I felt my gait take on the grim weight of an executioner’s march, even though the execution had already taken place. As I drew closer, the boy’s glassy eyes became unavoidable. Hard and unseeing as marbles, he stared up at the night sky like he might be studying the constellations. What had he been doing walking across a country road in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm? And who was Meg?
A pang of guilt twisted through my side. Dogs started barking in the distance. I looked over. Every light was on in the closest farmhouse. The highway butted up against a fence connecting the cornfields, but the fields were huge. Surely nobody could hear the crash from here, let alone see it. I quickened my pace and the dogs barked even louder. A correlating relationship, not causal, I had to remind myself. If two events occur together, that didn’t mean they had a cause-and-effect relationship. The dogs weren’t barking because of me. They couldn’t be. Could they?
I took a deep breath, then crouched and slid my wrists underneath his armpits. The heft of his torso pulled me down. My back strained against the mass of what felt like a six-foot-two linebacker.
I arched, hoisting him higher on my skinny frame. My thighs quivered as I shuffled backward, taking tiny steps in the direction of Bert. I really should have pulled the stupid car closer. I wrapped the body in a bear hug. My fingers barely touched across his chest and I caught a whiff of tropical-scented shampoo.
After a few feet, my biceps were screaming for mercy. I let his upper half collapse onto the road. Stretching, I wiped a hand across my forehead and felt a smear of wetness the texture of leftover jam. I jerked my hand away. My fingers were covered in a fresh coat of blood.
“Oh god.” I coughed, hocking over my shoulder.
I squeezed my eyes shut and lugged the boy back upright. His jeans skidded across the blacktop.
“Almost … there…” I huffed as if he were somehow invested in the journey. With a final heave, I leaned my unwilling passenger up against Bert’s back tire. His chin slumped onto his chest and a chill ran through me.
I popped the trunk. I started with his upper body, digging my shoulder into the boy’s belt buckle, and winched him over my shoulder so I could use the full force of my body to propel him up into Bert’s spacious trunk. There was a clunk as his skull hit the trunk’s fiberglass lid.
His legs hung out the rear end like a dead deer. I swung one limb over the side, where it landed on the black carpeting with a dull ker-thunk, then the other. Crystallized in time, this was the sort of life moment that’d be better left on the side of the road like discarded luggage, and, in truth, I never thought I’d be the girl to cart around emotional baggage. It was almost comical how wrong I’d been. Because I was clearly more the type of girl who took her mistakes, bundled them up in the back of her car, and drove.
FIVE
The Final Dissection of Mr. Bubbles Six:
I began by carefully removing the skin to expose the muscles below, using scissors and forceps. I began the incision at the top of the neck and continued toward the tail. The muscular structure, including the biceps brachii, the triceps brachii, and the latissimus dorsi were all still intact despite the effects of the higher electrostimulation, a fact which is promising. The lymph glands, however, appeared darker than on Bubbles Four or Five. Will preserve them along with the heart, lungs, and liver for the laboratory.
*
I cut quietly across the lawn to Owen’s window on the rear side of a large brick house. Owen had one of those houses you could just tell had a real family inside. Trimmed shrubs, a pebbled walkway leading up to a cheery red door, and a wooden bench swing that hung from one of the trees. I stalked through the grass. We didn’t hang out at Owen’s house much. Mainly because we didn’t like his housekeeper chasing us out of rooms or his mom constantly checking if we wanted cookies. Plus, his house didn’t have a place where it was okay to store flammable liquids.
I looked both ways, then tapped the glass. “Owen,” I hissed. His light was off and my breath fogged up the glass as I smushed my nose to the windowpanes. “Owen! Owen Bloch, open this window right now!”
When I couldn’t see movement in the shadows, I dug the tips of my fingers underneath the sill and tried to pry it open myself. I was making zero progress when the window slid open and Owen popped his head through. His hair stuck out at sharper angles than usual and he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He squinted out into the night. “Tor, is that you?”
I was instantly annoyed. Owen had a breakthrough and now he was sleeping? “I’m sorry,” I said. “Do many other girls stop by your window in the middle of the night?”
He fumbled around inside and after a moment located his glasses. Spectacles in place, he squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, and yawned. “I’m going to guess there is a ninety-nine-point-five percent chance that whatever it is you’re about to tell me could have waited until morning.”