She looked down at her knotted hands. “This guy and his friends were bad, and being with him meant being involved with both. I did some things I shouldn’t have. I’m young. I experimented. We all did. Better than sitting and waiting to die.” She rubbed her arms like she’d caught a sudden chill. “But by the end, I owed them money and I wanted out. When I tried to stop, Jimmy wouldn’t let me.” I recognized the name. Jimmy, short for “James.” James Flacco, the man who died at 408 East Trice Street. “I told John that Jimmy had been hitting me. It wasn’t true. But I did believe he might have killed me. Sooner or later, anyway. I knew John had … a temper. There’d been a few other incidents. Lots of guys in Hugo were angry, though. I knew when I told John about Jimmy that he’d lose it. So I let him and that was when it happened.…” She trailed off.
My eyes flashed with anger that she’d done this to Adam. But then again, there would be no Adam without her. “Then how come you had a gun?” I demanded of Meg.
She let out a short, mirthless laugh. “I knew that looked familiar. For protection. From Jimmy’s friends,” she said. “I’m not exactly the most popular girl in town right now. John even less so. The question is why’d you go searching through my things.”
“I needed to find you.”
Adam studied his knuckles. “I killed Knox. I killed Jimmy. I would’ve killed him, too.” He looked over his shoulder at McCardle’s crumpled body. “I’m a monster.”
I grasped his chin between my finger and thumb and looked into his eyes. “The generators worked, Adam. You’re not a monster. If I’m right, the energy source should hold. At least a lot longer. You can be Adam.”
“I can only be both,” he said. I cut my glance to Meg. She looked away, shifted her weight. “And I’ll always be this,” he continued. “Dead.”
“No. Don’t say that. I made you.”
“I know, Victoria. Thank you. But you made me.”
My intestines writhed like slime-laden earthworms. “Adam, you can’t stay here,” I said. “Not after Knox. Not after Jimmy. You’ll never get a fair shot.” I had destroyed the keeper of the secret, the one who knew what Adam was, but who he was could still catch up to him.
“Victoria, no.”
I shut my eyes to block out his pained expression. I’d abandoned him once, and now I was doing it for a second time. “You have to. It’s the only way that makes sense. At least for now.”
All around us, the clearing was cast in an eerie light.
“My aunt has a house in Laredo,” Meg said. “We’ll head there for now.”
“What about your injuries?” Owen asked.
Carefully pinching the fabric, I peeled up Adam’s pant leg. Deep lacerations churned up loose skin. Blood coagulated in the sunken wounds. I was pretty sure the cuts went down to the bone. “His platelet count has been double what it needs to be. It may be enough to heal him more quickly.”
Beads of rain dripped from his hair. I thought of the tree-branch scars that braided his chest, and I wanted to memorize him, all of him.
“Adam,” I said softly.
“Victoria.”
I breathed in from my nose, out through my mouth, and tore my eyes away. “The charge should hold, but if it doesn’t, don’t let it get too far. Always stay alert.” I glared at Meg when I said this. “You let him get too far gone. You see what happens now. Promise me.”
“I promise,” she said, and I knew I had no choice but to trust her, even though I still didn’t.
The rain had nearly dissipated. The sky had turned milky. The night clouds swirled in uneven patterns, blotting out the stars.
“Go,” I said before I could change my mind. “We’ll take care of all this.”
My throat became sore and achy. With Adam’s last look, he didn’t hug me. We didn’t shake hands. He only held my gaze for what felt like a small eternity, and then he was gone. Owen wrapped his arm around my shoulders and squeezed as the pair of them disappeared into the Hollows.
FORTY
With a heavy heart, I’m closing the Adam file today. Adam has been my greatest achievement. I’m looking into the possibility of getting recently euthanized cats and dogs from the local animal shelter. Will report with availability. Otherwise, I may have to look into less palatable means of getting large mammals.
*
People would believe anything that fit within their version of reality. Some days I was convinced that the people of our town chose not to see Adam for what he really was. Now he was nothing more than a memory in Hollow Pines—a ghost—which was funny seeing as how he’d been dead all along.
I stood with Owen next to our flimsy piece of poster board, waiting for the judges to evaluate our project. By now the burns around my wrists from McCardle’s rope were a ring of ragged orange scabs, half peeled from the skin. I used my sleeves to cover them up and the nubs of my fingernails to scratch them now that they itched constantly. The judges consisted of two senior science teachers, a junior college professor, Principal Wiggins, and an oil-rig engineer. All around the cafeteria, students sat with their creations—oozing volcanoes, models of the solar system, and seeds sprouting weeds.
“That kid blew up balloons using Pop Rocks,” I said, crossing my arms and eyeing a set of three soda bottles whose necks were covered with blown-up latex. “And I thought our project was bad.” Science fair projects were mandatory in most science classes, but effort tended to be lackluster. The school fair was only a stepping-stone, anyway, for the team that got to move on to county and then state. Owen and I had won every year, and this one was supposed to be our best. Our brightest.