Teen Frankenstein (15 page)

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 evening 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.”

“Shhhhh!” I said. “Just a second.”

“Tor Frankenstein!” She stood directly in front of the television. I moved a foot to the right to see.

“You forgot the syrup again,” I told her.

She looked down at the fork and the brimming glass of wine and cursed. A few seconds later I heard her open the fridge and begin rummaging.

“… exclusively to Channel 8 to tell us the gruesome details of the body's recovery.” The anchorwoman finished just as the screen cut to a man in camouflage overalls and a lure hanging from the brim of his cap.

“I've never see anything like it,” the man said. “And I've been fishing here for twenty years and have never seen anything like it,” he repeated, rubbing his chin. “It was like an animal had gotten ahold of the boy's ankle. It was that torn up. Like maybe a bear had attacked him. And his other leg, well, it was missing completely.”

The camera panned wider and the field reporter turned to face it. “Authorities will be investigating the cause—”

The channel flipped to a man in a surgical mask and scrubs making eyes at a young nurse. I hadn't even noticed Mom come in. I sat pinned to my seat, blood whooshing through my arteries. Trent Westover had been found. It wasn't Adam. I laughed out loud; I was so relieved until Mom slapped at my elbow and hushed me.

“It's not funny,” she muttered. “Dr. Lee could lose his teaching job at the hospital. His daughter is sick.”

“What? Oh. Yeah.” I blinked, still feeling the tickle of laughter building inside. “Sorry.”

Then I noticed the heap of pancakes sitting in front of me, and for the first time all day I felt really, truly hungry, so I took a fork and dug in.

 

SIXTEEN

Hypothesis: A re-administering of the electrical charge will sustain circulatory and organ function.

Process: Same methodology followed with lower voltage.

Conclusion: Experiment was successful, though shockingly (pun intended), Adam seemed to exhibit signs of physical pain post-electrotherapy and elicited incoherent words.

Observations: Personality shift observed right after electrostimulation. Perhaps stimulus to cranial cortex. Personality shift subsided shortly thereafter and no further anomalies have been observed.

*   *   *

The discovery of Trent's body buoyed my mood more than it probably should have. For one, it wasn't polite to gloat when a teenage boy was found with one leg mauled and the other completely gone and, for two, it solved only a fraction of one of my problems, which left at least two big, fat, granddaddy-sized predicaments to topple over and crush me at any given moment—there was the shattered phone that, science would suggest, hadn't appeared on my porch by magic and the fact that someone, somewhere, even if it wasn't the Westovers, was probably looking for Adam, my Adam, and if they found him, it wouldn't be either dead or alive.

But instead of feeling the weight of any of those things, I was starting the school day feeling nearly invincible. The experiment was working. The sun was shining. Adam was a student at Hollow Pines High. Today, for the first time, it felt as though it was all beginning to fall into place.

“Um, Tor? Why are people staring at us?” Owen said, smiling through gritted teeth. The sun reflected off the morning dew, bright enough to leave a sunburn. The smell of freshly mowed grass permeated the air. It was summer in September.

Adam trudged through the gravel lot beside us. The pools of crimson that had pocketed beneath his skin had all completely disappeared, and the dark circles beneath his eyes had lightened.

“Huh?” I tore myself from my thoughts and noticed that we did seem to be drawing attention. “I have no idea. Do I have toilet paper stuck to my shoe?”

Owen actually fell back several paces to check. “No, rider, you're clear for takeoff.”

“God, you're a geek.” I rolled my eyes.

“I think that's been established,” Owen said with an uneven strain to his voice. He tugged at his collar and glanced around at the onlookers.

As we neared the Bible Belt, several clean-cut kids in matching T-shirts turned to greet us. “Hey, man,” said one. “Heard you had a great practice last night.” Adam waved without stopping. The guy turned to watch us pass. “May the power be with you.” The Bible Belter put up his fist. “The power of God, that is.” At this, a few cheers rose from the group.

“That was nice.” I looked back.

“Yeah, but they're always freakishly nice,” Owen said. “It's their thing.”

“I don't know them,” Adam said. “I didn't say hello this time.” He smiled. “See? I'm learning.” The flecks in Adam's eyes shined golden in the sun. A lock of dark hair slipped over his eyebrow.

“Not exactly what I meant,” I said.

As we neared the Billys' trucks, more people began to turn, and it became clear that they weren't looking at us at all. They were looking at Adam. Billy Ray broke from the group, and I had an instinctive, bone-deep desire to run. Science would call this a conditioned reflex. The art of survival. I'd call it high school.

Instead, the three of us slowed as Billy Ray blocked our path. Given that he was the size and shape of a refrigerator, there wasn't really any other choice. He held a football chest level, smashed between his palms. He tossed it to Adam, who caught it easily.

“I heard Coach is thinking of starting you, Smith.” Billy Ray's face broke into a wide, fat-lipped grin. He ran his hand over his shaved scalp.