“Hell,” Tristen muttered as we both peered inside. “Bloody, bloody hell.”
Chapter 17
Tristen
ALTHOUGH I’D HAD no reason to doubt that Jill had told me the truth when she’d described her family’s artifact, I was nevertheless taken aback—shaken?—when I opened the dented metal container to discover curled, yellowed papers covered with cramped, faded writing.
Experiment dated 7 October in the year 1856 . . . Addition of phosphorous, 3 grams . . .
“Oh, god,” I muttered, scanning the notes. “Son of a—”
“It really looks like what Dad said,” Jill noted, sounding uneasy, too. “Experiments.”
“Yes,” I agreed, unable to tear my eyes away.
Consumed half litre . . .
“Could it be?” I mumbled, shaking my head. “Could it really be?”
Although I didn’t want to get excited, I knew that I seemed overly eager as I advised Jill, not even looking at her, “We’ll need to begin work immediately. But we will have to do so in secret, after school hours. And there’s no need to tell that idiot Messerschmidt anything. He’ll only interfere and possibly try to stop us.”
“What?” Jill asked, sounding puzzled. “Tristen . . .”
But I was barely aware of her at my side.
“We can meet tomorrow night, at the school,” I said. I reached in the box to remove a fat stack of papers, with fingers that threatened to tremble. There was so much to do . . . “We’ll want to transcribe each experiment, and there are so many . . .”
I began reading more closely, my excitement spiking as I noted the writing on the top left corner of the first page. Experimental Log—H. Jekyll.
The name that my grandfather had so often cursed, right there, in smudged but legible script.
Forcing my impatient fingers to be more gentle with the fragile paper, I opened to a sheet about halfway through the stack. Addition of .2 grams sodium produces no discernible change in demeanor . . .
I read the words again, not trusting my eyes. Discernible change.
Was it possible that Jill’s father really had told the truth? Was there a chance that I held the actual roots of my twisted family tree in my hands?
“Tristen?”
I didn’t answer, absorbed in my thoughts, my plans.
“Tristen?”
My name was spoken again, accompanied by a tentative tap on my shoulder, and I looked up to recall that I wasn’t alone. Jill Jekel was watching me, with a very curious—and extremely uncertain—look in her unusual hazel eyes, which I’d finally really seen as I’d revealed, to the first person in America, the story of my mother’s disappearance. Pretty, intelligent eyes.
“Um, Tristen?” she ventured, sounding almost frightened. “Why really do you want to enter the contest? Why are you here?”
I’d expected that Jill would ask that question at some point if her father’s old box actually held what he’d claimed, and if she and I began to use it as I intended. Jill was a smart girl and certainly wouldn’t do the things I planned to do without questioning my motives. Unlike Todd Flick with Darcy Gray, Jill—though shy—would expect to be a partner, not an assistant. Moreover, my obvious excitement right then and there must have seemed very strange to her.
Making my decision, I reached for the messenger bag at my feet and searched inside, retrieving my first edition of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I held it up for Jill to see, thinking how uncanny it was, me meeting the one person on this earth who might possess the key to saving my sanity, and asking, not quite rhetorically, “Do you believe in coincidence, Jill? Or fate?”
Chapter 18
Jill
“COINCIDENCE OR FATE? I don’t really know, Tristen,” I said, confused—and a little scared. He was talking about working in secret at school, maybe after hours, without telling our teacher anything. I couldn’t do that. I glanced at the clock on Dad’s desk. And Mom would be home soon. “What are you talking about? Why did you bring that book?”
I reached out to take the novel from his hands, but Tristen moved it smoothly out of reach. Another forbidden object, apparently. At least for me.
“This, Jill,” Tristen said, “is a gift from my grandfather Hyde. The man who instilled in me the love of music and who first taught me to play piano. The man who set the course for my future—and who insisted that this novel is my past.”
“What?” I was even more baffled and sank down in the guest chair next to Dad’s desk. “I don’t understand.”
“Just as your father believed that you are distantly related to Dr. Henry Jekyll, my grandfather insisted that I am a direct descendant of the ‘evil Mr. Hyde,’ to use your own words.”
Tristen was one of the most articulate people I’d ever met, and he enunciated clearly, in his very precise British accent . . . but I still didn’t quite follow. “So you’re saying we’re, like, related? Because Dad said Henry Jekyll didn’t have any children. That’s one of the reasons we ended up with the old papers . . .”
Tristen smiled, but it was a joyless, bitter grin. “No, Jill, we’re not related. Don’t ever wish that upon yourself!”
I must have still looked very confused, because Tristen lost the smile and tried to explain more seriously. “If you’ve read the book, you know that Dr. Jekyll believed he altered his very soul when he drank the formula. That he created in Hyde a new being—a ‘new life,’ Stevenson called it.”
“Yes. I read the book,” I said. “But—”
“This new life,” Tristen continued, “was completely different, even in size and stature, from its creator. And it was this being, this beast, that procreated, beginning my family.”
I studied Tristen’s handsome face, thinking he was about as far, physically at least, from a “beast” as I could imagine. What he was saying, it was laughable. A
