Teen Frankenstein (6 page)

This, I hadn't expected. “Who are you?” I asked. “You mean you don't know?”

He shook his head, deliberately, gradually, revealing the two razor-thin incisions at each temple.

This time I took several steps forward, walking over to the busted radio and tub of brine. I had to tilt my chin up to make eye contact. “What
do
you remember exactly?”

“Nothing.”

I circled him, examining the crusts of dried blood. “A blank slate?” I stopped in front of him. “Where're you from?”

“I don't know.” He knitted his eyebrows together. “Did you bring me here? I'm sorry. I don't remember you. Victoria.” The way he said it was apologetic. Like one of those overly contrite British fellows from a Jane Austen novel, but without the accent.

Owen and I had never thought to consider how re-instigating the brain patterns might affect thought, especially memory. Naturally, we'd expected there to be complications. We'd just expected those complications to be those of a rat, or in other words, relatively uncomplicated.

Explaining the situation to a walking, talking corpse? Considerably more difficult. I took a deep breath. “Okay, then, there's something I need to tell you.” I felt my mouth twisting to the side the way it did when I wanted to tell a lie. “Yesterday there was an accident.” I stopped. “I feel like you should be sitting down for this. Do you want to be sitting down? The reason people are usually asked to sit down before receiving bad news is that it lessens the distance to fall, you know, if you faint or something.” Like now was the time to play Human Encyclopedia. He didn't move. Just stood there, arms pinned to his sides. “
Okay
.” I hesitated over how to proceed. Owen, of course, was being no help. I could tell him how he died. Or I could remind him he was walking the streets at close to 2:00
AM.
I wasn't sure how much information was too much and how much not enough.

The point was he was here now. Breathing. He had a heartbeat even if he had no memory. I decided the best approach was clinical. Give him the facts that mattered. I would ease him into the full picture later. When it made sense.

“All right then.” I clapped my hands together. “I … came across you last night,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “And, well, there's no easy way to say this, but you died.”

A strained gargle rose up in the boy's throat. For an instant, a look of panic flashed over his face like he was dying all over again. “Died?”

Owen moved to my side, adjusting his glasses to get a better look at the man-creature occupying space in our laboratory. “Great bedside manner, doc.”

“I was going for the Band-Aid approach,” I said out of the side of my mouth. “Rip it off and the worst is over.”

“Do these look like Band-Aid problems to you?” Owen retorted in a stage whisper.

“Shut
up
.” I jabbed him with my elbow, and he jabbed me right back. I pressed my lips together and tried to seem in control. “I brought you here,” I said. “Because I thought I could help.” My words were coming rapid-fire now. “See, I've been working with Owen on reanimation. And”—I could hardly suppress a smile—“and, as you can see, it worked.”

The boy blinked, once, twice, three times, and then he lurched forward. I shrank into myself. I had a vision of him mangling me to death like a grizzly bear, but then, when I was about to scream for help, he wrapped me inside a stiff hug.

His skin had the coppery tint of blood, and he smelled salty and a little sick with my nose pressed into his chest. “Thank you,” he said. “Victoria. Thank you.”

My lungs tightened at the word
thank
. I was the reason he was dead. A confession prickled on the tip of my tongue.

Just then, though, there was a pounding at the hatch door. “Tor! Are you in there?” Mom beat her fist against the entrance, and Einstein's howl joined the chorus.

I squeezed the boy's shoulders hard and wondered briefly if he was cold without any clothes on. “Don't say a word, 'kay? Owen,” I said. “You two hide.”

“Hide?
Where?
” He glanced around the knickknack-filled room. But I was already bounding up the stairs.

At the top, I slapped my cheeks and tried to rearrange my face into something that looked less guilty.

“Victoria Frankenstein, are you in there? It's seven forty-five in the morning. You're gonna be late for school.”

Seven forty-five
, I mouthed. I had a physics quiz first period. “One second, Mom,” I said, shrinking back farther from the door. There was a crash of metal from down below. My shoulders jerked up to my ears.

“We're okay!” said Owen's muffled voice.

“Be. Quiet.” My molars ground into one another.

“I hear you in there.” Mom shook the latches on the door. She wasn't a morning person.

“Mom, I said I'm coming!” I licked the palm of my hand and used it to flatten the mop of hair sticking out from the top of my head, then added more saliva to try to smudge off eyeliner using my thumb.

“I'm counting to three, Tor. One…” I heaved the inner latch up and over, unlocking the hatch. “Two…”

With both hands I shoved open the door and climbed out. “I'm here,” I said breathlessly, kicking it closed behind me. The sun assaulted my eyes. I felt like a vampire and immediately threw both arms over my head to block the light.

“What happened to your car?” Mom said without introduction.

“I—” I was still squinting against the brightness of morning. The rusted metal groaned on my father's weather vane, and Mom spared an irritated glare for the rooster outline that spun atop the post of cardinal directions on our roof.

In the events of last night I'd completely forgotten about my car. I cast around for a lie, a good lie, a convincing one. “I … hit a deer, Mom.” There, that was believable. There were deer everywhere in Hollow Pines. “I'm sorry,” I said, and I knew I probably should have felt worse about that fib than I did.

Mom appeared as though she'd been put together from a collection of chicken bones this morning, and I wondered if the light was too bright for her, too. Her teeth were still stained grape juice purple from her favorite brand of Merlot. I'd tried a sip once. It'd tasted like sweet vinegar and made my breath smell like rubbing alcohol.

“I swear, for how smart you are…” She didn't finish her sentence. Instead, she pinched her nose so that I didn't know if she was about to sneeze or yell at me. All I knew was that on mornings after she drank, she was in a rotten mood. Lucky me. “Who's going to pay for this, Tor? The tooth fairy?” At that, I felt a surge of righteous indignation. When it came to how parents were supposed to act, I wasn't the resident expert, but still, wasn't my mother supposed to thank God I was okay or something? Since my father died, she was always thanking God for everything else. “Can Bert still drive?” she asked instead.

And I thought about the two of us and how different we'd become from each other. Looking back, I found it nearly impossible to remember whether we'd started this way before my dad's death or whether it was his passing that had turned us both into creatures with our own thirsty addictions—hers to forget, mine to know more.

Seconds felt sticky and slow as I waited for them to tick by, and I succumbed to the familiar, twitchy-fingered jitteriness of impatience I got when my mom took too long to understand something or forgot to set the oven timer. “It's only the windshield and maybe the fender,” I said.

Goose bumps erupted on my arms as the weather vane let out another creaky howl.

“This is going to cost us your dad's Social Security check, you know that?” Her words rubbed at my nerves. Every time she mentioned my father, it was as if she put a special tone around it just to show that she thought it was his fault for dying. She glanced up at the roof again. “And haven't I talked to you about fixing that thing?” My arms prickled again.

I hated that. Mom didn't get anything. She didn't get why Dad chased storms and she didn't get science and she didn't get me. But that was all going to change now that my first big discovery was already here, just beneath our feet.

Eureka
.

 

EIGHT

Conclusion: First human subject—reanimation a success! Submersion in conductor; higher voltage capacity; placement of incised wires on cranium and trunk stimulated all vital organs; possible injury to the hippocampus or reset resulting from localized charge to that area of the brain causing loss of memory; signs of electrocution present on torso.

*   *   *

I watched my mom's beat-up station wagon trundle out of the drive, leaving muddy tracks in the bogged-down dirt, when I noticed something. Or at least I thought I had noticed something. The soles of my shoes squelched onto the unpaved road as I moved closer to study the thing that I believed I'd seen—tire marks. Three sets of fresh tire marks to be exact.

The stench of rain tilled up notes of cow manure. Brown sludge oozed up the sides of my sneakers as I stepped closer, dodging the puddles left over from the night's storm. First, there was a set of tracks leading straight from the fence opening to where my car was now parked. I could see the small curve that my car took before stopping, and as I traced the path with my eyes, I remembered sitting behind the steering wheel with Owen beside me. Our argument. The enormity of what followed.

I bent down and studied the pattern, touching my finger to the imprints that were left over like fossils in the damp earth. Next, I sidestepped over to where Mom's car had been parked, a stone's throw to the right of my driver's side door. Four craters were left where her wheels had sunk into the mud during the rains. I'd watched her leave and could now retrace the path. The tire marks bowed out from my own before converging again at the fence. I could recognize her tires by the three lines, crossed through by horizontal markings that looked like sketches of barbed wire.

My skin tingled as I slowly turned to the final set of tread marks. I brushed the dirt from my knees and scanned the yard. There were only these three sets of tire marks on the road. This was significant because the rain had started last night, leaving behind a fresh canvas, and now there were three where there should have been only two. Each set must have been left behind after the rain had died down. I swallowed.

The final set of tire marks veered sharply to the left, disappearing into a patch of grass. My heart pounded. I let my knee sink into the dirt. The third set of tire marks matched neither Mom's station wagon nor my Bert. The grooves in the dirt were thick and chunky, like rows of molars had taken bites out of the road. The pattern reminded me of my dad's old truck, the one my mom had sold, and a cold sliver of fear passed through me. Because there was only one explanation: Somebody must have been here.

I lingered over the strange trail even as the sun was baking the remnants into a hard mold. I tried to shake the crawling sensation out from under my scalp and, instead, headed straight for the house and into my mom's bedroom.

It smelled like cigarette smoke and the pages of old magazines. The room stayed dim, even when the sun was pointed straight at the rest of the house. The carpet was squishy beneath my feet. I tugged at the closet doors, and they opened like accordion pleats to a shallow two-rack wardrobe. My mom's clothes hung dull and lifeless near the center, an array of muted colors, sloppy cardigans, and ill-fitting pants. I pushed those to the side to clear a path to the far right-hand corner, where, hanging untouched, were my dad's clothes. Once, when Mom didn't know I'd come in, I caught her smelling the sleeves of one of his shirts, just sitting there with her nose pressed into the fabric. I yanked down on the collar of a button-down, and it slid from the hanger. My father liked plaid, and by the time I left, I was cradling three shirts in that pattern along with a couple pairs of jeans.

I carried my stash to the cellar, no intention at all of going to school. I pried open the hatch door and descended the stairs at last. “It's me,” I called, my voice muffled by the pile of clothes. I stopped at the bottom and dropped the garments on a clear square of countertop. From where he was squatting behind the lab table, Owen pulled a tarp he'd draped over himself and stood.

“What took you so long?” He swatted the blue plastic down toward his feet.

I hesitated, weighing whether to tell him about the unexplained tire marks that I'd found in the front lawn, until I made a conscious decision that Owen, who was already more prone to worry and paranoia than I was, didn't need to know unless and until there was actually something
to
know.

Right now, there wasn't. So I pivoted and spotted the boy, standing directly behind the model skeleton against the far wall. This time I raised an eyebrow at Owen.

“What?” he said, kicking the now crumpled tarp beneath the table. “You told us to hide.”

The boy's form was in full view between each of the bones. “You can come out now.…” The boy had no name with which to finish the sentence. He didn't move. I came closer. “It's all right. My mother's gone.” The boy stayed very still but was peering at me over the model skull. “No one's going to find you here,” I said. “It's just Owen and me.” I stretched my hand out toward him.

Cautiously, he put his palm in mine and allowed me to lead him away from the worst hiding spot ever. “I don't like it when you leave, Victoria.”

The corner of my mouth twitched with the beginning of a smile. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I'll try not to from now on.”

His stillness seemed to suck the movement right out of his surroundings, like the air had turned stale along with him.

“First thing's first,” I said. “Let's get you dressed.” I reached over and tossed him a pair of jeans, boxers, and a shirt from my dad's closet. He immediately began sliding off his boxers. “Wait!” My hand flew over my eyes and I spun around, pinching Owen to follow suit. “Okay, proceed.” I listened to the rustling of fabric and soft grunts for several moments. “Are you clothed?” I asked.