by Jake Wolff
So I lowered Number 50 into the water maze for a second time, and he began to swim. Sammy was right. If Number 50 had been a healthy rat, he would have shown at least some improvement on this second try. But Number 50 wasn’t healthy. In the previous study, he was electroshocked so many times—the electrodes placed near his dime-size brain—that his memory functions were shot. He couldn’t remember where to find the platform. He simply began his lap anew, hugging the walls. Without my intervention, he would have drowned.
When we were finished, Sammy invited me back to his apartment for dinner. “Have you ever made sushi?” he asked, and I didn’t tell him that I’d never eaten sushi and had only the barest conception, from cooking shows, of its shape and color.
It was just after five when we arrived, which meant his little apartment had received a full day’s worth of summer sun. The air inside was hot and dry, and this bothered Sammy more than it bothered me. I remembered what he’d said—“I’ve never really fit in anywhere”—and it was true that he never seemed comfortable. He was always too hot or too cold, always adding or removing layers. I watched him walk to the kitchen and fish an ice cube out of the freezer, which he ate in four loud crunches.
Once he cooled down, he started the rice cooker and stretched out on the bed. I stood awkwardly and indecisively in the kitchen. I wanted to have sex as soon as possible, but I liked, too, that he seemed to want me around even when we weren’t having sex.
Sammy caught my eye and motioned me over. He was holding a thin manila folder, and he placed it next to him on the bed. “Check this out.”
I scooted onto the mattress and opened the folder. It contained a couple of images, and I knew I was looking at MRI scans of two brains—human brains, not rat. The brains were white and gray, set against a black background. It was like an inkblot test, and you could see so many things depending on your mood—a smiley face, a family of upside-down bats. Each image had a couple of red arrows pointing to different areas of interest, but no labels indicated what those areas were. Behind me, Sammy was sitting up so that he could see over my shoulder.
“It’s actually the same brain,” he said, reading my mind. “One is before electroshock therapy, the other is after. Can you tell which is which?” Another quiz.
I considered this. They looked awfully similar. Neither one had any obvious abnormalities, none of the big white spaces that would indicate a tumor or lesion. But the arrows were pointing to mirrored places on either side of the brain, and this was a clue.
I held up one of the scans. “This is after?”
Sammy looked at me the way he sometimes did—with an intensity that was flattering and strange. “Are you guessing or do you know?”
As far as I could tell, the arrows were pointing to the hippocampi—the thin, seahorse-shaped ridges at the floor of the brain. In one image, these ridges seemed slightly larger, and I assumed this to be “after.” If electroshock therapy could improve a person’s mood—and that was the goal—then it would happen there, and it would maybe be visible.
“Good,” Sammy said, when I finished explaining my rationale. “Our P. cupana, if it works, will activate the NMDA receptors in the hippocampus, thus strengthening memory.”
I handed the photos back to Sammy, and he looked at them for only a second before placing them in the folder, shutting it, and tossing it to the floor. He’d been impressed by my answer, but he seemed far away.
After a moment, I asked him if he was okay.
“The truth is,” he said, ignoring my question, “no one truly understands how ECT works. Is the hippocampus where happiness lives? Where memory lives? If so, how can electroshock improve one but decrease the other, and what does this say about our relationship with time?”
He sometimes spoke like this in the classroom, and just as in those moments, I didn’t know if his questions were rhetorical or if I was supposed to answer. I would learn, during my project, that ECT really worked for people. It made them feel better. But Sammy was right: there was so much we didn’t know, and every time someone was hooked up to one of those machines, it was a bit like sending a message into the deepest parts of space, not knowing who or what would answer.
“It’s just sick,” Sammy was saying. “Those rats are lost in their own minds.” He was staring at his hands, as though he had conducted the earlier study. Then—this happened fast, in an absolute blur of motion—he turned at the waist and put his fist through the wall.
A hole appeared above his headboard, his arm vanishing into it as if he were being eaten alive. The sound it made—like a basketball being run over by a car—echoed throughout the studio. Sammy retreated to the floor and tucked his fist into his stomach. He sat cross-legged, eyes wide, nursing his swollen knuckles. His stunned expression was that of a man waking up from a seizure.
I hadn’t moved from my position on the bed. The hole loomed behind me, dark and out of place. I imagined an MRI of the apartment, the hole a bright white lesion.
When the shock wore off, Sammy went to the bathroom and closed the door. I sat that way for several minutes, waiting for him. Eventually the rice cooker dinged, and the starchy smell of it infused the still-warm air of the apartment. Two little black boxes of seaweed were lined up on the counter, a rice paddle, a chef’s knife, a cutting board.
When the bathroom door finally opened, Sammy emerged with a warm, apologetic smile.
“Dude,” he said. “Dude.”
“Dude,” I replied, because I knew this was his way of apologizing.
“Listen, dude. That was, like, totally crazy, dude.”
I stifled a smile. “It’s fine, dude.”
As though this settled the matter, he went to the kitchen and prepared the sushi rice. The smell of vinegar and sugar filled the air. Thirty minutes later, we made sushi—California rolls, with avocado, cucumber, and sticks of fake crab—and when my rolls came out looking like sad, dying mushrooms, we abandoned the endeavor and threw ourselves onto the bed, the rice left hardening in the bowl, the avocado left oxidizing on the counter.
* * *
It was hard not to lose faith, remembering Sammy’s strangest behaviors. I actually thought about it: closing the recipe book, putting away the journals, going to bed. I was very, very tired. If I gave up now, I would be failing Sammy, but I would also be protecting my memory of him.
I was distracted from these thoughts by an odor emanating from the box of ingredients. The B. rossica was unsealed, contained as it was by a single sheet of paper. This meant the smell of it had entered the room—mild, earthy, but with a hint of sweetness, like dark chocolate. I lifted the groundcone out of the box and removed the paper covering. The herb was long and purple-brown, with rows of flaky knobs and a chunkier, knotted root. It looked like a pinecone’s gangly younger brother. Drowsily, almost absentmindedly, I searched the scientific literature for references to the herb and was surprised to find, almost immediately, an article about the herb’s effects on aging in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology.
ANTI-AGING ACTION OF BOSCHNIAKIA ROSSICA ON WISTAR RATS
by L. Xianming
Abstract: This study aimed to determine the anti-aging properties of the dried herb of Boschniakia rossica. The herb’s extract was administered to Wistar rats, and its free radical scavenging ability was analyzed using electron spin resonance spectrometry. The results showed that plasma from the test rats demonstrated statistically significantly higher free radical scavenging activity than that of the control population. Clinical observations of the test rats included improved appetite and endurance. Within the limitations of this study, the author suggests that B. rossica offers potential anti-aging function(s) via mechanisms of free radical scavenging and the prevention of age-related disorders.
As I came to the end, I nearly glossed over the paper’s acknowledgments section, which usually contained thanks to research assistants or department secretaries. L. Xianming’s acknowledgment read as follows: The author thanks Samuel Tampari, New York Unive
rsity, for his ideas and feedback on this study.
My drowsiness lifted. It was a small thing but also big, to see Sammy’s name this way, in a published study. It took everything I was reading and placed it back in the world of the living. I was beginning to search for other references to his name when I noticed something on the floor. The computer paper holding the B. rossica, I had thought, was blank—just an ad hoc wrapping Sammy had thrown together. But as it flattened out on the carpet, I saw that it contained images and a bit of handwritten text. I picked up the paper. Two photographs appeared to have been taken with a digital camera and printed out, probably on the old inkjet Sammy kept under his bed and plugged in only when he needed it.
Both of the images were of Number 50.
The first picture showed Number 50 in his cage, and I could recognize Sammy’s bathroom in the background—the picture had been taken the night Sammy died. Number 50 was lying sideways on the floor of the cage, but he wasn’t sleeping. His eyes were open. I couldn’t tell if he was dead or merely in the final stages of death, but either way, it was not a pretty picture. Next to the image, in pencil, Sammy had written, 11:55 p.m.
But in the next picture, Number 50 was out of his cage and sitting in the palm of Sammy’s hand. (You could have shown me pictures of a thousand hands and I would have been able to identify Sammy’s—the long fingers, the strong sun line, the little scar below the pinkie where he’d cut himself dissecting a frog.) Number 50 was awake, alert, alive, with his nose lifted and his lopsided ears pointed in Sammy’s direction. His long tail dangled over the side of Sammy’s index finger and disappeared into the border of the image. Sammy’s time stamp said, 12:35 a.m.
All of this would have been more than enough to excite me, but a final note was on the bottom of the page, in the exact same space where, if the paper had been part of the recipe book, you’d find the How did it taste?
In all capitals, with the pencil pressed hard to the page, Sammy had written, DUDE.
9
Black Sites
The morning after finding the photographs of Number 50’s resurrection, I went to school to give RJ the news: I was ready to call that number.
Once I fed Number 5, Number 7, Number 37, and Number 42, I walked the halls to homeroom. There, I spotted RJ through the window of the door. He was sitting in the back row, unusual for him, and I understood that he was doing this to keep an eye out for me. His leg bounced an uncharacteristically anxious rhythm. He had been waiting for me to decipher more of the recipe book, and it was almost thrilling to be wanted this way, to be needed. I caught his eye, and his face flooded with hope—and with a question: Are we going to save my sister?
As I began to turn the doorknob, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I saw a note of concern in RJ’s eyes, and then I was looking up at the familiar, kind, terrifying face of Captain Carson.
“Conrad Aybinder. Can we have a chat?”
* * *
I was a senior at LHS, had volunteered on multiple occasions to serve as a tour guide to lost freshmen, and I’d never even seen the room in which I found myself sitting face-to-face with Captain Carson. It turned out there was another office past the principal’s office, deep in the administration annex, and that’s where he led me, saying little along the way. The room was small and round and brown—it was like sitting inside a chicken egg. The circular table had chairs for five, but it was only the two of us. Was that even legal? For him to speak with me alone? Our government teacher had told us about secret CIA black sites where suspected terrorists could be held and interrogated, for years at a time, with no paper trail.
Captain Carson sat in the chair across from me, his left leg held splayed and straight away from his body. He looked tall during assemblies, standing next to the principal, but up close he was not that big—an inch or two shorter than I was. Still, he had the thick body of a man, a shiny badge, and the steady eyes of someone who knew what was happening, who hadn’t just discovered the existence of this room.
“Sheesh,” he said, settling in. “I’ve never seen a school year start like this one.” He had the thick accent of Downeast Maine, which is sort of like a Boston accent, except if you make that mistake, you’ll offend both Mainers and Bostoners: I’ve nevuh seen a school ye-ah staht like this one. Few of my classmates spoke this way, but my uncle Jeff always had, so I was used to it.
Captain Carson pretended to examine his fingernails. They were short and clean. “What did you think of Mr. Tampari?”
The photograph in the slideshow. The two of us standing close, smiling, eyes locked. The distance between us collapsing.
“He was nice.”
Captain Carson drummed his fingers on the table. “He helped me move this in here. Stronger than he looked.”
There was a pause, and it was deliberate: he was seeing how I responded to quiet.
“How well would you say you knew him?”
If only he understood how loaded a question that was. “I don’t know. I’m pretty good at chemistry.”
“I hear you’re pretty good at every subject. I hear if the year ended today, you’d be valedictorian. You ever been to his house?”
The suddenness of the question was designed to catch me off guard. It worked. I hesitated too long to say anything other than “Yeah.” Then, after another beat: “A couple of times.”
“Oh yeah? How come?”
“We were working on a science project.” I began to point in the direction of the chem lab before I realized that I didn’t actually know, from the chicken egg, where it was.
“Yuh, okay, but I never went to a teacher’s house.” He said this as though he were just musing out loud. When I didn’t say anything, he smiled. “I’m not givin’ you a hard time. There’s nothing wrong with going to a teacher’s house.” He looked me right in the eyes. “Unless that teacher makes you do things you shouldn’t be doing.”
All of the air went out of the room. I could feel the blood rushing to my head, along with a million questions. How did he know about Sammy and me? How much did he know? I saw everything unraveling at once. If word got out, I would have to switch schools—I couldn’t walk the halls with everyone knowing. Dana and Emmett would never see me the same way. The search for Sammy’s elixir would be over, and so would my father’s life, and Stephanie’s. In a very real way, my life would be over. Captain Carson was watching me, reading my face, and I felt as if I were failing a lie detector test.
Before I could speak, he said, “When was the last time?”
“Last time what?”
“You were at his house.”
“A few weeks ago,” I lied.
“Okay. That’s not what Mrs. Donahue told us.”
“Who?”
Here I experienced some luck; my genuine confusion undermined, just a touch, Captain Carson’s confidence. Despite how many times I had been to Sammy’s apartment, I’d previously known Mrs. Donahue by only one name: the widow.
“She says a couple of boys were in there the day he died. Scroungin’ around.”
I felt an unexpected surge of confidence. If the widow was his source, he might know less than I feared. I met his eyes. “I was looking for my rat. Our rat. For the science project.”
“Oh yeah? Like an actual lab rat?”
“There’s more in the chem lab.”
“You find it?”
“No. His apartment was all torn up.”
“I noticed that.”
“Do you know who did it?”
Captain Carson had an incredible ability to keep his expression neutral. His face was blank. “Do you know who did it?”
“No.”
“You weren’t looking for anything else?”
“No.” But then I was hit with a pang of guilt and the memory of the widow lying on the floor. “I mean, there was this book, it’s about a cheese shop, and Mrs. Donahue saw me—”
“Conrad,” interrupted Captain Carson. “Everyone tells me you’re a good, honest kid, so I’m just g
oing to come right out and ask you.”
I held my breath.
“Did Mr. Tampari ever give you cocaine?”
“What? No!” There was a rush of relief: Is that what he thought Sammy was making me do? Is that all?
“He never gave you drugs, or sold you drugs, or asked you to try drugs?”
“Never.”
“You never gave or sold him drugs?”
“Is that how he died? Cocaine?” I didn’t know how to square this information with the ingredients in the recipe book.
Captain Carson exhaled a long breath. “That’s not for your blogs or Facebook. That’s a private conversation between you and me.”
“You’re sure it was cocaine?”
Captain Carson gave a short, single chuckle—amused, but only slightly, by my attempts to switch roles with him. “You’ve been skipping school. If you’re grieving, talk to somebody, but you can’t just skip.”
“Okay.”
“And do not go back to his apartment. Roger?” Captain Carson began to stand, and I followed his lead.
“Roger,” I said, and left.
* * *
Homeroom was over by the time I escaped Captain Carson, so my next chance to see RJ was study hall in the computer lab. We sat next to each other in the back, pretending to waste time. In front of us, on rows of flatscreen monitors, our classmates checked that dreaded Facebook or watched short, loud videos of people hurting themselves doing backyard stunts. I had the recipe book and photographs of Number 50 in my backpack and showed them to RJ, filled him in on what I’d learned. If Sammy had really brought Number 50 back to life, he may have thought he had finally done it—that it was time to test the latest recipe on himself. But that didn’t explain what I’d just learned from Captain Carson.
“Cocaine isn’t even part of the elixir,” I complained to RJ, holding the recipe book open for him.
“Hm,” RJ said, half-listening. For all his excitement over the prospect of saving Stephanie, he was happy to leave the “science-y stuff,” as he called it, to me. So he surprised me by saying, “I mean, you don’t really know that cocaine isn’t part of it.”
