Teen Frankenstein (2 page)

I took a deep breath, savoring this moment, the one of possibility just before fates were made or broken, when everything felt balanced on a pinpoint. I took a deep breath, put my finger underneath the switch, and flipped it.

The dials on the rudimentary kilowatt meter sprung to life. Four small circles aligned on the face of the meter, each with matching needles that spun to different points like hands on a clock meting out energy. As with a spark traveling the wick of a dynamite stick, I saw the moment the volt hit the vat of brine water from the small twist of wire and the tiny ripple that grated the surface before the other wire began to tremble almost imperceptibly.

The smell of burning fur began to radiate. The rat's good ear curled downward and then, so fast I almost couldn't believe it happened, his tail swished from one side to the other. My eyes widened. The electricity built up and up. Mr. Bubbles shook violently. Nearby, Owen pulled his shirt over his nose. Then the tail that had just twitched began to blacken from the tip up toward the base until half of the pink appendage was charbroiled. His claws shriveled. His fur began to smoke. Coiled tendrils twisted, dark and shadowy, into the light.

“It's going to work. It's going to work,” I chanted, almost in prayer.

Smoke was now choking the room. The body of Mr. Bubbles was shriveling.

“All right, that's enough, Tor.” Owen pinched his nose.

I flattened my palm over his arm. “No, wait, hold on.” I inched my nose closer. The heat dried my eyes. “Come on. Come on
,
” I urged.

It was Owen who broke. He hit the switch just as another crack of lightning blasted through the cracks in the hatch. The charge died at once and the needles fell back to zero position. Slowly, I stepped up to the edge of the worktable. I stooped down to peer at the shriveled rodent and, with my gloved finger, nudged him in his little rat ribs.

For a second, I had a harebrained hope that he might stir after all. And then … his whiskers fell out.

 

TWO

hy·poth·e·sis: a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation; a proposition made as a basis for reasoning without any supposition of its truth

Postulation: A refining of galvanic reanimation will result in the stimulation of vital forces to the point of resuscitation.

List of variables: kilowatts, point of entry, mass, density, conductor, methodology

Progress: none to report

*   *   *

It's an absolute scientific fact that thunder is the sonic shock created by a sudden increase in both pressure and temperature at the exact moment the lightning expands its surrounding air too fast. Not that anybody in Hollow Pines cared much about facts, aside from Owen and me. I flipped the switch on the windshield wipers and they beat faster, groaning across the slick glass. Defeated, I'd dropped Owen off at home around half past one, just as the storm, which had been rattling and kicking at the hatch door, decided to unleash its torrential downpour. Rain pelted the forest green hood of my Mercury Grand Marquis, lovingly known as Bert. But it was the wind that kept pushing poor Bert off to the left, across the road's yellow dashed line. Nature's way of throwing a tantrum, I supposed.

In response, I gripped the oversized steering wheel so tightly the blood drained from my knuckles as I pulled myself to the edge of my seat and peered over the dash into the blustering night. Lightning split the darkness horizontally, forking into electric veins that pulsed through the gray-black sky, hanging heavy and thick as a corpse's skin over the farmlands.

“Just a little bit farther,” I pleaded with Bert. He had a bad track record of getting me stuck in situations that nobody would want to be stuck in. It was Bert that'd made me late for the PSATs. My mind chewed over the events of the night, the stack of mounting failures that rubbed at my nerves, the unshakable feeling that the answer was obvious only I was somehow too thick or nearsighted to see it.

Thunder rattled the cup holders, and I put my palm over the top of an empty can of Dr Pepper till it stopped. I gnawed on my lip, rifling through my brain the same way an ordinary kid might the pages of a textbook, before making another go of concentrating on the highway instead of the rat.

The sky hovered tangibly above like a ticking time bomb. My headlights scouted the road ahead by inches not feet, and the rain fell in white sheets I could hardly see through. It was only when I was practically even with it that I could read our city sign:
WELCOME TO HOLLOW PINES, TEXAS!
, with an exclamation mark, like Hollow Pines was some place to get excited about.

I peeled a hand off the steering wheel to fiddle with the radio; the speakers were drowning in static. I slammed the heel of my hand onto the dash, but the faint buzz of static persisted. I cursed at the station before fumbling for a scratched CD I kept in the side-door compartment. A halting, stop-and-go version of the White Stripes' first album crackled through as the city-limits sign melted into the rain. The dark silhouette of cornstalks blurred in the faint glare of my windows, and from here the two-lane country road started to curve around town. I forced Bert to stay centered.

Just then, my phone buzzed in the center console. A text from Owen flashed on the screen:

Eureka!

Lightning flickered overhead. Eureka?

Oh my god.

Eureka!

This was it. The breakthrough. The universal code of scientists everywhere. Eur-freaking-eka.

I shoved the phone into the pocket of my zipped hoodie and glanced up. For an instant, time was suspended like two objects dropping through a tub of high-density glycerin. There was the car. There was me. And then …

There was him.

He appeared in the middle of the road like a highwayman's ghost. Rain tumbled down around him, and the golden glow of the headlights lit up his white face as he screamed.

My foot fumbled for the brakes. My elbows straightened. I pushed back into the headrest. Wheels skidded and the moment filled with cottony silence. Then Bert's nose plowed into him with a sickening thud.

 

THREE

Scientific Method, Step 2—Applied Research:

Professor Giovanni Aldini first performed the process of galvanism in 1803. The process of galvanism involved three troughs that combined forty plates of zinc and copper and were applied through the arcs of two metallic wires descending from the ear to the jaw. The first experiment took place on the severed head of George Forster, who was hung for an hour at Newgate Prison at subfreezing temperatures for the drowning of his wife and child in the Paddington Canal. Aldini secured the body and succeeded in causing the jaw to quiver and the left eye to open.

*   *   *

The body hit the hood. The windshield splintered into a star. I ducked as the clunk of shoulders and boots pounded the sunroof on their way to the trunk.

My foot finally slammed on the brake, and Bert's tail whipped sideways. I slid to a stop, facing the opposite direction from where I began. I turned the CD off and could hear my heart hammering. My hands shook.

“One Mississippi … two Mississippi…” My breath wavered. I cut the engine but left the headlights on.

There, in the middle of the road, lay a heap. It wasn't moving.

I squeezed my eyes shut. This was not happening. I was supposed to go to Harvard or Penn—not penitentiary. But all I could see was his face lit up by the glow of headlights. Over and over, I saw his features morph into surprise.

Swallowing hard, I unlatched the door. Rain poured over me as if from a showerhead. Sodden strips of auburn hair, dangling almost to my shoulders, cleaved to my throat and chin like leeches.

It was the sort of moment that didn't seem real. The part in a dream where you suddenly become self-aware and start looking around for clues that your surroundings are projections. But the asphalt was hard beneath my sneakers. The rain turned my thin black sweatshirt into dead weight that stuck to my ribs and clung to the waist of my jeans. I gulped a sticky wad of saliva, and the roar of the storm grew louder.

One foot in front of the other, I trudged on wobbly legs closer to the heap. The nearer I got, the more human the heap became.

My insides lurched.

“Hello?” I yelled through the sheets of rain. I glanced back at Bert looming in the distance. I'd seen horror movies begin this way. “Hello? Are you all right?” I used my cupped hands as a megaphone. There wasn't so much as a flinch.

I should leave. Right now. Get in my car and go. To Mexico, maybe.
The thought lingered, but only for that instant.

“Sir?” I called, louder this time.

Rain continued to splash onto the blacktop. I swiped strands of hair off my forehead and ran the rest of the distance, at which point I immediately wanted to revisit that whole Mexico thing.

His teeth chattered.

At first, he didn't look at me and that was bad, but then he did and that was worse. He had eyes the color of maple syrup. Wide and alert as a cornered animal. His jet-black hair was plastered to his forehead, and he lay flat on his back, one arm stretched out with his palm open like he was waiting to be crucified.

Not knowing what else to do, I kneeled on the road and took his hand in mine, our skin slick with water. Drops poured down my nose and into my mouth.

“I'm so sorry,” I sobbed. Or at least I thought I sobbed. I couldn't tell on account of the monsoon beating down against us. “I couldn't see you. Or I mean, I didn't see you,” I corrected myself. I hated to lie, but not nearly as much as the thought of telling the truth.

His eyes seemed to register me for the first time. He had high cheekbones and tan skin, the good looks of a high school Homecoming king. He was about my age, too. There was a gash over his left eyebrow, but the rain fell too quickly for him to bleed much. I bit my lip and glanced away from his face, my own eyeballs stinging.

Farther down, dark crimson bled through his white V-neck T-shirt, spreading into fuzzy edges on the fabric. My stomach flopped over like a beached catfish.

His Adam's apple spiked. He looked up at the sky and then back at me.

Gently, I peeled the edge of his shirt up over his ribs. A long, curved gash ran down his side from just below the right side of his breastbone to the top of his hip. Pink, tattered skin flayed open, creating a crevice where blood pooled and oozed while he panted for breath.

“It's not that bad,” I told him, knowing full well it was exactly that bad. “See, I'm—” I patted myself until my fingers closed around the hard rectangle of my phone still stuffed inside the pocket of my jacket. I pulled it out. “I'm calling 9-1-1 right now. They'll be here any minute.” He nodded a silent agreement and I felt a ballooning in my throat.

I pushed the top button. The screen stayed dark. Frantic, I pushed it again, hands shaking more than ever now. It'd been working two minutes ago when I got Owen's text. This time I held down the button. I tried counting to five. Counting to five felt like an eternity. Nothing happened except the boy moaned.

I shook my phone as hard as I could and held it up to my ear as though I might hear the ocean if I listened hard enough. But it was no use. The screen was soaked.

I felt the corners of my mouth curl downward and my face break apart with the horror. My phone was waterlogged. No help was coming. Not quickly, anyway. I took the phone and threw it against the concrete. It split open on the pavement. I wanted to scream, but the sound was trapped inside.

“It's okay. Don't worry.” I pushed my hand into the gummy swamp of his side to stanch the flow, but blood oozed through my fingers, and more pools of red leaked onto the concrete than I had hands for. The asphalt had ripped into his legs, leaving tears in his jeans that revealed bloody scrapes of road rash. I sucked in a lungful of air. “Okay. You wait here.” Like he was going anywhere. “I'm going to get help. I'll be back before you know it, I swear.”

His hand squeezed tight around mine, clamping down on my bones. I stared hard at him, refusing to cry out in pain. “All right, I'll stay,” I said at last, and his grip loosened. “I'm sorry. That was stupid. I'll stay.”

Shiny red bubbles started to form at the corners of his mouth. Trying to look unfazed, I tucked my toes underneath the back of my jeans and rocked. One of my hands held his, and the other pressed into the chewed-up edges of his wound. Without thinking, I began humming the tune of one of my mother's old hymns. I had to hum with such force to be heard over the raucous weather that my lips tickled and I felt my nose get twitchy. But still, I hummed on.

I was in the middle of the chorus when his head jerked off the pavement. His eyes went round and rabid. I froze. His chest heaved.

He gasped in one desperate inhale and said, “Meg,” before his head fell back to the ground.

 

FOUR

Observations: A pattern has emerged regarding the use of the brine water in the experiment. Aldini used troughs with zinc and copper, but I've found the solution of saline to be a better conductor. Brine water was first used as a conductor in the early nineteenth century. When the brine water is used, the core body temperature of the subject heats up more before burning than during experiments without. At first, I marked this as a correlative relationship, but enough evidence has been gathered that I'm prepared to count the use of the conductor as a cause for better results.

*   *   *

I unlaced my fingers from the boy with the bluing lips and bent my ear down to meet them. Not even a tickle of air escaped his open mouth. I pressed my fingers into his glands, pushing through sinewy flesh in search of a pulse, but the veins remained flat and still. Placing my hands, palms down, on his chest, I leaned in with the full force of my weight and pumped. I pushed into his ribs until my muscles burned and breath rushed through me like fire, and when I couldn't pump anymore, I tilted his head back and pressed my lips into his. He tasted like blood and rain as I blew as much life into him as I could muster. It wasn't enough.