“Mom!” I shrieked. “Turn it back. I was watching that.”
She opened the Styrofoam lid. “My soaps are on,” she said. “Tonight we find out if Eliza was really having an affair with Dr. Lee. Oh, I forgot syrup.” Mom meandered back to the kitchen, and I clicked the button to return to the news program.
A shot of a lakeshore surrounded by reeds and sinking moss lingered on-screen. A yellow ambulance near the edge flashed red and white lights onto the surface. Below the shot the caption read Lake Crook. A team of uniformed men and women were busying themselves around the water.
“The boy’s body was recovered sometime after two this afternoon when a sports fisherman noticed the body being washed against the shore,” the anchorwoman continued solemnly. Body?
I moved to the edge of the sofa and rested my elbows on my knees.
Mom returned with a glass of wine, a fork, and no syrup. “Tor, I told you I was watching that. It’s a very important episode.”
“Shhhhh!” I said. “Just a second.”
“Tor Frankenstein!” She stood directly in front of the television. I moved a foot to the right to see.
“You forgot the syrup again,” I told her.
She looked down at the fork and the brimming glass of wine and cursed. A few seconds later I heard her open the fridge and begin rummaging.
“… exclusively to Channel 8 to tell us the gruesome details of the body’s recovery.” The anchorwoman finished just as the screen cut to a man in camouflage overalls and a lure hanging from the brim of his cap.
“I’ve never see anything like it,” the man said. “And I’ve been fishing here for twenty years and have never seen anything like it,” he repeated, rubbing his chin. “It was like an animal had gotten ahold of the boy’s ankle. It was that torn up. Like maybe a bear had attacked him. And his other leg, well, it was missing completely.”
The camera panned wider and the field reporter turned to face it. “Authorities will be investigating the cause—”
The channel flipped to a man in a surgical mask and scrubs making eyes at a young nurse. I hadn’t even noticed Mom come in. I sat pinned to my seat, blood whooshing through my arteries. Trent Westover had been found. It wasn’t Adam. I laughed out loud; I was so relieved until Mom slapped at my elbow and hushed me.
“It’s not funny,” she muttered. “Dr. Lee could lose his teaching job at the hospital. His daughter is sick.”
“What? Oh. Yeah.” I blinked, still feeling the tickle of laughter building inside. “Sorry.”
Then I noticed the heap of pancakes sitting in front of me, and for the first time all day I felt really, truly hungry, so I took a fork and dug in.
SIXTEEN
Hypothesis: A re-administering of the electrical charge will sustain circulatory and organ function.
Process: Same methodology followed with lower voltage.
Conclusion: Experiment was successful, though shockingly (pun intended), Adam seemed to exhibit signs of physical pain post-electrotherapy and elicited incoherent words.
Observations: Personality shift observed right after electrostimulation. Perhaps stimulus to cranial cortex. Personality shift subsided shortly thereafter and no further anomalies have been observed.
*
The discovery of Trent’s body buoyed my mood more than it probably should have. For one, it wasn’t polite to gloat when a teenage boy was found with one leg mauled and the other completely gone and, for two, it solved only a fraction of one of my problems, which left at least two big, fat, granddaddy-sized predicaments to topple over and crush me at any given moment—there was the shattered phone that, science would suggest, hadn’t appeared on my porch by magic and the fact that someone, somewhere, even if it wasn’t the Westovers, was probably looking for Adam, my Adam, and if they found him, it wouldn’t be either dead or alive.
But instead of feeling the weight of any of those things, I was starting the school day feeling nearly invincible. The experiment was working. The sun was shining. Adam was a student at Hollow Pines High. Today, for the first time, it felt as though it was all beginning to fall into place.
“Um, Tor? Why are people staring at us?” Owen said, smiling through gritted teeth. The sun reflected off the morning dew, bright enough to leave a sunburn. The smell of freshly mowed grass permeated the air. It was summer in September.
Adam trudged through the gravel lot beside us. The pools of crimson that had pocketed beneath his skin had all completely disappeared, and the dark circles beneath his eyes had lightened.
“Huh?” I tore myself from my thoughts and noticed that we did seem to be drawing attention. “I have no idea. Do I have toilet paper stuck to my shoe?”
Owen actually fell back several paces to check. “No, rider, you’re clear for takeoff.”
“God, you’re a geek.” I rolled my eyes.