“Looks like your ride’s here.” She offered a small shrug and handed me a flyer. “If you do hear or see anything, call me, okay?”
“Sure,” I glanced back over my shoulder at her. She was already taping up another flyer. We’d have to circle back to tear down the rest of them later. I folded Adam’s face in half, then in quarters, until he was hidden from view, but not from memory. The boy smiling in the picture was genuine. He was more than decaying energy racing through his blood and forcing his neurons to fire. He had history. And he had Meg.
THIRTY-THREE
I wish I had access to a CT scan. Then I could really see how Adam’s brain is functioning. By my best estimate, the brain stem and cerebellum would be lit up, firing on all cylinders. The frontal lobe would exhibit moderate coloring, and the hippocampus would be waking up to the first blooms of light on the scan.
*
“Victoria Frankenstein.” Owen put the Jeep into park and extended his hand, palm up. Moonlight gleamed off the windshields of dozens of empty cars in the school lot. “Will you go to the dance with me?” A sly smile dimpled his cheek. His eyes danced under his lenses.
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t make this worse than it already is.” I climbed out of the car and stared up at the school gymnasium. “Let’s just go.”
Owen’s door banged shut. “Is it because I’m underdressed? Because I must say, you look positively stunning if I do say so myself. Who are you wearing? Is that Levi’s?”
Okay, I probably did look like hell caked over and then left to ferment in the sun. I was still wearing my clothes from last night, which now looked like they’d been left for three days in the dirty laundry bin. Instead of heels, I followed the sidewalk in a pair of threadbare high-tops. I had meant to stop home before heading to the dance, but then we’d found all those flyers and we spent every spare moment ripping them down, a difficult task when they seemed to multiply faster than fruit flies. At least my face had stopped throbbing like one giant zit waiting to be popped.
“Save your corsage,” I said. “We’re just here to find Adam.”
In front of us, the gym was busy barfing up orange and black balloons and techno beats. A white banner welcomed us to “A Night in Paris,” the theme of this year’s Homecoming dance. We walked through a cardboard cutout of the Arc de Triomphe, where a chaperone offered us a glass of “French champagne.” I sniffed the cup. My stomach rumbled. The last thing I’d eaten was a handful of tortilla chips in Knox’s kitchen. I drank the swigs of sparkling grapefruit juice in two quick gulps and wiped my mouth.
“Just so you know, if I see Knox, I’m going to kill him.”
“One illegal act at a time,” Owen said. Together, we surveyed the crowd. Adam had now been missing for nearly twenty-four hours. We’d looked everywhere we could think of, and this now seemed like the best possible bet for an Adam sighting. Unfortunately, there was no scientific term for “last-ditch effort.”
The dance was in full swing. A flock of girls passed by, hair twisted up into unnatural knots, rhinestones sparkling off chiffon dresses. “I think we should split up,” I said. “Cover twice the ground.”
“Cell phone signal?” Owen asked.
I pulled out the clunky prepaid phone I’d purchased at the mall. “Check.”
“Meet back here at the Arc de Triomphe if we haven’t found him in thirty minutes.”
I nodded, and then, without a backward glance, I disappeared into the mass of people. Even though I was a slight person, slipping through a horde of dancing bodies wasn’t easy. It was tougher still since the definition of dancing seemed to be grinding one’s rear end against the front end of someone else. I searched faces for anyone who had been at the party. “Have you seen Cassidy Hyde?” I yelled into a girl’s ear. She shook her head and kept dancing. At the center of the throng, I knew I’d reached the fifth circle of hell, where all the people who were coupled up came to make out beyond the reach of the chaperones’ watchful eyes.
I wedged my way through to the other side, where I was, at last, able to take a breath of fresh air.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I looked up to find that I had stumbled into Cassidy and Paisley, who were halfheartedly dancing in a clear space close to the stage that had been set up at the far end of the gym.
Cassidy peered down her nose at me. “I didn’t think this night could get any worse,” she said, turning her cheek. She wore a shimmery green dress and teardrop earrings that made her look like a fancy mermaid.
I guess in her eyes I deserved that. In any event, I wasn’t there to clear the air. “Have you seen Adam?”