“I’ll be fine,” Mom promised with a yawn. “Dr. Hyde thinks I should start getting out of the house. He’s reduced my dosage during the day so I can be more alert.”
The glass slipped in my hand. “Oh? Just during the day?”
Even as I was blurting out the question, I realized how awful it was, because I wasn’t asking out of concern for her. I was worried about how I would sneak out to meet Tristen if Dr. Hyde decided Mom could go without sedation at night, too.
But she was so sleepy that my question didn’t even seem to register. She was already breathing in a fairly steady rhythm, her eyes closed and her mouth slightly open.
Dr. Hyde’s medicine had done its work.
As I tiptoed out of the room, I reminded myself that it was okay to hope Mom would stay safely sedated at night for a little while longer. The scholarship was worth thirty thousand dollars. Surely that much money, the way it would ease our family’s financial burdens, made everything I was doing right.
Right?
Chapter 28
Jill
“POTASSIUM,” TRISTEN MUTTERED, head resting in his left hand as his right scrawled notes in his bold, heavy script. “Potassium.”
“What?” I asked, glancing up from my own tedious transcription of Dr. Jekyll’s notes. Tristen and I worked side by side by the light of a single flashlight that we kept propped on a pile of books. “What did you say?”
“Potassium,” Tristen grumbled, head still in his hand. Dropping his pen, he shoved the paper clip that he used to pick locks across the table in my direction. “Do me a favor. See if there’s any in the cabinet? I seem to recall that it was running low, and this formulation requires a significant amount if I’m reading it correctly.”
“But I don’t know how to pick the lock,” I said, not reaching for the paper clip. Tristen—he was our official trespasser. Not me.
“It’s simple.” Tristen started writing again. He seemed irritated as he directed, “Just jam the clip in the lock and probe around until it gives. It’s not rocket science.”
I was hurt by his tone and didn’t like being ordered, but I reached for the clip, not wanting to worsen the bad mood he’d been in all evening. “Okay.”
Heading to the storage cabinet, I stuck the paper clip in the lock and wriggled it like I’d seen Tristen do. A few seconds later I swung open the door. I turned, about to tell him that it really had been pretty easy, but something about the way he was hunched over his notebook made me think he wouldn’t really care. “There’s plenty of potassium,” I said, checking the container and closing the cabinet.
Tristen didn’t respond, and I climbed back onto my stool, tapping him. “Tristen? There’s plenty.”
He still didn’t answer. He just kept transcribing, his hand jerking rapidly across his notebook.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, not sure if I should be excited or alarmed. “Did you find something?”
He shook his head, still writing. “No,” he grumbled. “Quite the opposite.”
“What do you mean?”
“This isn’t chemistry, Jill,” Tristen snapped, abruptly slapping down his pen. He sat upright, jamming his hand into his hair. “It’s a . . . a . . . cookbook. Your ancestor was a fucking Victorian Betty Crocker!”
“Tristen!” I chided him. “Stop it!” The rebuke came out automatically, and I immediately cringed. Tristen wasn’t the type of person anyone would normally bark at, let alone me. “Sorry.”
“No, no. I’m sorry.” Tristen sighed, seeming to have vented the worst of his frustration. He rubbed his hands across his face. “I just don’t understand, Jill. It seems as if Dr. Jekyll was primarily combining kitchen ingredients. The occasional dash of phosphorous or lithium aside, he’s mainly dabbling in vinegars and other weak acids and common bases. Not elements that would seem to hold promise for changing a soul, temporarily or permanently.”
The more Tristen and I had worked together, the easier it had become to forget that our project wasn’t just about me. That night’s show of temper aside, the Tristen I was coming to know as a collaborator was kind and considerate of me, and when he smiled, it was impossible to believe that a monster—the thing he called a beast—lurked inside of him. But his exasperation was a sharp reminder of his stake in our project. Of what he had threatened to do if we didn’t succeed in creating a formula to “cure” him.
“We haven’t reached the end of the papers,” I reminded him, suddenly worried on his behalf. “There are still a few pages left. We might still find something.”
“No, Jill.” Tristen shook his head. Then he fell into a glum silence, staring into the distance and mumbling, “Something is missing. Something . . .”
“Let’s keep working,” I suggested.
“I suppose so,” he agreed, but he didn’t sound hopeful. Still, he tore a few pages from his notebook and handed me another stack of the old notes. “Here. Why don’t you check my latest transcription against the original? Perhaps you’ll find something I’ve missed or misread.”
“Sure,” I agreed, bending to read by the dim light. Even squinting, it was hard to read Dr. Jekyll’s bad handwriting, made worse by the way the ink had faded over time.
Seeing my difficulty, Tristen reached down and grabbed the edge of my stool, pulling me closer to the light and to himself, so we were practically shoulder-to-shoulder. As he bent over his notebook, I studied his profile. His straight nose, his full lower lip like his dad’s, his intelligent, troubled eyes . . .
He looked sideways at me, mouth twitching with his first smile of the night. “What?” he asked, eyebrows raised. “Are you preparing another scolding on outbursts, or the evils of profanity? Is that what’s stalling you?”
No, not a scolding. What had stalled me was Tristen. I hadn’t even realized I’d been watching him
