Teen Frankenstein (37 page)

“Tor.” Owen stepped toward me. I was already making my way for the door, skipping backward. “You can't fix a body count. It didn't work. We tried.”

“I know, but maybe I should still fix him. I have to go,” I said. “I'll call you later.”

I backed out of the room, still watching the storm brewing outside.

“Tor!” Owen called, but I just pivoted and ran, ran for my car, ran for Adam, ran to chase the storm breaking overhead, and just hoped that I'd get there in time.

 

THIRTY-SIX

Lightning is caused by an imbalance between positive and negative charges. A single cloud-to-ground lightning bolt can contain up to one billion volts of electricity.

*   *   *

“Answer, answer, answer.” I shook the phone. This was my third call in a row. I dashed down the abandoned school hallway, dodging a yellow sign marking a puddle on the floor.

“No cell phones in school,” barked Old Man McCardle. He pushed the mop back and forth across the white tiles. The silver wisps of his hair covered only pieces of his bowed head, sun-pocked and wrinkled with age. A yellowing bandage, stained with dirt and sweat, wrapped around one of his hands.

I cupped the receiver. “I know, but it's an emergency.”

I hurried past while he grumbled something after me.

Just as I made it outside, the line clicked over to voice mail. “You've reached Meg. If you'd like to leave a message, do so after the…”

“Meg, it's Tor—Victoria—Frankenstein. I've been trying to get ahold of you. This is urgent. I have something that will help Adam, but I need you to meet me at the lightning generators in the Hollows as soon as possible. Even if it's raining. Tell Adam. He'll know the spot.”

I could have sworn I'd told her to answer her phone if I called. Then again, maybe it shouldn't have taken me a week to call. I crossed the parking lot and dropped into my car. I crumpled the flyer that I'd pulled from my backpack and threw it on the dash.
Think
.

I stared at my cell phone. But it remained quiet. Maybe this was some kind of sign. Maybe Owen was right. I'd been down this road. As unpleasant as it was to admit, Adam had malfunctioned. That was my doing.

The sky was a wash of gray, and I leaned into the steering wheel to watch it darken, like spilled ink coming toward us. I twisted the key and felt the motor rumble underneath me. I'd almost forgotten. I didn't believe in signs.

I was going to the Queen's Inn to find Adam for myself. A few minutes later I crossed Main Street on my way to the southeast corner of Hollow Pines. As I drove, the houses got rattier. Weeds scaled the fences of overrun lawns. The windows of a gas station had been boarded up with plywood. Meanwhile, the clouds above me engaged in a valiant standoff with the threatening downpour. The sky held steadfast, with only a few spare drops slipping through the defenses and plummeting to earth like warning missives that splashed onto my windshield.

There'd be more. A lot more. The radio's weather report beeped with severe thunderstorm warnings and a tornado watch in the area until midnight. I pulled into the seedy lot of the Queen's Inn. The motel was a squatty two-story building with bars on the windows of the bottom-floor rooms and craggy asphalt with painted yellow lines fading in the parking lot. The place reeked of imagined cigarette smoke and crushed dreams.

Most of the spots in the lot were empty. I parked mine in a back row, nearest the road and the vintage sign with slide-in letters that read
VACANCY
. Or that was what it would have read if the
y
wasn't missing from the end. My hands twisted over the steering wheel. What if he had left town? What if she told someone our secret? My stomach chewed over these possibilities. I still had time to turn back while the experiment was still in the loss column. But, instead, I unfastened my seat belt and climbed out of the car into the part of town that nice girls never went. I looked both ways and crossed the parking lot to the front entrance of the inn, where I pulled open a door with ten years' worth of fingerprints smudged on the glass.

A sleepy-eyed man with a comb-over slid his elbows off the counter upon seeing me. “Can I help you?” His tone urged me to say no, but that wasn't going to happen. A roll of thunder so faint it could have been mistaken for my stomach growling seeped through the door.

“I'm looking for a girl's room. Her name's Meg.” When he blinked, his hoodlike eyelids had only a short distance to travel. “She's about this high.” I held up my hand an inch over my own head. “Dark hair. Pointy features. Scrappy. She's with a boy named”—I hesitated—“John Wheeler.” I thought I saw a flash of recognition, a moment where his wiry eyebrows twitched.

“Sorry. We don't give out occupants' room numbers.” This was the type of place that called their customers occupants instead of guests, and I found this to be the most honest thing about the Queen's Inn.

The clerk returned to picking bits of lint from the front of his shirt.

I cleared my throat. I'd been expecting this answer. After all, it was no surprise that occupants at the Queen's Inn wouldn't want to be found. I leaned on the counter. “Then could you call them to let them know someone's here?” I used my girliest
please help me
voice, a skill, although not mastered, that was maybe the one plus I'd picked up from the Oilerettes. “I'm sure they'd like to know.”

He looked as if he didn't want to commit to moving, but, finally, he picked up the receiver. “Meg, you said? Meg what?”

“I don't really know,” I said honestly. “I—Well, truth is, I'm better friends with John and, this girl Meg and I, we're on more of a first-name basis only. Know what I mean?”

He grunted but didn't seem perturbed. In a place like this, there were probably plenty of people who had reasons for obscuring their name for some reason or other.

Behind the counter, he ran his finger down a list.

“She's skinny,” I said. “Pretty. I guess, anyway.”

He didn't glance up. “I know the one.” His voice was gruff. “Not a lot of young kids like you staying here.” He perched a pair of glasses on his nose and peered down through the lenses. With a dirty fingernail, he punched the numbers into the phone's keypad and I watched, holding my breath.

First a nine. That was to be able to dial, I figured. Then a two, followed by a one, then another two:
2-1-2.

Room 212
, I recited silently. I waited for the phone to ring in his ear. I worried the guy would go narcoleptic on the phone, but he hung up and stated, “They're not answering.”

I shrugged. “No problem. Thanks for trying.”

At least I knew that they were still staying here. I left the dingy clerk's office armed with Meg's room number and stuffed my hands into my pockets to keep them out of the wind. Without stopping, I climbed up the two flights of steps that ran alongside the fire escape.

I found Room 212 four doors down. The second “2” hung cockeyed from its nail. Inside, the window blinds were drawn.

I used the tarnished brass knocker to rap on the door. “Come on, come on.” I bobbed up and down on my toes. I knocked again. The bottom had dropped out on the atmospheric pressure, and the temperature was falling along with it. The storm was strengthening. But where was Adam?

Again, there was no answer. I glanced over my shoulder. No one was around. I dug my teeth into my lower lip and wiggled the door handle. Locked. My heart thumped. I wondered if I'd officially lost my marbles. But that was the thing about losing it: You were usually too far gone to care. From my back pocket, I pulled my wallet and slid out my driver's license. Bending down, I inserted the license between the doorframe and door and slid it down toward the latch. It took several attempts until I heard the
click
that meant I'd successfully maneuvered the license in between the lock and frame.

With a whiny creak, the door popped open an inch. The room inside was a dark, tea-stained brown. The soles of my shoes sank into a spongy, carpeted floor as I slipped in and pulled the door shut behind me. I chained the lock and pressed my back to the door, letting my eyes adjust. A musty odor emanated from the comforters on two separate beds.

“Hello?” I called. The room was quiet except for the buzz of the window air-conditioning unit. All I needed was a hint of where they might have gone or when the last time was that they were here. I forced myself to move away from the wall and made a beeline for a duffel bag squished tightly between the television and minifridge.

I dug into a pile of clothes. If I had any doubt as to whether I had the right room, it went out the window when I found the treasure trove of cutoff denim. The girl loved to take scissors to jeans—shorts, skirts, it didn't matter. Soon, I was squatting amid a denim massacre.

But it was underneath a pair of underwear that I saw the glint of a screen. I pinched a red thong, the kind I'd never personally own, between two fingers and dropped it on the pile of clothes.

I picked up the shiny black tablet. The silhouette of my face reflected off the screen. I swiped my thumb across the bottom, and the tablet came to life. Bingo.

The background lit up blue, displaying a dozen icons. I tapped the one for “mail,” but it wasn't set up. I cursed under my breath and closed out of the application. I selected the Internet app instead and the browser expanded.

I navigated to Meg's search history. A long list appeared, showing the last two weeks of activity. I scrolled. I didn't even know what I was looking for. A clue. Anything. Shopping websites filled the bulk of her history, and I grew impatient as I paged my way through.

From the hallway, I heard the sound of approaching voices. I stiffened, glancing around for somewhere to hide if I had to. Under the beds? The bathroom? They got closer. Shadows crossed the blinds. Footsteps. They were at the door, and then, in the space in which I was sure a key would slip into the lock, the footsteps began fading. They passed by the room. I let out a long whoosh of air and returned to the contents of the tablet.

Partway down, though, the word
fire
caught my attention. The link was to a news article. I clicked it, and the screen went white before flashing to the local news site for Hugo, a town north of Hollow Pines, across the Oklahoma border.

The headline, at once, stopped me cold:
Fatal house fire was intentionally set, officials say
. I read without wanting to. I read knowing what I might see. But the important thing was, I read anyway.

Unified Fire Authority investigators ruled out natural gas as the cause of a fire that destroyed 408 East Trice Street in Tuesday's late-evening hours. Unified Fire Battalion Chief Aaron Blanton issued a statement confirming, “… some other form of accelerant was spread in several places throughout the house.”

James Flacco, 21, perished in the fire. An autopsy will confirm whether Flacco died as a result of the fire or whether his death occurred at some time earlier in the night.

My skin went from hot to cold to clammy and sweat-ridden like I was consumed by fever. I had finally found the house. My hands quivered. I set the tablet down and heard it knock against something hard in the bag.

I pushed a rolled-up shirt to the side, and my finger grazed something smooth and hard. Carefully, I lifted a gun out of Meg's bag.

My veins whooshed against my eardrums. Despite living my entire life in Texas, I'd never held one before. The short, angular handgun was light in my grip. I balanced it between handle and barrel.

My thoughts tumbled one on top of the other, roaring like a waterfall. Adam. The flashback. The screams. The fire. Meg. Gun.

That was what Meg meant by trouble. Someone died. I stared at the words on the screen. I hadn't created the monster. I'd just uncovered the person there waiting. It was John lurking underneath the surface. Not my methods.
John.

But my loyalty was to Adam.

Still shaking, I stuffed clothes back into the bag, then tucked the gun unnaturally underneath my arm. When I stood up, my head filled with hot air, and I had to wait three
Mississippi
s for the feeling to pass.

The world around me was sharp and dreamlike all at once. I unchained the lock and slipped back out onto the balcony. Still no sign of Adam. In the parking lot, a blue truck was parked next to my car. It looked empty, but the motor was running. I caught a silhouette of my own reflection in the truck's window as I passed by.

I threaded my way through the space in between and popped open the door to my car. From the center cup holder, the screen of my phone flashed blue. I leaned over, maneuvering my knee onto the seat so I could pull out the phone. I recognized Meg's area code on the missed-call notification. My heart jumped.
Finally
.

I was entering the phone's password when I felt a shadow cross me. A whiff of tobacco. Then a brush of hair on my cheek. I didn't have time to scream before a coarse rag was shoved over my mouth and nose. The grip of strong arms hugged me to a stranger's chest. Something sweet filled my nostrils, and a wave of nausea rushed up my throat just before the world disappeared.

 

THIRTY-SEVEN

A half-life will grow shorter the more energy that is released. Therefore, a vast quantity of energy is needed as a starting point to sustain Adam for a greater length of time. It would need to be a supersource.

*   *   *

Pressure filled the space between my temples in waves. I lay still as a possum and counted to five, then to ten, then to five again to see if the last surge had left me. When the pressure faded, I dragged my forehead from a hard wooden surface to a world where everything was blurry. Tilted. Unrecognizable. I tried to sit up. Somewhere outside dogs barked, and I briefly thought of Einstein. My arms scraped the wood. Splinters flaked off and stuck in my skin. I groaned. The back of my throat burned like it'd been seared with acid. My hands, I realized, wouldn't budge. They were paralyzed. Stuck together. My feet felt as if needles were attacking them. They tingled, dead asleep. How long had I been lying here? I squinted through my eyelashes. An intricate knot looped around my wrists and ankles.