this hideous orange cast. It’s a disaster.” Her lips, which were painted a bright scarlet, tightened into the shape of a cherry.
“Tragic. I’m just looking for Adam, okay? I don’t even want to be here. Trust me,” I said, craning my neck to search the room. At the edges, round tables covered in white cloths speckled the floor and glowed with soft candlelight. Blue, red, and purple spotlights spanned the ceiling.
Cassidy trained her stare on me, and I could tell by the way the tendons on her neck kept constricting into guitar strings that she was fighting back tears. “You know, you really are no better than us, Tor.”
And I didn’t know what to believe when the first thought that popped into my mind was, That’s not true.
But just then the music shifted. The volume lowered, and two white spotlights circled the crowd. “What’s happening?” I asked.
Cassidy and Paisley both turned to each other, lips drawn into solemn lines. “I hope you win,” Cassidy said, taking Paisley’s hand.
“Thanks,” Paisley replied, nodding and turning back to face the stage without letting go of Cassidy’s hand.
“It’s that hour.” The DJ’s voice boomed through the microphone. “Time to crown this year’s Homecoming king and queen.” He hit a button and a drumroll track played.
The ring of light looped over the heads of the crowd.
Knox appeared next to Paisley, holding a plastic cup in his good hand. “My lady.” He gave a slight bow of the head. With his bad hand he fumbled with the cap on a flask and tipped a splash of a mysterious substance into the drink. He caught me watching. “Want some, doll face?” He winked.
The contents of my stomach roiled. I turned my chin away. “I’d rather take cyanide, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” He stashed the flask back into the inside pocket of his suit coat. Paisley grabbed him by the elbow and forced him to face the stage.
Everyone’s heads bobbed up and down as they leaned and stood on tippy-toes to see where the rings of light would land. I squinted and stepped back when the circle stopped moving and fell over not Paisley, but Cassidy. Her jaw dropped. “Please welcome to the stage, Hollow Pines’s finest, Miss Cassidy Hyde.” The DJ, who was wearing sunglasses, hit another button, and the sound of applause came from the speakers. Cassidy flashed a quick smile and played with the hem of her dress. Her fingers unlaced from Paisley’s, and I immediately noticed Paisley’s hand curl into a claw at her side.
A tune began to play, and Coach Carlson beckoned Cassidy. Slowly, she scaled the steps to the stage, where she stood in the center, shifting her weight between her feet like she wasn’t sure she was really supposed to be up there. The edges of my teeth dug into my lower lip. After last night, I could see that the balloons on Cassidy’s balloon-arch fairy tale had already been popped, and no amount of canned applause was going to fix it.
I didn’t know why I felt bad for Cassidy standing up there, only that I did. I wished I could tell her that there were things going on here that were bigger than her, that there were matters of life and death bubbling under the surface of this stupid Homecoming facade, and that she had just been one part of the experiment. But, of course, I could never tell her any of that. I could only do what I came here to do, which was to find Adam.
The second spotlight traced a figure eight until it stopped, dead middle, on Knox. I felt my face screw up like I’d just mixed orange juice and toothpaste.
“Please welcome our new Homecoming king, Knox Hoyle.” The DJ hit the cheesy prerecorded applause again. Knox stepped easily away from Paisley without a second look. He smiled broadly and waved to the crowd with his good hand. That weasel, I thought.
But I couldn’t linger, because the crowd behind me had begun to murmur as Knox made his way onto the stage to stand beside Cassidy. When Cassidy smiled, she looked like she was baring her teeth. A freshman boy and girl came out from either side of the stage, holding the winners’ crowns. Cassidy was taller than the girl, and she bent down, knees pinned together, and let her fasten a shiny, plastic tiara to the top of her silky, loose curls. Owen was right. Cassidy Hyde was beautiful. She was a perfect specimen.
Once crowned, Knox thrust his fist in the air and crossed over to the microphone propped up at center stage. “Anybody have a drink?” He glanced around the stage. The two terrified-looking freshmen shrugged and retreated into the backdrop. “I’d like to propose a toast.”
The stage lights glared so brightly it turned the strands of Cassidy’s hair into a glowing halo, but the newly announced royalty couldn’t hold the crowd’s attention. A ripple continued through the student body, moving closer and closer to the front. The throng of people parted down the center until it broke open entirely and spit out Adam.
My Adam.
“Last night,” Knox was saying. “We defeated Lockwood for the first time in ten years. And it wasn’t one man…”
My heart practically leaped into my throat and out of my mouth I was so relieved to see him.
“Adam!” I waved. I felt a sharp pain in my foot and buckled over. “Ouch!”
I looked down to see the needle-thin spike of Paisley’s stiletto. Her nails were at my scalp, and she yanked my hair back. “Stay out of this one, Frankenstein.”
She released my head, and I rubbed the spot where she’d pulled.
Adam’s fist was clutching a bouquet of h
andpicked flowers. They drooped and sagged over his grimy hands. He was still wearing his jersey and crusty jeans, and traces of black paint smudged his face, so faint now that it only looked like dirt. His forehead smoothed when he looked up to see Cassidy standing on the stage, sparkling in her sea-green dress.
Adam looked around. I separated from Paisley and tried to make my way to Adam, but it was too late. He was already tromping up the steps to the stage, carrying those wilting handpicked flowers. Just as he had for me once. Exactly as he had for me. My glands began to sweat. Cassidy gritted her teeth and angled herself away from Adam.
The crowd was rapt. No, no, no, no, what are you doing, Adam? I thought.
Knox stopped mid-sentence. He cocked his head, watching Adam approach. “What do you think you’re doing, man?” he said into the mic. “This isn’t about you. The game is over. It’s over for you, Adam.”
Adam kept coming. He pushed the flowers out in front, ignoring Knox. “For you.” I could barely hear him say this. Cassidy looked sideways without turning her head. It felt like I was watching two cars barreling toward each other and we could all already sense the explosion in the air.
“She doesn’t want to see you, dude.” Knox stepped off the microphone stand and held up both hands to stop Adam’s progress. “Did you hear me?”
Adam was like a machine. He tried stepping around Knox, but Knox headed him off.
“For you.” I saw Adam’s mouth form the words again. And there were those pathetic flowers.
“You wanna go?” Knox shoved Adam. “We can do this right here, right now.”
This rattled Adam. He looked Knox in the eyes for the first time. I scrambled to get closer, to reach Adam in time, for what, I didn’t know.
“You’re a freak, Smith.” Knox pushed again. Someone threw an empty soda can at Adam. It bounced harmlessly off his arm, but he jumped at the sound it made clattering onto the stage.
The DJ cut the music.
“Cassidy.” Adam stretched out his hand with the flowers. Another can, this one at least a little bit full, hit Adam in the ear. His head jerked sideways.
I froze in place. This was happening. They were turning against him. They were calling him a freak.
“Stay away from me.” The venom of Cassidy’s words stopped Adam. He turned as if noticing the onlookers for the first time. He turned and they booed.
Knox ripped the flowers from Adam’s hand and tore them at the stem before dropping them. “She said, get lost.” He pushed Adam again.
This time Adam pushed back. My heart stopped beating. No. Time stood still. Every clock in town stopped ticking if only for that one crystallized moment. Knox’s arms windmilled wildly. I caught a glimpse of his eyes as he fell from the stage. They weren’t foxlike at all, but wide and keenly aware of the feeling of nothingness into which he was careening.
His head hit the dance floor first. A pop fired off. Screams came from everywhere. Knox Hoyle lay still, his hair tossed over his eyes, his neck bent at an unnatural angle and a sickening bulge sticking out just above his collarbone.
Bile burned my mouth. My eyes watered. I had to get Adam out.
“You did this.” Cassidy was backing away. Her throat was tight. She barely opened her mouth to speak. The words oozed out. “You did this.”
Knox Hoyle was dead.
And Cassidy was right. Adam did this.
I scrambled to the stage and crawled up. “We have to leave,” I told him. “We have to go right now.” I reached for Adam’s hand. He grasped my fingers. I was blind with panic. Our shoes squashed petals as we rushed off stage left.
I spotted a red exit sign glowing in a corner behind the stage. “This way,” I said. I didn’t look back. I pulled Adam as fast as I could out the door and slammed it behind us. We cut back to the front of the building. I spotted headlights swooping sharply around a turn, and then Owen’s Jeep was parked in front of us. He rolled down the window. “Get in.”
I didn’t ask questions. We piled into the backseat, and Owen slammed on the accelerator. I heaved for air, sticking my head between my knees and trying to breathe. “What … the hell … was that?” I said.
“That, Tor, was a very dead Knox Hoyle.”
I pushed myself into a sitting position. Owen drove faster than I’d ever seen him drive before. It was good. We needed to be as far away from there as possible. I wrung my hands. Adam’s eyes were bottomless in the dark backseat with the evening landscape whipping past. My Adam. My perfect Adam. What had I done?
“I’m sorry, Victoria,” he said, and I wished that his voice held more emotion. Just this once.
But it didn’t matter. Sometimes, the results of the very best experiments were different from what you’d expected. Sometimes you failed. I’d been wrong all along. I couldn’t fix Adam. His time was up. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the last flyer, the one that the girl had handed to me.
I spread the page out on my lap and punched the number into my keypad. The tone rang three times before an answer.
“This is Meg.”
THIRTY-FOUR
The subject will not be progressing to Stage 3 of the experiment. The regression of Stage 2 has been complete. Subject has failed to integrate into society and is no longer a productive member. Impulse control has devolved considerably. Subject is a menace to himself and to others. I can’t help but think that this inability to control is caused by his lack of memory, which would serve as an anchor to his behavior. In any event, the experiment has failed.
* * *
What started off as a car crash on a rain-slicked road had splintered. We had collateral damage. First the mirror, then the wall, followed by Knox’s arm, and now someone was dead. I paced the short distance from wall to wall of the cellar. My laboratory, since yanked free of my mother’s wood boards, felt more like a storm bunker than ever, only it wasn’t a tornado we were trying to keep out. Adam raked his fingernails down the sides of his face and neck. Owen’s head bent low as he tinkered with the back of a broken pocket watch.
“Adam, where were you today?” I asked, trying to keep the rage from my voice. It was there, it had been quietly boiling for some time, I realized. I checked my phone again. Precious minutes were melting away. They would be looking for him. Where was she?
Adam rocked back and forth in place. “I was searching for the house. 4-0-8. You told me that you would help me find it,” he said.
My teeth clenched. I squeezed my eyes shut. “And I would have, Adam. If you gave me the chance.” I idly closed an anatomy book with pencil scribbles in the margins. “Now everything is ruined.”
“Tor…” Owen looked up from the pocket watch. “Come on…”
I couldn’t believe that Owen was the one standing up for Adam. Especially after tonight. None of us spoke for a long moment until we heard the sound of three knocks on the hatch door.
“Who is that?” Adam hardened. The muscles in his forearm twitched.
Owen’s screwdriver went still. He looked to me, then the stairs, then to me again. He seemed to make a decision. It took him three steps to reach me. He positioned his back to Adam. His fingertips were stronger than I expected as they applied pressure around my arm. His mouth was close to my ear. “You have to tell him, Tor. Tell him how it happened. He deserves to know at least that much about why he is the way he is. This isn’t all his fault and you know it.”
Our cheeks touched when I shook my head.
“He might … remember.” His voice was low. “When…”
I swallowed. Before any of this, there was me. I killed John Wheeler. But I was too afraid to say it. Three more knocks came from above. Held breath burst in my lungs. I pulled away from Owen. My heart slammed against my chest.
“It’s a surprise, Adam,” I said, trying to keep my voice light, a noticeable shift from moments earlier. This was the end, though. There was no point in acting mad. There was no point in acting anything. “You’ll like it, I think.”
“A surp
rise?”
“Tor…,” Owen insisted.
“Did I hire you as my conscience? No? Then maybe you should stop trying to be one.” There was no turning back now, anyway, and I failed to see what telling Adam the truth would solve. I hurried up the steps, the smell of the cedarwood stairs thick in my nostrils, and turned the hatch lock. At first, all I could see was the moon half hidden by a cloud, like it was wearing a dirty sock. Then the silhouette of a girl cut a dark notch into the already dark sky. “I came as fast as I could,” she said.
“Did you park on the side road?” I asked, and eyed my mom’s station wagon out in the drive. Through the curtains I could see the soft blue glow of the television set.
She nodded. “Can I come in?” It felt too late to say no.
All the words I possessed were colliding in my head, so when I moved aside, it was without saying one of them. I felt the end of something drawing near, and I wasn’t sure that I was ready to let go or that I would be ready for what it meant to hold on. She stepped gingerly onto the first creaking step. I wondered what kind of girl went willingly into the basement of strangers.
The kind of girl, I supposed, who was a boy’s last word.
She cupped her elbows, holding her arms tightly to her body. She wore the same white tank top that she’d been wearing earlier this afternoon. With her back to me, I noticed a raised scar like a cigarette burn on the back of her arm.
She stopped at the bottom of the stairs. For a second Adam appeared invisible to her. Her hand found the railing, and she leaned on it for support. “What is this place?” She took in the bowing shelves, shriveled specimens, mason jars full of viscous pea-green liquid, tubes that attached to crusted Florence flasks, life-sized skeleton, preserved rats, and rusty claw-foot tub.
“This is my laboratory,” I said, squeezing past her. “This … well … this is where I saved him.”
“Saved?” Her pitch shot up.
“Do you know her, Victoria?” Adam’s shoulders were as hunched and tense as those of a guard dog.
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