He nodded. “What’s it called when a plan’s a step below bulletproof?”
“Shot to hell,” I said.
He grimaced. “Right, that.”
As we got closer to the school, my legs began sticking to the fake leather seats, and it felt like ripping off tape every time I pressed the brakes. My armpits were Slip ’N Slides, and I knew my cotton socks were doing their fair share of sopping up my nerves.
My head was ringing louder than a bell tower as we neared the school. Buildings started popping out of the cotton fields. We passed the sprawling expanse of the Beverly-Tate plant, where the lion’s share of this country’s feminine pads and toilet paper was proudly produced.
We then took a right and my heart began hammering harder. The stadium loomed in the distance. “Adam?” I said as we pulled into the parking lot, the brick and mortar of Hollow Pines High sprouting out of the ground in front of us. “Just act normal.”
We unclicked our seat belts. Car doors slammed. I ducked my head into the backseat. “Are you coming?”
“I am coming. Wait for me.” Adam didn’t notice when the top of his head rammed against the roof of the car. Each large foot clomped into the gravel and, once standing, he dwarfed me.
“This,” Owen gestured, “is Hollow Pines High.” Adam grunted and backed up against Bert. Owen thumped him on the back. “I agree, buddy. It’s frightening. But you get used to it. Shall we give you the tour?”
The school was crawling with its morning bustle. Hollow Pines High School was a biosphere in which all species were forced to mix. A pickup truck sped past us, kicking up gravel and dust. We paused to cough and swat it away. Adam stuck close to my side.
“Those kids,” said Owen, looking over to where the pickup was squeezing itself in among a line of other gas-guzzlers, “are called the Wranglers.”
“As in the jeans,” I explained.
“You thought that Wrangler jeans went out of style in the 1980s and you’d be right,” Owen continued. “But the Wranglers believe it’s their God-given duty to wear starched denim twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five. Check out the ironed-in creases on those babies.” We shuffled past three guys sitting in the bed of a pickup, sharing dip from a tin can of Skoal tobacco. They passed around a Styrofoam cup and took turns spitting into it. I shuddered and looked away. “Rumor has it, they even sleep in them.”
Adam’s face cracked open with what I believed was supposed to be a smile. He raised his hand in the air and waved furiously. “Hello, Wranglers,” he shouted.
The kids in the truck glanced up and shook their heads before stuffing in another wad of chewing tobacco.
I grabbed Adam’s arm and forced it to his side, shuffling him off past the line of trucks. My face flushed with heat. I made a quick wave and muttered an apology to the confused wannabe cowboys.
“Aren’t those your friends, Victoria?” He pointed back to the Wranglers.
“Definitely not. Come on. We’re headed that way.” I gestured toward the mouth of the main building, where a stream of students was already pouring in. Owen and I had the worst parking spots. It was a hike.
“On your left, you’ll see that we’re entering the Bible Belt.” A collection of kids wearing matching shirts busied themselves unloading posters from the trunk of a car. “They’re harmless mostly, but if you so much as hint that you’re having a less-than-perfect day, they will pray for you. You’ve been warned.” I laughed when Adam sidestepped farther from them. “Over there, those are the Billys.” Owen directed our attention to five husky guys tossing around a ball. “Redneck football players. They have a shocking amount of dudes named Bill. That’s Billy. Then there’s Billy Ray, and William. Those fine fellows”—we paused to watch Billy Ray crush a can between his palms, then use it to peg William in the backside—“those are God’s gift to Hollow Pines.”
“As you can see, God’s fondness for Hollow Pines is questionable,” I said.
Maybe it was seeing guys that looked like him or maybe it was the whooshing excitement of the football, but Adam began gravitating toward the Billys like they were the actual center of the class solar system. “Uh-uh.” I snagged Adam by the elbow. “No way. We steer clear of them.” I had thought Owen and my speech made that clear. “They’re popular. And mean. That, my friend, is a bad combination.”
We picked our way through the rest of the factions—Tea-Sippers, Kickers, and the Angels Camp Posse—and onto the school’s crumbly lawn.
At the top of the walkway, a card table, manned by a bevy of Oilerettes, blocked the entrance. “Calendars! Only ten dollars! Show your Oiler spirit!” Paisley Wheelwright waved a glossy wall calendar overhead.
“That’s the drill team, the Oilerettes,” Owen mumbled to Adam. “Tor affectionately calls them the ‘Whore Core.’”
“Can we please keep that between us?” I shot Owen a dirty look. But seriously, the school’s cheerleaders were selling calendars of themselves. The campus of Hollow Pines High was basically where feminism came to die.
Nearby, I heard a gruff yell. “Ready, set, hike!” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Billy Ray cock his arm back like a trigger and fire off a football.
“Incoming,” Owen called out.
William ran toward us, his chin hiked over his shoulder. I watched his bright red hair and freckled face sprinting over, not looking where he was going. His eye was on the spinning ball and so was mine. Adam and I jumped apart and William threaded the space between us, narrowly missing a death stomp to my toes.
As the ball hurtled toward me, I did that awful thing girls do when they screw up their arms and elbows. I hated sports. Even more than that, I hated team sports. And even more than that, I couldn’t handle balls flying toward my face. A chorus of squealing girls split the morning bustle just as William dove. He crashed onto the Oilerette table, squishing the smiling faces of the pom-pom-toting future Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders of America and buckling the table’s legs so that it pitched onto its side. As for the ball, it landed with a bouncy ker-thunk directly in front of Adam’s feet.
“Did that even make sense in your head?” Paisley Wheelwright, pint-sized blond and summa cum laude in high kicks and spray tans, shrieked at William, who was crinkling glossy calendar spreads with his rear end as he tried to wriggle free from the wreckage.
“What?” He roughed his hair. “It’s not my fault.”
Feet away, Billy Ray clapped and held his hands out. “Toss me the ball, man.”
Adam stared at the football, still rocking on the concrete walkway like a dying cockroach. Time seemed to freeze over. Slowly, Adam reached down and wrapped his hand over the leather laces.
William stopped his shimmy. Adam looked down at the ball then up at Billy Ray. I clenched my teeth.
Billy Ray rubbed the top of his shaved head and looked around as if to say Are you seeing this? “It’s not a snake. It ain’t gonna bite you.” His accent made for a slow drawl.
Adam’s expression was serene. His elbow arced back so fast that his hand was a blur of motion as he released the ball. It sped like an arrow straight into Billy Ray’s gut. He grunted and doubled over, a whoosh of air rushing out of him.
Nearby, William was pushing himself off the broken table. He stopped to stare at Adam, then at Billy Ray, and then at Adam again, squinting one eye shut to look at him cockeyed like maybe he’d been seeing him from the wrong angle before. As he trundled past, he kept staring back at Adam and shaking his head. “You ain’t gotta kill him, you know,” he said before reaching his friend and clapping him good-naturedly on the back.
“See what we mean?” Owen asked, returning to join us.
Adam spun to me. “I killed him?” He pointed at Billy Ray, who was still rubbing his belly. “Can you bring him back, too, Victoria?”
“Shhhhhh.” I glanced around, looking for anyone who might have overheard him. I pushed his arms down to his side. “It’s called a figure of speech. You didn’t literally kill anyone. But, just to be safe, let
’s not use the K-word in public. We don’t need to draw any more attention to ourselves than … well, than you just did.”
Adam appeared chastened while a group of girls stood whispering behind their hands and casting looks in Adam’s general direction.
“Way to fly under the radar.” Owen looped his thumbs under his backpack straps.
“It was one thing,” I shot back.
“Hey, kid.” I stiffened at the voice of my nightmares. The she-devil with horns that must have been hidden somewhere under all that highlighted hair. “Kid with the arm. Come over here.”
Adam lifted his chin. “Me?”
Paisley nodded.
“You don’t have to go to them,” I said, but he was already walking over.
Paisley leaned against the side of the overturned table. “I don’t remember seeing you around before, and Hollow Pines isn’t exactly a big place. Who are you, anyway?”
“Hello. I’m Adam Smith. I come from Elgin, Illinois. I’m sixteen years old. I’m a junior. Victoria is my family friend. I am staying with her while my parents wrap up our move to the Lone Star State.” Adam reached down and retrieved one of the scattered calendars from the ground and held it out for Paisley to take. “I can help.” He picked up another calendar and tried to straighten the table.
“I’m—”
“You’re the Whore Core.” Adam smiled. “I remember.”
I choked on my own spit. “Adam,” I hissed, but kept my distance.
Paisley’s eyes snapped to attention. Her left eyebrow arched slowly. Her glance flicked to me. “Is that what they’re calling all the girls who didn’t make the spinster squad?”
I scowled.
Adam’s brow dropped. “I don’t know. I’m new here,” he said with a tone of complete seriousness.
Paisley dropped into a seat behind the cash box. “I see that. Here.” She shuffled around for an undamaged calendar. “For you, free.” She flourished a silver marker from her pocket and signed her name across the front. Autographed it. Like she was famous. “Welcome to Hollow Pines, Adam Smith.” She handed him the calendar, which he held clutched to his chest as he wandered back to me. “Hope to see you around more often.” I turned away in case she did something truly gag-worthy like wink and I was forced to upchuck my breakfast.
“Look, Victoria,” he said, showing me the calendar like a cat dropping off a dead bird to its master. “I got you this.”
Owen snorted. I closed my eyes and counted to three. Then I took the calendar from Adam. On it, Paisley Wheelwright, Cassidy Hyde, and the rest of the Oilerette elite posed in bikinis and high heels with Crest Whitestrip smiles plastered on and glittery pom-poms clutched in hand. “Thank you, Adam,” I said. “That’s, um, that’s very sweet.”
He beamed. I swung my backpack around and stuffed the calendar inside as we ushered Adam into the administration office.
“Are you seriously going to keep that?” Owen asked close to my ear.
“What am I supposed to do, dump it in the trash in front of his face?”
The glass door swung shut behind us. “It’s autographed. If I were you, I’d burn it.”
The administration office had orange carpeting. I imagined it was meant to tie in with the school colors. It didn’t. It was the color of Cheez Whiz.
“Shut up,” I said, noticing that Mrs. Van Lullen was peering over her glasses at us. “We’re on.”
I squared my shoulders and strode up to the desk, wishing that I’d chosen something more presentable than a loose-fitting baseball tee. “Hi, Mrs. Van Lullen. I wanted to introduce you to a new student. This is Adam Smith. I believe his mother e-mailed you yesterday for the paperwork?”
Mrs. Van Lullen painted her lips into the shape of a heart and favored overstretched cardigans that never failed to clash miserably with the spray-on cheese decor.
“Nice of you two to join us today, Ms. Frankenstein,” she greeted me in return. “May I see your guardian or doctor’s notes for yesterday’s absence?”
I winced. It figured that an otherwise perfect attendance record would be the thing to come back and bite us. “Um…” I made a show of patting down my pockets.
She waited until I finished acting. “I see,” she said, jotting something down in a notepad with quick, staccato handwriting. “Adam, you said?” She didn’t look up. Not right away.
I felt Owen prod Adam forward. He stood so still I might have sworn he was a mannequin. I nodded at him and he twitched to life as though remembering his lines. “I am Adam Smith. I come from Elgin, Illinois. I am sixteen years old. I am a junior. Victoria is my family friend. I am staying with her while my parents wrap up our move to the Lone Star State. Please, I would like to enroll in Hollow Pines High School.”
Mental head-thunk. Owen sucked in his breath. Mrs. Van Lullen leveled her chin and stared at us. She was allergic to shenanigans, as she called them, unless said shenanigans came from the right sources, and those were, namely, the Billys and the Oilerettes. We were neither of those, and the wild knocking of my heart threatened to give us all away.
“Elgin,” she said, only she drew the word out so long she could have said it twice. She crossed her arms over an egg yolk cardigan and pursed her lips. “You’re awfully big, Adam. Did you play football where you’re from?”
He looked back to Mrs. Van Lullen, holding her eye contact with the directness of a sociopath, and said, “I don’t think so.”
She frowned and slid the folder from the desk to examine. “You don’t think so? It’s hardly a trick question.”
I glanced nervously between Adam and Mrs. Van Lullen and burst into spontaneous fake laughter. I slapped my knee. “Oh, Adam.” I hiked my thumb in his direction. I was a terrible actress. Owen physically distanced himself from me like I was having a psychotic break, though perhaps that wasn’t so far off. “This one…” I stuck with my nervous chuckle. “He’s always such a kidder. You’ll see.” My laughter died under the hard stare of the administrator. “Er, no, he’s never played football.” I tugged at the hem of my T-shirt. “Adam here is a pacifist.” He smiled in return.
“I don’t like kids trying to be fresh with me,” she said.
I cleared my throat. “He’s not being fresh,” I added. “On the contrary, he’s downright stale, I think.”
She slid her glasses down her nose and held out a printed sheet of paper. “It’s too bad. We’re always looking for good ballplayers around here.” She flipped to the next page. “I tried your mother’s line yesterday.” She had returned to all business. “She didn’t answer.”
I swallowed. “I’ve known the Smiths for a long time, Mrs. Van Lullen. They’re good people.”
“That may be, but we need parental consent to enroll in the public school system.”
“And you have it.” I reached over the desk and pointed to the signature at the bottom of the page.
She gave a small huff and picked up the phone. “I’m going to try her again.” She referenced the paperwork to dial the number for the fictitious Ms. Smith.
As soon as she finished dialing, a buzzing sound came from Owen’s pocket. We froze. Mrs. Van Lullen cradled the receiver against her ear. The phone kept buzzing at intervals.
“What is that sound?” she whispered, then shook her head and turned away.
My eyes bugged at Owen. Silence it, I mouthed. He fumbled in his pocket.
Finally, she clicked off the phone. “Went to voice mail again.”
“Mrs. Van Lullen, with all due respect,” I began. “It’s Adam’s constitutional right to be educated, and he’s exercising that right, right here, right now. Are you really going to do something so … so un-American as to deny him his individual liberties?”
The second it left my mouth I felt the liquid in my stomach turn to battery acid. Her glare hardened. If there was one thing the folks in my town would-not-could-not stand for, it was questioning their patriotism.
“I’m just saying—” I started up again.
She held up her hand and I quieted. “Well, stop saying it.” She set the open folder down on top of her desk. “Adam,” she said, “you seem like a nice young gentleman, and if you’re in a hurry to get into school, then for now,” she stressed, “I’m not going to be the one to stand in your way. It’s a noble thing you’re trying to do here, furthering your education. I’ll keep trying your mother, and I’m sure I’ll get ahold of her.” She squashed a rubber stamp into an inky sponge pad and pressed it on the front of Adam’s file. “We could use more boys like you. Promise me you’ll go see Coach Carlson? I trust you’ll meet some excellent friends here soon.”
When it was clear that Mrs. Van Lullen didn’t place me in that category, I sneered my lower lip just a hair. She disregarded me and flipped the folder shut. With a smile meant only for Adam and definitely not for me, she handed Adam several pamphlets. “Enjoy Hollow Pines High,” she said. “Go, Oilers!”
TEN
Stage 1 of the experiment concluded in a successful resuscitation of a dead human specimen. Circulation and organ functionality have resumed. Proper vital signs are present and being monitored. Plans for Stage 2 include integrating the resuscitated specimen into society to increase quality of life. Notably, this stage would not have been possible with one of the rat specimens, which makes this an exciting stage of development.
* * *
“They stuck you with the junior basics,” I said, examining the schedule that Mrs. Van Lullen had printed for Adam. “What kind of transcript did you send?” I asked Owen.
Owen shrugged. “I didn’t know. I went with the most average one I could find from Elgin.”
“Sorry, I hope that’s okay.” I handed the schedule back to Adam, who held it daintily. The usual morning cacophony overtook the hallway. Muffled music played from headphones. Locks clinked open. The smell of Magic Marker wafted off poster board.
A foot outside the administration office, Adam stood frozen. Ice Age frozen.
“Let me see. It can’t be that bad.” Owen snatched the sheet of paper. “Here we go, US History, English 2, economics, Algebra 2, chemistry, PE, Global Studies.”
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