*
By the time I crawled into bed on the night of Adam’s first day, fatigue had reached into the cavities of my bones and clogged them up like lead fillings. An hour ago, I’d carried a plate of brisket down to the cellar and put Adam to bed on his makeshift pallet, or at least I turned off the light, seeing as how you can’t exactly tuck in a hulking teenage boy, regardless of whether he’s alive or not.
I smiled faintly to myself as I switched on the bedside lamp. When we got home, Adam had tugged at the hatch door, clamoring to get in. As soon as he did, I could see the muscles in his jaw loosen and his hands unclench.
He was home. This was his lair. Maybe he’d be more like a superhero than Owen had thought.
Yawning, I jiggered open the nightstand drawer and pulled out one of my black-and-white-speckled composition books. Even as sleep dragged on me, I forced myself, in scrawling letters, to write down everything I could remember about the past two days.
I scribbled a reminder at the top and underlined it with blue pen. Rule Number One: Catalog Everything.
I didn’t know when I fell asleep, only that once I did, it was restless, with dreams of splintering glass, and that sometime later I woke to pitch-darkness and the sound of rain pattering against the roof. Eyes unfocused, I felt around my bedspread until my hand found the lumpy outline of Einstein. She groaned and nestled deeper into the space beneath the small of my back.
A flash of lightning burst through the blinds. I let out a hoarse scream. A glimpse of a face hovered inches above mine, lit up and then disappeared into the night. I could just make out the fuzzy edges of a figure bent over the bed. I scrambled upright, tugging the sheets around my waist. A pair of eyes shone at me in the darkness, the rest of the outline stock-still.
I pressed my back to the cool wall behind my bed and twisted my fists around the cotton bedding. Einstein let out a soft woof but didn’t stir.
“Victoria?” Adam’s voice was deep and baritone.
I felt my tendons tighten into guitar strings at the base of my neck. I tried to swallow and wound up nearly choking. “Adam? God, Adam, you scared me.” My eyes were beginning to adjust to the dim light.
“Did I wake you?” He touched my knee gently over the blanket.
I pulled the neck straight on a threadbare shirt I’d stolen from Owen. “It’s the middle of the night,” I whispered. “So yeah.”
“Sorry.” The pressure from his hand lifted and his silhouette retreated a few inches farther. The tracing of his body blurred.
“What are you doing here?” I was suddenly conscious of all the embarrassing items scattered around my room. A dirty bra hanging from the back of a chair. Yesterday’s clothes still lying in a pile. A stuffed unicorn. The open notebook in which I’d been cataloging Adam’s progress. I reached for that first, shut the book, and shoved it into my nightstand drawer.
“Victoria.” The way he stood stiffly at the side of my bed was unnerving. “I’m scared.”
I rubbed my eyelids, thick with sleep. “Of what?”
He pointed outside. I crawled to the end of my bed and peeled back the curtain, but there was nothing out there. Fat rain droplets plummeted past the window, splashing onto the lawn below.
I glanced back at him. “Of the rain?”
“I don’t like it.” I caught the tremor in his voice.
“I—” I started to tell him that was silly but stopped short. Instead, I crawled back to the head of my mattress, but this time scooted over. Adam hesitated and then sat down on the empty spot. There, he tucked his hands into his armpits and rocked slowly back and forth.
“When will it stop?” he asked.
I slid closer and put my hand on his back. The ridges of his spine pressed into my palm. I marveled at the way his rib cage expanded and shrank beneath it. So alive. “I don’t know. Soon probably.” My vision adjusted to the light. I peered intensely at his profile. The slight bump at the bridge of his nose like it might have been broken once made him seem all the more real.
He was real, I reminded myself. He was real because I made him that way.
I shouldn’t have left him alone in the laboratory tonight. It was the accident. He must be having an adverse reaction to the thunderstorm because of the storm on the night he died. A fist squeezed around my heart. Which meant his memories were there, somewhere, waiting.
I decided to test the waters gently. “Is there a reason you don’t like the rain?” I suspected that if he knew the reason, he wouldn’t be coming to me for support, but if he’d uncovered the truth, I might as well know now. I studied the pronounced seam of his brow. So many answers locked away in that single head.