Teen Frankenstein (26 page)

I spun the dial to my locker and pulled out my physics textbook and stuffed it into an already overstuffed book bag when out of the corner of my eye I saw Cassidy dressed head to toe in orange and black. She squealed as soon as she saw me lurking and dragged Paisley over.

“Happy Junior Class Spirit Day!” she said as though this were as natural a thing to say as
Merry Christmas!

Bah humbug
, I thought while struggling to zip my bag. I was losing track of the days, but if it was the junior class's day, that must have meant it was Wednesday. Freshmen on Monday, sophomores for Tuesday, seniors on Thursday. Yes, Wednesday. I made a mental note. Each class was in charge of making one of the days of Spirit Week “special.” I didn't take my duties seriously.

Cassidy spun her bag around and unfastened a giant round pin that read
Get Loud
in school colors. “Thank God I thought to bring you one, Victoria. We're selling them for student council. You look the opposite of spirited. You look…” She curled her lip, taking in my fitted black shirt and sneakers. “Apathetic.”

“I'm not apathetic,” I insisted, feeling defensive. “Apathy is for kids pretending to be smart and stoners. I'm neither of those things. I'm an independent thinker. Like, I don't know, Galileo.” The zipper finally closed, pinching the tip of my finger and causing me to jerk it back. “Or something.”

Paisley sputtered out laughing. “I told you not to waste your time, Cass.”

A heart-shaped pucker formed between Cassidy's eyebrows. A slight frown creased either side of her mouth.

“That's not true,” I said quickly. It turned out I would do just about anything to prove Paisley Wheelwright wrong.

Cassidy grinned. “See?” She stuck her tongue out at Paisley, who dismissed her with a wave. “I knew she'd like it.” Cassidy threaded the pin through the fabric of my previously plain-Jane tee.

“Go Oilers?” I said lamely. My outward show of school spirit was no doubt a surefire sign of the coming apocalypse.

As though in response to this cosmic shift in the balance of the universe, there was a ripple through the hallway. One of those invisible movements you felt like a magnetic force field. It started somewhere at the far end from which the commotion was beginning to carry. There, the crowd of people was beginning to churn like sharks spotting chum in the water.

Cassidy and Paisley turned.

“What the hell's going on?” Paisley asked.

The current of bodies was reaching us now. Girls leaned in with cupped hands and sidelong whispers. Paisley marched up to one and tapped her on the shoulder, demanding to be let in on whatever had the attention of the entire student body. I could tell she wasn't used to not being the first to know. I wasn't used to caring.

Paisley's eyebrows shot up. Her blond bob swept her shoulders as she shook her head. Cassidy and I shared a look.

The first bell rang, but instead of hurrying off to class, students were leaving the building. “Come on.” Paisley grabbed Cassidy by the arm. “That freshman told me there's something on the building and the administration hasn't been able to cover it up yet.” While not exactly an invitation, it was enough of one for me. “I hope it's about Principal Wiggins.”

I ignored the first bell sounding through the intercom and followed them past the administration office and out onto the front lawn. Students snaked like a trail of ants toward the stadium, stopping short and curling around the side of the building.

A clump formed at the end of the line where they all stood staring in the same direction. There seemed to be an invisible line across which no one would step.

Finally, we joined them. Across the exit to the boys' locker room red dripped in stringy rivulets down the side of the school building. Jagged letters scrawled across the tin door, spilling onto the brick on either side. The writing had the metallic taste of violence, as if the brush had been wielded like a weapon, and positioned below it, like an abandoned puppet, was a third body.

Someone shrieked. “Is that
real
?”

An arrow stuck out from the boy's throat. Silvery netting wound around his legs and up his torso like a fly stuck in a spider's web. The boy was small. He couldn't have been more than a freshman, with skinny arms that poked out of baggy sleeves. His chin drooped onto a frail chest. A ring of burned flesh was carved into the scalp. His feet splayed out from the school, shoes that were too big for his body like he might have shot up next summer if he'd been given the chance. There were more screams now. Girls shielded their eyes. I couldn't take mine away. At his sides, the boy's wrists pointed up like a sacrifice. And he might have been sleeping or passed out.

If he hadn't been dead.

If it hadn't been for the missing eyes.

I stared into the hollows where the whites had been carved from the sockets and blood left tearstained streaks down his cheeks. The vacant expression leftover haunted the daylight and drained the warmth from my skin. Bloodied eyelids hung limply, half covering the empty holes.

Kids covered their mouths, and I flinched at every muffled gag that sounded from nearby. I gulped down my last memory from that locker room last night. Adam lying on the floor. Damp, water dripping. Crickets and nighttime and no one around. The thought sent a shudder through me. The spaces between my fingers grew slippery.

“Back inside!” Coach Carlson had arrived on the scene and was yelling into a megaphone. “One week's detention for anyone that's not in their seats in five minutes.”

The wail of sirens grew closer. A teacher shuffled in front of the students, herding them away, shooing them. She kept glancing over her shoulder at the dead body, too, and the empty sockets. Glancing and shooing, glancing and shooing, as if we were all passing by one giant car accident.

I didn't know if it was the threat of detention or the approaching sirens or if everyone wanted to get away from a spot that felt all of a sudden unconsecrated, but the herd began to slowly turn back in the direction of the front entrance.

I took a final glance back at the glistening words, penned in dripping blood.

The Father Said Drink In The Blood & Share Ye The Resurrection.

I then flitted my eyes away, worried that the act of reading itself marked me as one of the damned.

 

TWENTY-SIX

The subject has lost five pounds in the last two days. His eyes are dilated. It's becoming increasingly clear that a new energy source, with a longer half-life, is needed to sustain him or we'll risk losing the progress shown to date in the data.

*   *   *

Instead of class, the school staff corralled the entire student body into the gymnasium and told us to sit on the bleachers and when those were full to sit on the floor. We caught sight of Owen and Adam, and while I knew she'd never admit it, I got the feeling Cassidy found the emergence of a crisis on school grounds to be
très romantique
. An excuse to leech onto Adam, who, to her credit, was tailor-made to play the strong, silent type.

We climbed up a set of bleachers after the other upperclassmen, with Adam and Cassidy trailing. Owen rolled his eyes. “Someone get the fair lady her smelling salts before she faints,” he said.

I looked back. “Don't be a jerk. We're making progress. I think he actually likes her. Look at how he watches her.”

“I think it seems as if he likes everyone.”

We scooted past a row of students to a few empty spots near the top of the bleachers. “What do you mean by ‘it
seems
'?”

“Nothing.” He sat down and slid over to make room. I didn't peel my eyes away from him. His shoulders scrunched up to his ears. “
Nothing
,” he repeated. “God, you don't need to go all mama bear on me.”

The roar of a thousand voices filled the gymnasium.

Adam tapped me on the shoulder, his face calm and serene and innocent as ever. “Victoria, what are we doing here?”

The corner of my eye caught the red scabs on his knuckles, and I quickly glanced back up. “Damage control.”

On cue, Mrs. Van Lullen waddled out in a tight black pencil skirt and orange cardigan. She dragged a screeching podium to center court. She tottered away on clunky heels, and Principal Wiggins, who was built like a bullfrog, appeared, tugging at the tie around the spot where his head and shoulders met. The man had no neck. He tapped the podium microphone, and the thumping reverberated around the room. He leaned over. “Hello?” Mrs. Van Lullen reemerged and whispered something in his ear. “Oh.” He cleared his throat. “Okay then.” A hushed silence blanketed the room save for the choked heaving of a single person's sobs. “Most of you know why we're here,” Principal Wiggins began. He spoke close to the microphone with his head bowed, probably trying to strike the right balance between authoritative and grim. “We're not releasing the name of the victim at this time, but a student's body was found this morning outside of the boys' locker room.” This sparked a round of tittering, and Principal Wiggins had to hold up one hand to make it stop. “This marks the third murder in Hollow Pines in the span of weeks. Precautions must be taken to protect our students. If you spot anything or anyone that looks suspicious, report it to an adult immediately. Students are to go home directly after all extracurriculars, and the Hollow Pines police have asked me to convey that all persons under the age of eighteen will be subject to a ten o'clock curfew as an added safety measure.”

This time the crowd elicited a collective groan. “But it's Homecoming,” called a voice in the crowd.

“Which will now be over at nine,” said Principal Wiggins. “In order to ensure that everyone has time to get home for curfew.”

“This blows,” yelled another voice to shouts of agreement.

“His body's not even cold yet,” I said to Owen. “And already his death is an inconvenience.”

“Surprised you're not going to try to bring him back, too,” he whispered. “You could have an entire army of—” I elbowed him. He croaked and shut up.

Principal Wiggins raised his voice over the crowd. “The police will be pulling certain students to question them.”

Cassidy bent forward to talk to us. “I wonder if they'll question us since we were there. You think?” She said this like it was a good thing.

“Why? We don't know anything,” I said too quickly.

My heartbeat picked up. Adam plus police plus alibis. Under scrutiny, it all seemed to add up to a mudslide of worst-case scenarios, and I was standing at the bottom waiting to get buried.

When Cassidy returned her attention to the gym floor, I tilted toward Adam. “You didn't see anybody here last night?” I asked, voice low, half wanting him to say that he had, that he hadn't been the only one on campus. “No other cars in the parking lot?”

Principal Wiggins continued to drone on about the closure of the boys' locker room and where counseling would be available for students that needed somewhere to cope with this most recent tragedy. Adam shook his head. “Is this my fault?”

“No.” I closed my eyes and willed myself to be patient with him. “And don't say that, either. To anyone. Don't mention that you were there.”

“I should lie.” He said it as a statement, one that I wished he'd have said more quietly.

“Think of it as leaving out part of the truth. It's more of a secret. A secret between us. You like when we have our secrets, right?”

“Just us?”

I squeezed his hand, then felt Cassidy watching us, monitoring. I pulled it away. “Just us,” I said.

“Um, Tor?” Owen nudged me. “You might want to take a look at this.” He tilted the screen of his phone toward me. I recognized the basic blue-and-white background of the Lie Detector message boards.

I snatched the phone and scrolled the page. I couldn't reach the bottom. It was as if the comments on the Hunter of Hollow Pines thread went on forever.

“The number of posts has more than quadrupled in the last hour,” he said.

“Are they about…?” I clicked the screen off and shoved it back into Owen's lap like it was contaminated.
Adam
, I thought, but didn't say it.

“Some of them.” His mouth formed a hard line. “But if the rate continues, more than five hundred people will have viewed the comments by tomorrow. It's out there, Tor, and I'm not sure you can stop it.”

I refused to let myself contemplate how much time Adam had had unsupervised this morning once we'd arrived at school. Had it been fifteen minutes? Thirty? Would that have been enough? And if so, enough for what?

My throat was parched. I folded my hands in my lap and stared at the podium and Principal Wiggins behind it. “Then no more mistakes,” I said. “We have to make sure there's nothing else to get out there, okay? It's simple. We just have to be perfect.”

We can be perfect
.

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

Stage 3 of the experiment will revolve around a new energy source for the subject.

*   *   *

The administration locked the doors. Off-campus lunch privileges were revoked. All PE classes were held indoors until further notice. For the rest of the day, we'd been trapped inside a cinder block cage with what felt like a shrinking oxygen supply. At the final bell, students rushed for open air. I was one of them. I grabbed my things and headed straight for the stadium to wait out football practice. At this point, there was no way I was leaving Adam alone. Not in Hollow Pines. Not with the Hunter on the loose. And … for other reasons, too, reasons that lodged painfully in my throat like a pill that refused to go down. Reasons that couldn't be true. They just couldn't be.

I scaled the stadium steps to a spot a few rows from the top bleachers. It looked like every sport except for the football team had canceled practice today. But this was Hollow Pines and this was Homecoming we were talking about.
The show must go on
, I thought drily. I popped off the orange-and-black pin fastened to my shirt and tossed it into my bag. My books made a loud clang when I plopped them down on the metal bleacher beside me. The seat was hard and cool. Up high, a strong wind swelled, peeling back the covers of one of my textbooks. I pinned it in place, then wrapped my arms around my knees, shuddering in the unexpectedly brisk air. The weather was changing. Above me, stray leaves fluttered before falling onto the sidewalk below.