“Oh, come on. Life is short, Ben.” My mom got up and wrapped her arms around my dad’s neck, then leaned over to kiss his ear. “Let them have a sneak peek of this thing you love. It’ll be fun. You used to have fun with them all the time, remember?”
We did used to have fun with him. He was always the best at making up puzzles or designing family treasure hunts whenever we were on a road trip, and once upon a time he would play Legos with us for hours. He was never the warm and fuzzy type like my mom, but he had his own things with us and I loved them, too. Until for some reason this particular study came along and devoured the part of him that had always belonged to us.
When my mom rested her forehead against his, his whole body softened.
“Okay, fine.” He leaned back in his chair and tossed his napkin down. “I surrender. Let’s do it.”
“What?” I asked, feeling queasy. It had not occurred to me that he could possibly say yes. I was not at all into any kind of mental assessment. I already knew all I needed to about my monkey mind. “Seriously?”
“Yeah!” Cassie pumped her arms in the air.
“What do you mean, ‘okay’?” Gideon looked like he’d just been slapped. “All Cassie has to do is ask and all of a sudden you say yes?”
“I am not saying yes to Cassie, Gideon. I am unable to say no to your mother. Someday you will understand.” My dad stood from the table, seeming brighter than he had in a long time. “Listen, I’ll make it up to you—how about you go first?”
Downstairs in the basement—my dad’s home lab—Gideon, Cassie, and I sat stiffly on my dad’s bright-red couch and watched him set up. It wasn’t bad-looking down there these days, not since my mom had insisted on improvements: a shaggy cream carpet, some posters on the walls, the bright Ikea sofa. With my dad spending so many hours down there, she’d worried he’d get depressed.
“I’ll hook you up to the electrodes to monitor your heart rate, perspiration, and all that,” he said. “We’ll run the test in pairs, two of you having a conversation, while the third does the reading. That is the bulk of the study. We’ll keep the whole thing shorter than the actual study, but we’ll also do it with the blindfold and with the noise-canceling headphones and then with both so you can get a general sense of that part, too.”
“A conversation about what?” Gideon asked, probably nervous that his feelings for Cassie would somehow come out.
And I was a little nervous, too, for what would happen when my dad’s test revealed somehow that I was extra insane?
“Don’t worry, I’ll give you the topics. They are meant to generate some emotion—so there’s something for the reader to intuit. But nothing too personal.” My dad pulled three chairs into a triangle formation. “Cassie and Wylie can have a conversation first, and Gideon will be the reader.” He set about hooking Gideon up to all the wires—electrodes, a pulse monitor. And now he seemed like he was enjoying himself. “The equipment I have here isn’t nearly as sophisticated as what I have at my lab on campus. The chairs there read the slightest shift in body temperature and muscle response. Because a piece of this is, of course, about someone reading not just how you think you’re feeling, but how you really feel.”
He moved over to hook me up to the same set of wires. But I was so tense already (because I am tense always), I wondered if it was possible I would short out the machines. I wanted to kill Cassie for getting me into this.
But when I looked over at her, she smiled and mouthed, “Thank you.” And she had this look in her eyes that felt like love.
And I thought, for the first time in a long time, that maybe she and I would be okay. After all, didn’t we have to be?
My phone vibrates in my hand, startling me. Cell coverage again, finally. Probably not for long. All the alerts I’ve missed come through in a blast. Four calls and one text from my dad. Three new texts from Cassie. My mouth feels dry looking down at all of them.
I read the texts from Cassie first. Where are you guys? And then, when I didn’t respond, Is everything okay? How much longer? I’m scared. And then the last, just minutes ago: Never mind what I said. Go to the police in Seneca. It’s not safe anymore for anyone. I’m sorry I got u mixed up in this. But don’t text my mom. Please. She will make it worse.
I would have sworn all I wanted was for Cassie to give us permission to make this emergency someone else’s problem. But I hadn’t counted on how much more worried it would make me once she finally did.
“Cassie says we can go to the police in Seneca.” I type the town name quickly into Google Maps, hoping to get some directions or at least how far it is before we lose the signal again. I feel a surge of relief when the pin drops in the center of Seneca. “It’s not far, ten more minutes on this road, then Route 4 for thirty miles, then Route 151 for another ten.”
“Is she okay?” Jasper asks.
“She didn’t say. But she was still texting as of a half hour ago. That’s a good sign.”