Teen Frankenstein (14 page)

At this point, a few other people on our team started to notice Adam's skills. “Toss him a ball,” ordered Knox. Knox was shuffling from side to side like we were in the freaking dodgeball Olympics.

Another of Adam's missiles made contact. A loud
thwack
. Plastic on wet skin. He ducked, dodged, and shuffled. Teammates fell around him. I stuck close behind, using him like a shield. I glanced over. Knox was dripping sweat. Paisley was out. Adam, though, wasn't even short of breath. He was like one of those automatic tennis-ball machines.

He fired another shot. Bingo. Then another. A human strike force.

Knox hollered his appreciation. It was as if Adam were charged up on batteries. Or, I paused, watching him in awe from the free-throw line, an electrical charge. I felt my jaw drop. That was it.

In that instant, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a purple dodgeball floating toward me. I turned, but it was too late. The ball pegged me in the shoulder. Owen was just finishing his follow-through, a joyful gloat already parading over his face. He bounced up and down with one fist in the air.

“I got you!” he crowed. “I so got you!”

This was his mistake. Adam zeroed in on him like a fighter jet. Ready, aim, fire. Before Owen could calculate rate of speed plus velocity, the ball was already nailing him on the side of the head. I scrunched my shoulders as Owen's head snapped sideways. He stumbled and then his palms squeaked onto the gym floor.

Coach Carlson's whistle trilled. “Time! Time!” He waved his hands in the air. “Bloch! Get off the floor. It's a dodgeball not a meteor.”

I ran over to Owen, who was scraping himself off the ground. He grabbed my hand and I hoisted him up. He cupped his ear and moved his jaw back and forth. “My ears are ringing, Tor. He destroyed my hearing. Ah! Ah! Ah! You hear that?” He pointed at his ear. “I'm completely tone-deaf now.”

Adam appeared by my side. “I saved you, Victoria,” he said happily.

Owen shrank back. “Don't be such a drama queen,” I told him. He glared at me. “
What?
” I shrugged. “You have to admit, you're a little soft.”

“Oh, I'm sorry I don't have the modern-day Prometheus to hide behind.”

“You threw the ball too hard at Victoria,” Adam said, turning cross.

“I threw the ball too hard?” Owen pressed his hand to his chest. “
I
threw the ball too hard?”

Adam got that deep furrow in his brow, almost like a caveman. “Yes.”

I put my hand on Adam's shoulder. “Adam, next time let's agree to give poor Owen a free pass. He's one of the good guys.”

“Good guys don't hit my—”

“Adam.”

He dropped his chin to his chest. “Okay.” He scuffed his shoe against the gym floor, leaving a black skid. “This game is confusing.”

Our class was starting to funnel back into the locker room. Adam reached out his hand, which Owen reluctantly accepted.

“Let's go.” I thumped Owen on the back.

“Smith!” It took me a moment to register that Coach Carlson meant Adam. The three of us spun around. Coach jogged up to us, whistle bouncing off the white polo that was working double as a bra.

Adam smiled when he approached. “Hi, I'm Adam Smith. I'm from Elgin, Illinois.”

A slight tilt of Coach Carlson's head. “You ever think about playing football, son?”

“I threw one yesterday,” Adam replied flatly.

Coach Carlson gave me an
is this kid for real
look. That was becoming a popular one when it came to Adam.

I cleared my throat. “He hasn't.”

Coach Carlson eyed Adam from the shoes up. “Never?” He shook his head as if he thought we might be fibbing. In Hollow Pines, even toddlers had thought about playing football. “You like running around out here? Throwing balls. Catching things?”

Adam scratched his head, then there was that same spark in his eyes. He liked orange; he liked pizza. “Yes, I liked it a lot.”

“You show promise. Come out to practice after school. I can't guarantee you anything about spots on the team, but I can promise there'll be a lot more where that came from.” Coach gave a small salute and pivoted on his heel.

I trotted after him. “But Coach Carlson, don't you think that he should get settled in first?” I called after him. “Focus on his academics?”

Coach Carlson's butt cheeks sucked in the fabric of his mesh shorts and trapped it in the little triangle between his crotch, legs, and rear end. “That's enough, Frankenstein,” he said without stopping. “Maybe you could learn something from your friend there. You know they don't give out trophies for who can study the most by the end of high school.”

I threw my hands up just as he was disappearing through the open door to his glass-encased office.

“Actually, they do,” I yelled. “It's called valedictorian.”

He raised his eyebrows and tugged the blind cord, sealing himself off.

I stamped my foot, spun, and marched back to where Owen and Adam were waiting. “For the record,” I said. “I think this is a very bad idea.”

 

FIFTEEN

Half-life is usually used to reference nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, but anything can have a half-life. It's the amount of time required for a quantity to fall to half its value from the first time it was measured. I shouldn't be surprised. Like I said, anything can have one. That includes a charged atom.

*   *   *

I didn't ask about football practice the whole ride home. Maybe that made me a jerk. Maybe that was what normal people did. The same kind of people who asked how people's days were or what was wrong when somebody was crying in the bathroom. Not me.

It was a relief to return home. My nerves felt like frayed wires, sparking with the memory of my broken phone, the tire tracks, and the missing boy. By now, I had a tiredness in my bones over the whole ordeal that made me eager to retreat into my own personal headquarters. Plus, hopefully we'd gotten this whole football thing out of our system. Since Adam didn't mention it, either, I felt validated in my usual rightness as I unbuckled my seat belt and climbed out of Bert.

Mom worked as a secretary at a small law firm during the day, but she moonlighted as a waitress at the Waffle House, and tonight she had the five-to-ten shift, so I didn't have to be on the lookout as we traipsed to the hatch. Adam's steps were heavy on the ground. Without a word, he stepped into the cellar in front of me.

He had taken four steps when he staggered, knocking hard against the railing. “Adam?” I said, alarmed.

He grunted and then pushed himself up. He got to the last few steps. His knee buckled and he staggered. Barely catching himself from crashing to the floor, he careened sideways.

I skipped down after him. “Are you … drunk?” It would be just like the Billys to haze the new guy. Would Adam know any better? He hadn't smelled like alcohol.

Adam groaned. I reached out a hand and spun him by the shoulder to face me. Upon seeing him, my heart leaped clear into my throat. This was not drunk. I almost wished it were. This was a thing far, far worse.

“Adam, you look…” I knew it wasn't the best bedside manner, but I couldn't help it. “… awful,” I finished.

Color appeared to be actively draining from the top of his head downward. Pools of blood could be spotted through the translucent skin on his neck, above his forearm, on the back of his hand. They looked like wine-colored bruises. If I pushed one, it would bubble to the side like a blood blister. His eyes were hollowed out, as if by an ice-cream scooper. In a span of minutes, he'd gone from awkwardly pale to walking dead. The quiet car ride was more than Adam being the strong, silent type, it was him being the near-dead type.

This wasn't good. This wasn't good at all. I wrung my hands.

“Victor—” he started, lurching forward. I put my palms on his chest to keep him from falling on top of me. “Victor—” He began again before his eyes rolled back into his head and I caught his arm.

“Adam, come over here.” I guided him closer to the gurney until I could reach over and drag it the rest of the distance to him. The rusted wheels scratched and stuck. I clasped his arms and helped him onto it. “Lie down,” I directed. His elbows crumpled and his head clanged back like a newborn who couldn't support his neck. In a drawer, I found a flashlight and flicked it on, wiping dust from the glass. I started by aiming it in his ears. The thin skin lit up red with the light. Then I pulled his eyelids apart with my fingers and aimed the flashlight into his pupils. I saw a miniature version of my face reflected in the chocolate-brown irises.

I dropped his lids. “I'm going to try to listen to your heart, okay?” I slid the hem of his football jersey up. The sight of Adam's body sent a tingly sensation under my fingernails that made me want to peel them off and scratch. Pink branches forked across his chest in intricate patterns. Adam stared down and grazed his fingers over the scar tissue ridges.

The hatch marks of intricate scars somehow only seemed to make him more beautiful, like a snowflake that could never be re-created.

I leaned forward and pressed my ear to the spot over his heart. I closed my eyes, listened. At first, what I heard was the sound of nothingness. People might not think this has a sound at all, but it does. It was hollow, a heavy, vaulted absence. I held my breath. My own heart thumped loudly and pumped blood into my eardrums. A dull thud. Then two more. Soft but there.

“It's failing,” I whispered. “Do you feel that?”

“Am I … dying, Victor … ia?” His voice was a rasp. “Again?”

I chewed my lip. There was no word in the English dictionary for someone who died when they were already dead. I wasn't sure I could replicate the experiment. It worked once, but once could mean anything. The success of the experiment could have been a statistical anomaly. No variables had been controlled.

I grabbed a thick research book from a shelf and dusted off the cover before flipping through pages, nose close to the typeface. I dragged my finger line by line.
Experiments in Revival of Organisms
. No.
Soviet Dog Experiment
.
Electrotherapy
. I muttered the chapter titles under my breath, knowing full well that pioneers in a field didn't get to check their work in textbooks.

I slammed the covers shut and paced the room. On the gurney, Adam's eyes started to close.

I snapped my fingers under his nose. “Don't go to sleep,” I said. His eyelashes fluttered and he stared at me dazed, but awake.

Okay, his energy was drained. His systems were shutting down. I thought about closed-circuit systems. When the human body grew tired, a person refueled it with food. Even from the fetal stage, a human was only able to grow by receiving calories and nutrients in utero. But Adam wasn't brought into existence through calories and nutrients. So more likely, then, was that Adam's fuel wasn't food at all.

I crossed the length of the storm cellar three more times. If a car engine sputtered, what happened? Someone had to give the battery a jump to restore it to full capacity. I pulled a long breath of air like I was sucking on the end of a cigarette. I eyed Adam, then the claw-foot tub, then Adam again.

“Adam,” I said. “I think we're going to have to try to recharge you.” I began pulling wires. “Last time, well, you don't remember last time, but you're going to have to trust me.” I selected a red wire and a green wire. Both had worn coating so that the copper wires were exposed.

“I trust you.”

“I'm going to need to make new incisions. Ones that are less visible. You'll tell me if this hurts?” I dragged the scalpel over the counter into my grip. He didn't respond. “Adam?”

“I'll tell you.” His lips were turning blue.

“Good.” I pinched the scalpel hard between my fingers. He didn't flinch as I sliced an inch in the soft spot behind his ear and before his skull bone. Blood bubbled into the fresh cuts made on either side of his chest. “I'm going to need your help for this part. You're going to have to focus.” He moaned his agreement. “You'll have to undress. And then I'll need you in that tub.” I pointed. Adam's head lolled to the side. I used the full force of my weight to roll the gurney as close to the dirt-coated tub as I could. “Okay, Adam. Now, before you're not able to.” There was urgency in my voice. I worried he'd lose consciousness at any moment.

I supported him as he struggled to sit up, and then together we swung his feet off the edge and deposited him straight into the empty tub. He peeled off his jersey first, and I caught myself staring not at the tree-branch scars but at the swell of his muscles underneath. When he unfastened the button of his jeans, I whirled around. Heat rushed to my cheeks. “Sorry,” I mumbled. This had been so much less awkward when he was dead.

Behind me, I heard squeaks and squawks of skin on porcelain, and once they'd stopped, I announced myself before turning around, feeling more embarrassed than I should have been at the thought of the human anatomy. I was careful where my gaze landed as I reached over to turn the handles on the faucet. The spigot choked, sputtered, and then retched a gush of grimy water. The sound thundered against the sides of the bath.

Adam's eyelids finally closed and didn't reopen. I was reliving the night of the accident. To assure myself that not everything was the same, I put my finger below his nose and felt the soft puff of air against my skin. He was alive, if only barely.

I wheeled the kilowatt meter over and gathered a jar of brine water, working up a sweat as I culled together all the necessary supplies. Since I wouldn't be reanimating a corpse, I reasoned that the power I'd need would be significantly less.

I inserted the wires into the open cuts and applied a short piece of tape to hold each in place. I set the power gauge and, as a final, lucky thought, I pulled ratty old towels and a short stepping stool. I positioned my feet on top of the stool and wrapped the towels around them to stave off the shock. There was no time left to think. Adam was slipping. I had no choice but to flip the dial.