Teen Frankenstein (19 page)

“It's a weather vane and it's just rusty. Mom, we're busy out here. Owen and I are working.” The first sprinkles of stars gathered in the translucent sky.

Her lips pursed, forming deep lines around her mouth. What would my father think of her if he could see her now? She grumbled and glared at the roof again, where the metal rooster spun a quarter turn and let out a hair-raising screech. “Suit yourself.” She spat on the ground and disappeared behind the screen door.

“One of these days she's going to figure out what a terrible daughter you are.”

I rolled my eyes and rubbed my forehead like a doctor coming out of surgery to deliver the prognosis. “She's not exactly going to be named Mother of the Year,” I said, feeling a flush of embarrassment for her. “Anyway, forget her. Adam's in there muttering that he just wants to remember. I can't get him to say anything else,” I said. “He's practically catatonic. I don't know. If I could just get him to feel something, maybe it'd help.”

“Still nothing?” I shook my head. Owen's mouth twisted. “And emotionally?”

“Still not much improvement there, either.”

“Well, what'd you expect? If there was ever an excuse for a man to be emotionally stunted, death has to be it.”

“Except he's not really dead.”

“Vitally challenged? Is that more politically correct? I'd hate to offend here.”

“For your information, he has all of his vital signs.” Another unwelcome reminder of the body found in the field. I was only seventeen and already I'd seen three dead bodies in my life. It was beginning to feel excessive. “Anyway, I'm not sure finding a dead body shortly after his own death helped in the emotional-stunting department.”

Owen sighed. “Can I see him?”

“Okay, but be nice,” I warned, and led him back in. Einstein's collar jangled after us.

Downstairs, Adam straightened upon seeing Owen. His skin was clear and his eyes were sharp with the fresh dose of energy. “Rough day,” Owen quipped. Adam didn't flinch. “Right.” Owen pulled up a spare stool and took a seat opposite Adam. “A couple questions of my own, if you don't mind,” he said. “What's making you, you know, yell like a banshee when Tor recharges you, Adam? Is it pain?”

Adam stared down at his lap. “I don't know. I can't remember.”

“So you're not feeling physical pain then? You're screaming about something else.”

“I don't feel anything. Except sometimes. Right after. My fingers.” He waggled them. “They get … tingly.”

At this, Owen glanced at me. “That's improvement. And what about happy or sad? Do you feel any of that?”

“I don't know. I can't tell. Mostly, I feel blank.”

Owen nodded. “That's what I thought. There's a technique I've been studying since … since you came along called emotion and memory retrieval. See, the amygdala, along with the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex”—he pointed to different spots along his own skull—“store emotional memories even if you don't know it. Emotional stimuli are used to retrieve buried feelings along with any associated memory. Since we're working with a blank slate, so to speak, I think we'll have to prompt the resurfacing of those feelings. We've got to create the memories rather than just rely on a mood-dependent memory retrieval system.”

“Somebody's been doing extra credit,” I said. We'd been taking turns researching Freudian studies of psychosocial development at night, but this was beyond textbook psychology. “So you're saying we're going to unbury what's already in there.”

Owen blushed. “It's simple cognitive neuroscience, really.”

Adam rose to his feet. His height cleared Owen by nearly an entire head. He peered around the room and then his gaze landed on a small hand shovel. He crossed the room and picked it up. “Here,” he said to Owen, eyes wide. “Unbury them.”

*   *   *

BRIGHT, COLORED LIGHTS
twinkled off the fairground tents. Our shoes kicked through dust. The crowd was thin for a Sunday night. We were arriving on the tail end of park hours. A country song blared through the loudspeakers as we snaked between booths.

Much to Adam's relief, we'd explained that we wouldn't be using an actual shovel to create memories and uncover repressed emotion and physical sensation. Owen suggested that we start by getting Adam out of the laboratory more, and the fairgrounds were his first thought. I stared wide-eyed at the flashing lights of the Milky Way, the main stretch of carnival games, at the entrance of which a man with a handlebar mustache was advertising goldfish as prizes.

“If we're going to make you memories, we better start from the beginning,” Owen declared, throwing his arms out wide to welcome us. “Childhood ones.” I plugged my ears to block out the sound of a twangy guitar. Owen pushed my hands down. “Stop it. I made some of my best memories here.” He reminded me of Willy Wonka, and this was his chocolate factory.

It had been at least ten years since I'd gone to a fair, and even then it was hard to imagine a miniature Tor dying to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl.

Adam sniffed the air. “I'm starving, Victoria.”

“Adam, we're here for a reason.” I pulled a pen and notebook from my purse. “Now, where to go for maximum impact…” I bit the cap of my pen.

“The man needs to eat.” Owen rolled his eyes and thumped Adam on the back. “When it comes to caloric intake, my friend, you've come to the right place.” Owen led Adam over to a large stall where I could practically taste the grease and burning sugar, and it made my mouth fill up with spit. “They will fry anything here,” Owen explained.

“We're wasting time.” I tapped my pen on the cover of my notebook. “Our background research tells us that long-term memories are influenced by the emotion experienced when creating the memory as well as the feelings experienced during the memory retrieval,” I said, beginning to tick through the steps of the scientific method. “Our unknown variable is whether we're actually causing Adam to re-experience a buried memory from his own childhood or whether this is a new memory altogether. I think for the purposes of the experiment, we have to assume we're combining the learning experience with the emotion of retrieval. I can study the effects under both assumptions when I analyze the data.”

Owen looked up at the sign. “Fried Oreos. Fried cheesecake. Fried honey bun. Fried
butter
.”

I scanned the fair. “Now, how to test our hypothesis.”

“Tor, what do you want?” Owen nudged me.

I glanced at the menu. “Does everything have to be fried?”

“Owen said that you fried me, too, Victoria.”

I glared at Owen. He scuffed his shoes in the dirt and whistled, ignoring the fact that I was shooting lasers through his head with my eyeballs. After a few moments of deliberation, he ordered us four fried Oreos and a corn dog to share.

“Now can we please get back to the experiment?” I stomped my foot impatiently.

Owen stooped down to whisper in my ear. “Pro tip: You might not want to refer to the human standing beside you as an experiment. It's tacky. Here, have a corn dog.” He shoved the stick between my fingers.

For his part, Adam took in the fairgrounds slack-mouthed and blinking rapidly. A tattooed carny with a giant mallet offered him a chance at a swing to ring the bell. “First one's free,” he said, leering. Adam skittered back.

The corn dog burned my mouth, and I handed it off to Adam to devour. “We should do something that combines a strong physical sensation with a strong emotional one,” I said.

“Relax.” Owen pulled a wad of tickets from his pocket. “I know exactly where to go.” Sometimes, I could swear Owen had never met me at all. I didn't do relaxed. Especially when I wasn't in control of all the variables.

Still, we followed Owen past the food stalls and the fair games. He doled four tickets out to Adam and me and tore off two more for himself and, at the front of the line, handed them to the Ferris wheel operator.

We piled into a three-person bench with me crammed into the middle. The operator pulled the bar down over our laps, and the ride lurched to life, jolting us back into our seats. “Hey, I remember this,” I said. “My dad took me on this Ferris wheel when I was a kid.”

“See?” Owen's eyebrows shot over the rims of his glasses. “It's working already.”

The ground swept out from underneath us. The pull of gravity planted me to the bench. We arced clockwise, out and up. Our feet dangled. Adam's hands tightened around the bar and twisted. He pushed as far back into his seat as he could go.

“How far into the sky are we going?” he asked.

Below us, the fairgrounds shrank to a pocket-sized scale. “All the way to the top,” I said.

He grunted.

I leaned forward. I liked the view looking straight down where the angle was the sharpest and most thrilling. Adam reached his arm in front of my chest and pushed me back into my seat. The bench swayed in response.

“Be careful, Victoria,” he said. His voice was strained.

“I'm with him,” Owen said. “Don't rock the proverbial boat, please.”

“This was your idea,” I reminded him.

The horizon sank lower and lower as we soared over the tree line. Our trajectory began taking us backward as we began to reach the crest. At the top, the ride jerked to a halt.

“Adam?” I glanced over again and found that his eyes were squeezed shut so tightly that wrinkles reached all the way to his temples. “Adam, open your eyes.” He shook his head violently and the trolley car swayed. “Adam, this won't work if you don't open your eyes.” But I already knew that the experiment
was
working, because the emotion he was feeling was fear. Fear was useful. Fear was good. Fear kept people from running out in front of buses and diving off cliffs. My mind raced with the possibilities of what else I might be able to evoke in Adam. Were the primal responses easier to unearth? If I tried, could I make Adam very angry?

I brought my thoughts back into the bench dangling high above the ground. One thing at a time.

Hands still wrapped in a death grip around the safety bar, Adam peeled open an eyelid, followed by his other. He stared out of the chairlift. Up here, the music couldn't reach. The metal creaked and groaned. Our bench swung gently in the breeze.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I—I don't know,” he said.

I put my hand on his. “You do know. Tell me what you see,” I coaxed him. “Describe it to me.”

He shifted his weight in the seat. “I see,” he paused, “dark.” Another pause. “With little lights.”

“And how do you think they look?”

He focused on them. “I think … they look pretty.” I leaned over and gave Owen a meaningful look. “Which reminds me of your hair.” He fidgeted again. “At school, even from far away, I can spot your hair and know that you're close and will come to get me. So it reminds me of that. And I like that.”

My heart pulled at the arteries that attached it to my chest. I looked down and let my auburn hair fall around my face to hide my grin. Adam was mine. He would always be mine.

“You should write for Hallmark, man.” I could feel—though not hear—Owen laughing beside me, and I elbowed him in the gut. “Hey, watch it!” He rubbed at his rib.

Just then, the Ferris wheel motor began to whir, and we were being taken on a slow, controlled fall to the bottom. Adam closed his eyes again, and his knuckles turned whiter than normal.

I had to assure him twice that it was okay to let go of the bar once we'd reached the bottom. He wobbled sideways when he got off the ride, and Owen and I caught his arms.

“Victoria?” he said as we exited the gates of the Ferris wheel. “I learned another thing to add to things I do not like.” He craned his neck and stared up at where we'd experienced our bird's-eye view. “Heights.”

After the Ferris wheel, I decided we should try to test our hypothesis by evoking a more positive emotional response in the subject. The three of us traipsed over to the petting zoo, which I figured had a good chance of making him happy. This turned out to be a serious miscalculation since the pigs and miniature horses seemed to have a sixth sense about Adam. He spent ten minutes trying to chase them into corners to pet them, and the goats kept trying to nibble his jeans. No sooner than I'd written it, I scratched “interaction with animals” off my list.

It was when leaving the petting zoo that I spotted four people who had the capability of ruining our entire evening. Cassidy, Knox, Paisley, and William were making their way toward the Ferris wheel, which went to show how little there was to do in Hollow Pines on the weekends.

Paisley had a large plush bear straddled over her shoulders. It was pink and was wearing a sombrero and was probably taller than her. Cassidy spotted us first. She squealed when she saw Adam.

“You guys! I didn't know y'all were here.” She came running over. Her face turned grave. “It's so nice to get out and do something
normal
after…” She lowered her voice. “You know.”

“I don't know.” Owen shrugged, even though she clearly hadn't been talking to him.

Her eyes were wide as if she were seeing it all over again in her head. “The body. Victoria, surely you told him. My mom is making me be home by ten thirty tonight. Emily's and Mason's parents are going to make them see a shrink. Paisley, look who it is.” She turned around to Paisley, who was walking up at a much slower, less enthusiastic pace.

“Well, who would have thought we'd have run into a real, live celebrity,” Paisley said. She looked ridiculous parading around with a sombrero-sporting bear. But that was the thing about being popular. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Popular kids didn't do cool things. Things were cool because they did them.