*
I unlaced my fingers from the boy with the bluing lips and bent my ear down to meet them. Not even a tickle of air escaped his open mouth. I pressed my fingers into his glands, pushing through sinewy flesh in search of a pulse, but the veins remained flat and still. Placing my hands, palms down, on his chest, I leaned in with the full force of my weight and pumped. I pushed into his ribs until my muscles burned and breath rushed through me like fire, and when I couldn’t pump anymore, I tilted his head back and pressed my lips into his. He tasted like blood and rain as I blew as much life into him as I could muster. It wasn’t enough.
With each thrust, his body plopped against the pavement. At last, I collapsed onto his chest, crying big, fat tears until they collected in the back of my mouth and threatened to drown me.
I didn’t know how long I stayed like that, lying with my cheek flattened against a bloody T-shirt, but by the time I peeled myself away, I was numb. And not in the metaphorical way, either. My nail beds tingled. I couldn’t feel my face. There was the feeling that my head had literally separated from my shoulders and was starting to float off.
My palms bit into the blacktop as I levered myself to my feet. I walked in a trance back to Bert. I should have asked his name. Why hadn’t I asked his name?
I slammed the door. The cabin filled with silence even though outside the rain kept beating down. Water trickled through the cracked windshield onto the dash, reminding me of what had happened, just in case I tried to forget.
A blank pair of hazel eyes stared back at me in the rearview mirror. Smudged liner smeared down pale, pink skin, creating an inkblot test on my face. I played with the volume dial on the radio, but the engine was cut, so nothing happened.
I clutched my forearms, wrapping them around my stomach and hugging. “I … k-killed him.”
There, I said it.
My forehead fell to the steering wheel. I was at a point beyond tears. On the road to total ruin, there was anguish, hopelessness, misery, despair, and then there was me. My temples throbbed. A dreamlike quality still shrouded the recent chain of events, and it was that surreal-ness that kept me from crumpling in on myself like a paper bag. But before long my legs were restless and I couldn’t sit still with my thoughts. I reached for the door handle once more and stepped out onto the shoulder of the road. The rain’s initial fury had ebbed from a torrential downpour to a soggy mist. The asphalt took on the translucent sheen of wet oil reflecting a cloud-obscured moon.
I paced the length of the car, back and forth, shaking my head. I couldn’t just leave him there while I went for help. I glanced over at the body-shaped heap down the road. Someone might think they’d come across a hit-and-run.
My phone. My stupid phone. Already I was imagining my picture plastered on a public service announcement that warned against texting and driving. My heart slipped lower.
What did Owen mean by Eureka when he texted, anyway?
Eureka. I shook my head. That text had seemed so promising for a single moment.
More pacing. My shoes struck out at the pavement.
This was why we needed a breakthrough in the first place. If—
I stopped dead in my tracks. Owen had a breakthrough.
That was it. My heart beat faster. If we discovered how to make Mr. Bubbles come back to life, then I could save the boy. I could do better than any hospital or doctor. I could do what medicine couldn’t.
What if what was wrong with our project wasn’t the process but Mr. Bubbles himself? More mass. More watts. The blood in my veins buzzed as if charged with electric volts. I tried to shove the thought into a corner of my mind like a pile of dirty clothes pushed into the back of the closet. But the more I paced, the more the idea kept tumbling out and spreading.
The thing was, once I did this thing, there’d be no turning back. One door opens and every window in a thirty-mile radius slams shut. Except through the open door, the boy might live. He might be the breakthrough. It only takes one person brave enough to find out. That person could be me.