Zzzzzztt!
My teeth chattered together as my body was flooded with 100 volts of electricity.
"Look at his brain waves!" Jimmy said excitedly, pointing at a spiking green line on one of Vox's screens. "The pleasure center of his brain is sending him so much serotonin it's like he's taking drugs!" The machine stopped and I put my hands on my knees, panting.
"Woah..." I murmured, stunned. "That was totally awesome! Do it again!"
"Why did he like that? I thought you said it might hurt..." Carl grumbled, crossing his arms.
"I'm shocking his neural cortex with just enough electricity to start a chemical reaction, but not enough to kill him," Jimmy explained, leaving out most of the science words for our sake, "This new invention can cure addiction, if I tweak it a little! Instead of needing to shoot up, for example, a drug addict would just need a brief shot of this to be able to give him the same pleasure, therefore eliminating his need for whatever he was getting high on. It would work on smokers, too! And alcoholics if I turn it into a mild depressant..."
"Jimmy, Jimmy, I'm addicted to sugar. Can this thing help me get off the stuff?" I looked at the silver box excitedly and began to fiddle with the bowl on my head that was connected to it.
"Sheen, you aren't addicted to sugar, and you cut me off mid explanation!" I rolled my eyes, and he continued. "The addicts would become less dependent on their fix and become addicted to the machine instead. But weaning them off the machine would be much easier than a drug would be, because they wouldn't have to go through withdrawal! Every rehabilitation center in the country will have one of these in the next ten years, I'm sure," he concluded. I looked over at Carl. He was asleep on Jimmy's couch and snoring softly.
"Jimmy," I whispered, not wanting to wake him, "Can you shock me again, pleeeease?"
"Sheen, I don't think it's a good idea for you to use it too much..." I groaned sadly, looking at my shoes.
"But Jimmy, I love electricity and—"
"Security Alert! Attempted entry! Attempted entry! Security Alert!" Vox said, and a little red light came on in the ceiling. "Speaker on."
"Your moth-ah can't stop the funk. Ooh! Your broth-ah can't stop the funk! Oh! Your sist-ah can't stop the funk! No! No one can stop the funk, 'cause it's funky tie-ime!" I grinned, forgetting what I was saying.
"The girls are here!" I said excitedly. Jimmy rolled his eyes to look at me.
"No, really?" he said sarcastically, "I didn't get that from the fact that someone who sounds exactly like Libby is singing a Grey Star song just outside the lab's door."
"...Oh." My brain was having trouble filtering out the sarcasm.
"Jimmy, tell Vox I don't have cooties!" Libby's sweet voice rang over the crackly speakers.
"Vox, allow entry," Jimmy sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. There was a whooshing sound, and the trap door opened in the ceiling. My Queen fell through it with a piercing scream, onto the strategically placed sofa. Unfortunately, Carl was still sleeping on it.
"Oof." Libby landed on top of Carl.
"Ahh!" He yelped, arms flailing, falling off the couch and brining Libby down with him. "Jimmy! I'm being attaaaaaaacked!"
"Carl, quit your whinin'! It's just me." She climbed off of him and got to her feet, dusting off her knees. Jimmy and I exchanged looks. We seemed to tell each other how to handle the situation with just one glance. Being friends with someone for as long as we've been can come in handy. His look said, 'I'll deal with Carl,' in a not-happy-about-it way.
"Are you alright, Carl?" Jimmy asked offhandedly as I embraced my girlfriend.
"Noooo," wailed my heavyset friend, sitting on the floor and looking sad. "She... she fell on me, and it... my tummy hurts.... and my scapula... I'm an easy bruiser..." He was sobbing hysterically. I shot Jimmy an apologetic look as he went about comforting Carl.
"What have you got on your head, Sheen?" Libby looked at the metal bowl with wires sprouting from the top with distaste. I shrugged.
"Invention." One word that clarified everything.
"Ah." She looked over at Jimmy, who was rubbing Carl's stomach with a disgusted look on his face saying 'Nonny nonny nonny,' over and over again. "You wanna get out of here? Are you guys done?" I nodded.
"Yeah, Jimmy said he won't shock me anymore," I said, more than a little disappointment in my voice. I took of the bowl.
"Oh, and that's such a letdown," Libby sighed, taking my hand and leading me out of the lab. "I feel like a Purple Flurp. Candy Bar?"
"Anything for you, my Queen," I enthused, gripping her hand tighter and taking off at top speed down the street (practically dragging her behind me). It only hit me once we were seated at the Candy Bar (Libby got a Purple Flurp and a burger and I got two burgers, a hotdog, three Purple Flurps and a chocolate fudge sundae with extra sprinkles) that Cindy hadn't been at the door with Libby, like I had thought. I also remembered her seat being empty at school.
"Where's Cindy?" I blurted out, and Libby stopped, mid-sentence. She had been talking about Grey Star, I think, and how good our seats were.
"At home," she said, taking a sip of her soda, "Said she caught the flu, or something. There was a lot of fake coughin', so I bet she was faking it... why?" I bit my lip and shrugged, though I had this bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. The last time I saw her she was being dragged into the trees by her boyfriend...
Stop obsessing, my brain told me, Geez, you don't even like her! He was probably just looking for a private place for them to talk or make out or something. It's not like something bad happened...
When I walked Libby home just before dinner, a few hours later, I told her to keep a look out for Cindy for me. When she asked why, I just said I needed to ask her something. The truth was, I wanted to ease that uneasy feeling I had. Libby agreed and went to go eat dinner with her family. I went to Jimmy's.
"Jimmy," I said, walking into the lab (he had long ago programmed Vox to let me and Carl in), "Have you seen Cindy?" He looked up from whatever he was tinkering with and cocked and eyebrow.
"No. Why?"
I flopped down onto the couch and sighed. "Dunno. She wasn't at school, and Libby says she's faking sick. There's just been something up with her lately, haven't you seen it?" Jimmy rolled his eyes.
"Sheen, there's nothing wrong with her that wasn't always wrong with her," he said, taking off the large safety goggles he'd been supporting and tossing them onto a table. "I've observed some pretty strange behaviour in her before." He walked to his bookshelf and took down a thick volume. "It's nothing to be worried about. She's just weird." He offered me the book, and I took it. "These are my notes. Go ahead and look for... whatever. Just bring it back when you're done." I nodded and got up.
"Thank you, Jimmy!" I said with a grin, "You're probably right." I paused by the entrance to the elevator. "Say, you remember that bracelet you gave her?"
"The one for her birthday last year? Sure." He put his goggles back on. "Why?"
"What did it look like?"
"It was a silver charm bracelet with charms on it that reminded me of her. A heart, because she's so loving when she wants to be; a star, because she is one; a butterfly, because she's so free-spirited; a crown because she can be an egotistical princess sometimes; a rocket, to remind her of our adventures; and a 'C' for Cindy," he recited, knowing it by heart. He picked up a tool off his workbench. "Why?"
"No reason." I pressed the up button and got on the elevator, which took me into the small, wooden club-house. I left, carrying the book under my arm, and wondering why Cindy would lie and say the bracelet wasn't hers.
"It's probably nothing," I said to myself as I opened the gate into my back yard. I cross the patio and the lawn and went to the tree. I put the book in the old metal bucket that was hanging by a rope from it and grabbed a low branch.
I swung my legs into the fork of the tree and hauled myself up a few more branches. It was an old tree, and though my fingernails pulled the bark off the poor trees limbs as I clawed my way up them, the branches easily supported my weight. I got about halfway up and sat down on a wooden platform. Really, it was seven two-by-fours nailed between two branches, but it was the closest thing I had to a tree fort. My mom and I had started building it when I was eight, when we first moved to Retroville, before she was sick. It never got finished.
The one thing we had finished was a pulley system to get sandwiches and UltraLord comics to the fort. A rope (the original had to be replaced, and I cried when it did, but it was frayed and broke when my dad tried to send me up ice cream one night when I was ten) was tied to a branch, then went over a metal wheel that was tied to a higher branch. The end of the rope was tied to the bucket at the bottom. I untied my end and pulled until the bucket reached me (half falling over because of the weight of the book). I removed the book and let the bucket down again, and retied the rope.
The book was long and tedious and used many long words that I doubt I'll ever understand. It mentioned her pacing and her sleepless nights that Jimmy had seen through her window. It mentioned a punching bag and screaming parents and throwing heavy objects out of her window. It mentioned constant fights, both verbal and physical, and odd romantic moments that she seemed to bring on. It mentioned hand holding, and ty kwon do classes. It mentioned babbling when she was nervous, and how she never, not once, cried like a regular girl. It mentioned weird looks at Jet Fusion's wedding, and a wish to stay on the island they had been stranded on. It mentioned river dancing and how she never talked about her family. It mentioned a lot of things. But being quiet and submissive and skipping school wasn't one.
I read the whole book. It took me all night (I even read at the dinner table, freaking out my dad and Mia) and by morning, I was exhausted. Libby called, but I fell asleep with the phone in my hand. When I woke up, around noon, I took out a clean notebook (I never used those things for school, but my dad kept buying me them every September) and began to make my own notes on Cindy Vortex. It read:
Cindy (short for somthing, dont know whut) Vortex:
wierd behavor: didnt stand up to Nick, was quiet, fought with him, said braselet wasnt hers, let Nick eat her cake at my birthday, looks sad all the time, got pulled into the forrest by Nick, didnt show up at school, lied to Libby, hasn't fought with Jimmy latly, didnt talk much at my party
I didn't know what to make of my observations. Cindy acting weird wasn't weird according to Jimmy, but his notes indicated that she'd never done this before. I couldn't help but think there was something big going on. Very big. And very bad.