And as I put my things in all their proper places, I kept an eye out for one thing that was definitely out of place.
The missing vial of formula.
Had I hidden it somewhere? Lost it?
Why had Todd Flick made that comment about the size of his . . . ?
I glanced at my closet. And those clothes. I had to get rid of them.
Opening the door warily, like the clothes might bite me, I knelt to dig in the back for the short skirt and tight shirt, pulling them out. But as I stood up, I rubbed the fabric of the shirt between my fingers. It was silky and would feel good against my skin. I could try the stuff on, just for a minute, and maybe find out that I hadn’t looked too slutty . . .
Dropping my jeans and unbuttoning my blouse, I stepped into the skirt and pulled on the shirt, then moved in front of the mirror, dreading what I’d see.
But my reflection . . . wasn’t so bad.
I turned to the side. Maybe I was showing a little too much bare leg, but the clothes weren’t totally out of line. Relief flooded me, and I smoothed the shirt against my body, straightening my spine . . . and frowning. The silky fabric was lumpy across my chest. Would it look better with the bra I’d stole . . . The new bra?
I went to my dresser and pulled out the top drawer. The black bra was hidden near the back, and when I pulled it out, something rolled forward.
The vial.
I picked it up, noticing that it was still almost full. This . . . with this I could . . .
“Jill?”
“What?” I yelped, shoving the formula into the drawer and slamming it shut as I spun around to face my mother, who stood in the doorway watching me.
Chapter 67
Jill
“I—I DIDN’T KNOW you were home,” I said, leaning hard against my dresser.
“I was taking a nap,” Mom said, still watching me.
I tugged at the hem of the skirt, but was suddenly more worried about Mom than my clothes. She’d pushed too hard, was relapsing . . . “Are you okay?”
She smiled a little, maybe understanding my concern. “I’m fine, Jill,” she said. “I’m just resting between shifts. I’m trying to work a little extra this week.”
“Mom!” I forgot all about my exposed legs. “Are you sure?”
She nodded—and yawned. But she honestly didn’t seem as weary as before. “Yes, I’m ready,” she said. “I want to start taking more of the burden off your shoulders.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She finally seemed to notice what I was wearing, and she frowned. “Are those new clothes?”
I tugged at the skirt again. “Um, I borrowed this stuff from Becca.”
Mom stepped closer, looking me up and down. Then she met my eyes—and smiled again. “The skirt is a little short but probably in style for girls your age,” she admitted. “You look cute, Jill.”
“Really?”
Mom nodded, and to my surprise, wrapped her arm around my shoulders and squeezed. How long had it been since she’d embraced me?
“I just wish I could buy you more of your own new clothes,” she said, pressing us together.
And I wish I hadn’t just lied . . . wasn’t hiding things from you . . . “It’s okay,” I reassured her, pulling away. “Don’t worry about it.”
Mom checked out my outfit again, and realization dawned in her eyes. “Jill? This new look isn’t for Tristen, is it?”
“Tristen?” I jolted, wondering if she’d suddenly recalled meeting him the night he’d drugged her. “No . . .”
“I just thought maybe, since he did that favor for you—for us—”
“No, Mom,” I promised, cutting her off. “We’re not . . . together.”
We never would be. That was the truth.
“Oh.” I’d thought she would be happy that I wasn’t seeing a guy, but she actually seemed disappointed. “I get the impression he’s a nice boy.”
“Sometimes,” I said with a shrug. And sometimes not . . . “Um, about clothes,” I added to change the subject. “Could I borrow that blue blazer from you? For that scholarship presentation?”
“Yes, of course,” Mom said, but her face got pale. “I’m afraid I forgot about that, though. I made some plans for that weekend . . .”
I cocked my head. “Plans?”
“Yes.” She fidgeted and looked away. “Your aunt Christine invited me to visit her in Cape May. She thought it might be nice for me to get away.”
I looked at her with surprise. “Aunt Christine? But you two hardly ever visit. I haven’t seen her since Dad’s . . .” I stopped myself, wishing I hadn’t nearly mentioned my father’s funeral.
“Yes, well . . .” Mom shoved her hand through her hair, our shared gesture. “I’ve told her about my . . . illness, and she thought it might be good for me to get some fresh sea air, even if the weather is cold.”
“Well, yeah, I guess so,” I agreed. Actually, I was relieved that my mom would miss the presentation. I was terrified of public speaking, and it only got worse if I knew people in the audience. “I really don’t mind.”
She hugged me again, and the mood lightened once more. “Thanks, Jill. I really think this will be good for me.”
Then my mother left me to go put on her scrubs, and in spite of her approval, I took off the shirt and skirt, put them back in my closet, and went to bed early, trying not to think about the vial that was hidden in my drawer or about Tristen. But both of those wicked, wonderful things seemed determined to tempt me, while I, a good girl, did my best to resist.
Chapter 68
Tristen
THE SCHOOL’S EMPTY hallways seemed unusually dark and silent as I made my way to the second floor sometime after midnight.
Locating my locker, I spun the combination, opened it, and pushed aside a track jacket I never wore. Dipping my hand into a plastic bag, I retrieved a Gatorade bottle. Only the liquid inside wasn’t neon yellow-green. It swirled against the plastic, murky and milky and toxic.
I held it up before my face—and realized that I’d licked my lip.
Just touching the formula, I got edgy and . . . something else. Deep in the recesses of my brain I could hear one of my favorite compositions, a thunderous variation on a traditional funeral march, begin to play, almost feel my hands on the keys. Keys I hadn’t touched since curing myself. Keys I was afraid to touch . . .
“You’ll drink again, Tristen, of your own free will . . .”
I could have sworn that I heard my father’s—the beast’s—voice not in memory but whispered directly into my ear, and a shudder ran down the length of my spine. I honestly wasn’t sure if the cause was thrill or horror, but my hand trembled, too, and the formula sloshed loudly, breaking the spell. I spun on my heel, jamming the bottle into my messenger bag and heading for Mr. Messerschmidt’s classroom, walking quickly.
Hurry, Tristen. Hurry; hide the bottle from yourself and get moving.
Breaking into the room, I went directly to where the newly arrived rats moved restlessly in their cages, busy with their nocturnal lives, and although I was eager to be done with the tasks I had planned, I took a few moments to observe the animals, keeping an eye on a pathetic white runt that was missing half an ear. A weakling. A loser bullied by others. It lay curled in a corner as if trying not to attract the stronger animals’ notice.
Raising the lid, I sought him with my good hand, and he allowed himself to be lifted out. His little heart beat quickly against my palm, but he didn’t squirm or nip. I cradled him against my chest, stroking him, gaining his trust, and no doubt used to being handled by humans, he was soon playing along my arm, sniffing at my shirt.
As my new friend crept to my shoulder, I went to my lab station and first unpacked a small video camera, setting it up so it would capture what happened next, and then switching it on. Then I located an eyedropper in the equipment drawer.
The rat’s pink nose snuffled against my ear, and I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so grimly preoccupied wit
h uncapping the Gatorade bottle, dipping in the dropper, and retrieving about an ounce of the formula.
Oh, the smell of that stuff. The smell of evil. Of power—
Stop, Tristen.
“Come now,” I told the rat, plucking it from my shoulder and cradling it again, offering it the dropper in view of the camera. “Have a drink, yes?”
The rat clearly didn’t like the smell, but with a little prodding at its mouth, it opened up, and I squeezed nearly the full dose onto its tongue.
The reaction was almost immediate. The animal stiffened in my hand, and its pink eyes rolled wildly as it squealed in pain. I placed it on the lab table, where it wobbled and collapsed, sides heaving—just as mine must have done.
Had I convulsed so violently, too? I couldn’t remember.
“Sorry,” I soothed him, glad that I hadn’t brought Jill with me. I’d known the creature would suffer when it swallowed the formula, and I’d wanted to spare her seeing that—again. “Poor thing,” I muttered, wincing as the rat writhed. “Believe me, I understand your pain.”
I swore those pink eyes were accusing me. And then they closed.
I rested my index finger against the rat’s side. Still breathing but barely.
We stayed like that for what seemed like a long time, and I had just given up the animal as doomed to die at any moment when its eyelids fluttered and its paws twitched, then opened and closed, not convulsing but flexing. Gradually, with effort, the rat stood on uncertain legs.
“Welcome back,” I said, lifting and resting it against my chest again, making sure I kept the animal in view of the camera. But the rat sat docilely in my hand, and after about five minutes, I thought that I’d been foolish to believe that I might actually see it change. It wasn’t a human—wasn’t a Hyde. “Sorry about putting you through all that,” I apologized again to the animal, which seemed almost drowsy after its ordeal.
And sorry, Jill, that we’d have no proof of success for our presentation. I’d thought video of a wildly altered rat might just seal the deal, proving that the old formula really did create monsters. But it was apparently not to be.
I stroked the rodent’s head for another minute until it seemed recovered, croughing on its haunches and washing its face, then sniffing at my fingers again. I allowed it to play in my palm for a while, and was about to reach over and turn off the camera when suddenly, without warming or provocation—it bit me. Hard. “Dammit!” Blood welled from the tender spot between my thumb and index finger.
The rat released my flesh—only to sink in again, and again, so rapidly that I didn’t even have time to react. I barely had the presence of mind to steel myself for a short time, long enough to capture some images on tape.
And long enough to see the look in the animal’s eyes.
When I couldn’t stand being gnawed on one second more, I moved to the cage, and—just needing to be free of the little demon—dropped it in with the others.
As I stepped back, shaking out what had been my good hand, I saw the runt turn its new rage on its fellow rats, attacking randomly, viciously, until the cage was a seething mass of panicked, squealing rodents. Flecks of blood splashed on the glass.
“Shit!”
I swore not only at the carnage but at the realization that the experiment really seemed to have worked. “Dammit,” I muttered again in disbelief as more blood hit the cage walls. “Son of a . . .”
I watched for just another second, stunned into inaction, then realized I needed to intervene and stop what threatened to become a massacre.
I hurried back to the lab table and switched off the camera—not wanting to record what I’d do next—and started to pull the switchblade from its hiding place in my bandage. But as my fingers touched the knife, I found that I couldn’t do it that way. Couldn’t bring myself to plunge in the blade, perhaps miss killing him, and need to stab the animal again, maybe more than twice. Instead I flipped open my messenger bag, searching for the vial of strychnine, glad, for once, that I never cleaned out things. Twisting off the cap, I dipped in my index finger and covered it with pure poison, then reached in among the frenzied, wounded rats, snatching up the runt. He wriggled and fought as I struggled to force the powder onto his tongue, biting me enough times that I feared I might be poisoned, too, if too much entered my bloodstream through the breaks in my skin.
But before the rat could do me in, the toxin paralyzed his much smaller nerve system and he lay still on the table again. This time his heart didn’t beat at all.
“Sorry,” I apologized yet again. “But I had to do all that. For Jill.”
The rat’s videotaped reaction—documented success with an animal—might just net her the thirty thousand dollars. It was worth the life of a rodent. Yet I still felt bad as I bagged the creature for disposal and cleaned the mess in the cage. A few of the rats looked to have serious injuries.
When the room seemed in order, I packed up the camera and resealed the bottle of formula, twisting the cap on tight. The motion left a smear of fresh blood, my blood, on the white plastic, and I shoved the bottle into my bag, ready to return it to my locker.
The funeral march I’d once composed still played faintly, now mockingly, in my head as I hid the bottle away and carried the corpse to the Dumpster outside the school. One of my most beautiful compositions wasted on a dead rat.
How could I have been tempted, even for a second, to become like that animal: convulsing, mad, and murderous? Who, what type of person, would want that?
I also wondered, as I often did, where the beast that took away my parents was hiding, what it was planning, and if I would have the courage to use the knife when it really counted.
Raising the Dumpster lid, I hurled the rat into its rancid coffin, gagging unexpectedly at the strong stench of rot.
Chapter 69
Jill
“YOU’VE ACCOMPLISHED a lot in a short time,” Mr. Messerschmidt noted, nodding with approval. “Do you think you’ll be ready to present in a few days?”
“Yes,” I said. “But we’re cutting it close.”
“Jill’s got it under control,” Tristen said, dipping his hand into a cage and stroking one of the rats that we were systematically sickening, documenting their reactions to early versions of the formula that we knew weren’t really effective. “She’s going to win.”
“We’re going to win,” I corrected him, thinking that Tristen seemed to be distancing himself more and more, not just from me but from any concept of the future. “Us.”
Tristen didn’t look at me. He was frowning, eyes trained on the rat, which shuddered under the influence of a weak acidic solution.
“It’ll be okay,” I promised him. I sort of meant the rat. I sort of meant . . . everything. I wasn’t sure about either.
“You two don’t have a chance, with your half-dead rats and stinking old papers,” Darcy piped up from the front of the room. “It’s not research. It’s a publicity stunt!”
“It’s a great experiment,” I advised her. “So just worry about your own work, okay?”
“I guess Jekel told you, Darce.” Todd snorted as he wiped down their station for the evening.
I stared at him, not sure if Darcy had been insulted or me.
“Do you two have a ride to Philly?” Mr. Messerschmidt asked me and Tristen, diverting us away from an argument.
“I just sold my car,” Tristen noted, “so I’m no help.”
I frowned at that news and not just because we needed a ride. Was Tristen low on money? Or did he expect not to need a car soon?
“I don’t know if my car will make it,” I added. “I never got it tuned up. And my mom can’t take us. She’ll be out of town.”
“I’ll drive you,” Mr. Messerschmidt volunteered. “I’m going anyway.”
I expected Tristen to flatly refuse, forcing us to hitchhike before he’d accept charity from Mr. Messerschmidt. Instead he simply said, “Thanks. That’s great.”
I was further surprised to see
what looked like grudging but genuine gratitude Tristen’s face, and I wished again that I knew what they’d talked about on that day he had shown up battered in class. Something had changed between them. Somehow Mr. Messerschmidt had gained a little of Tristen’s trust.
Our teacher checked the clock. “Time to wrap up.”
“We’re done,” Darcy said as Todd, finally free of his cast, tossed his backpack over his shoulder and hoisted her designer tote, too.
I looked with dismay at the chaos at our station. “Could we stay late? We have so much to do.”
“You’re not supposed to work alone,” Mr. Messerschmidt noted, although he didn’t seem very firm about it. “That is school policy.”
Darcy, near the door, gave a wry laugh. “Oh, don’t worry. They’ve already worked solo.”
I glared at her until she rolled her eyes and marched out the door, followed by Todd, who gave me one last unreadable glance before departing. Then I turned back to Mr. Messerschmidt, pleading, “Please? We’ll be careful.”
“Jill, are you sure?” Tristen interrupted. “You want to stay with me?”
I knew what he was implying, and it tore at my heart suddenly, because I still trusted him. It wasn’t what I feared he’d do that appalled me; it was what he’d done that I despised. “Yes, Tristen,” I said. “I want to stay.”
“Well . . .” Mr. Messerschmidt wavered—but only for a second. “If you promise to be careful.”
“Really?” I blurted, surprised that we’d actually gotten permission. I’d thought Mr. Messerschmidt was a rule follower like me. “I mean, that’s great,” I amended before he could change his mind. “Thanks.”
“I’ll take responsibility,” Tristen told Mr. Messerschmidt—but he was looking at me. “I’ll keep Jill safe.”
“Lock up when you leave,” Mr. Messerschmidt said. “And don’t tell anyone I let you do this.” Then he got some stuff from his desk and headed for the door, too. But before he left, Mr. Messerschmidt paused, and for a second I thought he was going to change his mind. He looked nervous and sounded edgy as he offered us a weird farewell. “Good luck, kids.”