The Last Invention Read online

  Then a burst of fear. I was still in the graveyard. Logan had thrown me into an open grave, and that’s where I had slept all night. I pulled myself to my feet and tried to climb up the side, but I slipped down in an avalanche of dirt and squirmy worms. To make matters worse, my right leg pulsated with pain. After I made some footholds up the inner wall of the grave I was able to use them like a ladder and climb out. When I came out into the sunlight, I was a dirty, uncomfortable, crying, painful mess.

  I limped across the graveyard to the statue where I had first met Logan. It was still there, perfectly intact, minus the arms, of course. But there was no garage sale sign anymore, and no path anywhere, just like I had feared! I pulled at the big mass of bushes, but there was no way through. Anyway, there was a housing development right on the other side of them. It would be impossible for there to be a giant meadow with a caretaker’s cottage. Had I imagined it all? Or had I been sleeping and dreaming in that open grave this whole time—maybe I had fallen into it on the way home from school that day?

  “Would somebody please tell me what’s going on!” I cried out.

  I limped back to my house, trying to figure out what to do next. The streets were deserted—kids at school, parents at work. I waved to a few little old ladies getting the mail from their mailboxes. They gave me a frightened look and then shuffled back to their doors. I felt like something out of a horror movie—a groaning, limping, dirty monster that had just crawled out of the graveyard. The UPS truck stopped next to me, and the guy asked me where Cedar Drive was. As I pointed, a big cake of dirt fell out of my underarm, along with part of my shirt. He thanked me and left.

  As I trudged along, everything I looked at reminded me of Melanie. If I thought of a tree, I would remember the color brown, and how her tan looked at the beginning of each school year. If I thought of the grass, I would imagine how thin the stalks were, just like Melanie’s perfect body. Clouds: I saw Melanie’s face in them. Sun: how I always sneeze when I see her. Sky: her blue eyes. Mailman: he would so fall in love with Melanie if he saw her. Little old ladies getting mail: they were as young as Melanie once, but no way as beautiful. The brass doorknob on the front of my house: Melanie touched that once, maybe her DNA was still on it.

  I opened the door and limped into my deserted house. I walked into the kitchen. I found the rack of knives, and picked up the biggest one; it was huge, like something out of a Simpsons’ Itchy and Scratchy cartoon. The blade was longer than my head. Before I left I dragged myself upstairs and checked my room for the Body Builder—there it was on my floor where I had thrown it, and totally lifeless. I hadn’t fallen into an open grave on the way home from school. This was real, and so was Logan.

  I limped back outside and headed for Melanie’s house, clutching the giant knife in my right hand. The UPS guy saw me again and drove over with a concerned look on his face. He told me my directions were no good, and he couldn’t find Cedar Street. I told him it was the third right, not the second. I pointed with the giant knife. He thanked me and drove away. On the way to her house, I thought about nothing but Logan. I had created him, and he took away everything I had in the world. His job would be to experience pleasure while my life would be pain. I cried, thinking about how stupid I was to go over there with a knife. Melanie would freak out when she saw me like this. But I didn’t care.

  Tears were streaming down my face when I knocked on her front door. I held the knife behind my back. The door opened, and Melanie’s mom was standing there. Her head hung limply against her shoulder, her neck at a right angle to the spine below, like it was made out of a bendy straw.

  “Adrian?” she shrieked. “Is everything all right? You’re a wreck!”

  “Is he here?” I said, squeezing the knife tightly and licking away some tears.

  “Who, the school tutor?” she said, getting on her knees and gripping my arms. “What happened to you?”

  “Huh?” I blurted. “What tutor?”

  “Melanie felt sick today and stayed home. The school sent a tutor over. He’s so young looking, and handsome. I’m still tingling where he kissed my hand, what a gentleman.” She looked at her right hand with a dazed smile. Logan had brainwashed her with his stupid magical kiss! No way Melanie’s mom would ever let her be in her room with a boy alone. I pushed her out of the way and ran for the stairs. She ran after me, her head bobbing against her shoulder, but I took the stairs in two and sprinted for Melanie’s room at the end of the upstairs hallway. I pictured them sitting on the bed together, doing all sorts of mushy things. But when I burst through the door, Logan and Melanie were dancing to soft music.

  “Adrian?” Melanie said, shutting off the radio. “What are you doing here? Why are you all muddy?”

  Logan grinned at me and pulled Melanie close to him.

  “Adrian, why do you have a knife?” she said in an alarmed tone. “I told you I couldn’t be your tutor anymore.”

  “You’re real sick,” I said, pointing the knife at Melanie. “You just stayed home to be with him.”

  “That’s none of your business, you little brat. Now why do you have that knife? You’re scaring me.”

  “I made him,” I said, pointing the shaking knife at Logan now. “I made him. He’s only attractive because of me. You only like him because of me. I programmed him to have an inhuman kiss that makes your muscles collapse. I did all the work!”

  “Adrian, go away! Mom, can you make Adrian leave, please!” Melanie yelled. “Put that knife down!”

  “You may have made me, but I get to have all the fun,” Logan said, spinning Melanie around and kissing her on the lips. Her concerned look suddenly disappeared, and she got lost in the long, slow kiss. Soon she fell onto the bed, half-conscious and under Logan’s spell. It was the kiss that was supposed to be mine, but it was so wrong and unromantic the way Logan did it. He was going to hurt her; I had wanted to protect her. At that moment my brain exploded in fury, and I lunged for Logan with the knife. He stuck out his hand to stop me, grabbing my arm and preventing me from stabbing him.

  “You’re gonna die hard,” I screamed, tears streaming down my face. At once Logan let go of my arm, and cupped both my cheeks in his hands. Then he did the weirdest thing—he kissed me on the lips! My legs instantly felt weak, and my head got warm and woozy. I fell to my knees, and I didn’t even have enough strength to hold the heavy knife. It clunked on the floor. I was under his spell, just like Melanie!

  “There there, little boy,” he said, resting my head on the floor and picking up the knife. “Why don’t you lie there for a few minutes and watch what you’ve really created.” He stood up, put the knife on the windowsill, and then sat down next to Melanie on the bed. I was stretched out on the floor, unable to talk or move my limbs—frozen, but awake. I got a kiss finally, but it was from that wretched monster! It wasn’t like that at all in my fantasies, and now I was paralyzed!

  I heard Melanie moan from the bed as Logan undid her shoelaces and removed her sneakers. He tossed them right over my body and smirked at me. Then he took off her socks and tossed those on my face. I took a deep breath of Melanie’s foot odor and felt a rush of pleasure. Even her sock lint had the touch of a goddess—like sweet-smelling honey mixed with Ambrosia. I imagined myself on Mt. Olympus again, doing her laundry at a flowing stream and having a grand old time. After a couple of deep breaths, the smell started disappearing, so I reached for her sneaker and jammed it into my face.

  I reached for it! That meant I could move again! Melanie’s sock odor somehow broke the spell! At first I pretended to still be paralyzed, but when Logan started taking other, more serious pieces of Melanie’s clothing off, I crawled slowly over to the windowsill. I waited for just the right moment, and then in one quick motion, I stood up, grabbed the knife, held it high with both hands, and plunged it right into Logan’s back. I heard the cracking of bones, and it felt like I was cutting a really tough turkey. Snarling and drooling, I leaned on the knife with all my strength, until it sank throu
gh his whole body. Logan let out one big scream, jerked his head back, and then slumped down on top of Melanie.

  “Adrian, oh my god, Adrian!” Melanie yelled, pushing Logan off of her. There was a deep gash in Melanie’s stomach that was bleeding badly, quickly darkening her pink mini-skirt with blood. The knife had gone straight through Logan and into her! I could barely breathe as I tried to pull the knife out of Logan’s back, but my sweaty hands made it impossible. It was an awful scene when Melanie’s mom came rushing up the stairs and into the room. Logan was motionless. I was crying and holding a sock over Melanie’s wound, telling her I was sorry over and over again. Melanie was screaming at the top of her lungs, and there was another stain on the bed where I had wet my pants.

  With Logan down, all his kissing spells were broken, and raw reality took over. I don’t remember all that happened after Melanie’s mom called 911. Just the smell of all those fluids, and the screaming, and me crying and wishing it was all a dream. The cops pulled me right off the bed and put me in handcuffs, and the ambulance sped away with Melanie, Logan and her Mom. Then there was the horrible moment of seeing my parents for the first time at the police station, knowing our lives would never be the same again. That was followed by many other horrors, like facing the judge, the lawyers, the grand jury, the psychologist, news reporters jamming microphones in my face, and lots of other stuff.

  Now I’m in this little room telling you all this and trying to figure out where I could have prevented this from happening, besides never being born in the first place, that is. Out of all the magic that happened over those weeks, I couldn’t even get the one kiss that I dreamed about. Now I’ll never see Melanie again as long as I live, except, of course, at the trial. You see, Melanie wasn’t that badly hurt by the knife. It just looked really bad. Logan was dead, though. They never could find Logan’s parents to inform them of that, even though the police tried really hard. Was it illegal to kill a monster that you programmed? Could I really tell the truth at my trial? And would anybody even believe me?

  And that’s the entire tale, exactly as it happened. My whole life consists of sitting in this dark room at the mental hospital waiting for Mom and Dad to come cry and give me hugs, talking to the cabbage-smelling lawyer, the psychiatrist with the mole, and waiting for the nurse that looks like Pamela Anderson to give me a sponge-bath. Just between you and me, I would much rather be in school. I would accept almost any nickname just to be with my friends again, even “The Tough, Murderous, Mentally Insane, Girl-Crazed, Crying Puppy.” Like I said earlier, Life was much better in third grade when my nickname was just “Puppy.”

  Part 2

  The Roleplaying Ring

  I just came back from the first day of my murder trial.

  They drove me there in a white van with dark tinted windows. I had to wear plastic handcuffs. The worst part was when they walked me from the van into the courthouse. The street was lined with reporters, cameramen, and people with hand-painted signs. One sign read, “Death penalty for Adrian.” That hurt bad. So many people were yelling and screaming at me, waving fists, and spitting. They don’t know the real me. If only they could hear this narration. In The Body Builder, I was just trying to protect Melanie. Logan was a mutant creation who was going to hurt her. You believe I’m innocent, right? I don’t think I could go on with this story if I thought you hated me.

  “Why did you kill that homeless orphan boy,” one reporter asked me. “Was it really a love triangle gone bad?”

  If I opened my mouth, an ocean of tears would have come out. The news reporters had turned Logan into some Oliver Twist folk hero. The mysterious teenager who appeared from nowhere, had no family, and died horribly with a butcher knife through his back. The people ate it up. Some rich guy even started the Logan Foundation, a charity to help support kids just like Logan. I hope they collect a million dollars so it can rot in their vault, because they’re sure not going to find another teenage Frankenstein with enchanted lips created by a kid with a magical device dug up by a green pig in a meadow that doesn’t even exist.

  Another horrible part was when I saw Melanie in the courtroom. She looked so unhappy. Her brightness had faded, and she had dark rings under her eyes. Even though I see her every night while lying in bed, my heart burst when she looked over at me, and the bloody fragments fell down into my stomach and mixed with all the adrenaline that was flowing into there. I could barely stay conscious. If I had the strength I would have leaped across the wooden seats and kneeled before her, begging her for mercy—the slave that brought down a goddess. In ancient times I would have been executed in a second, my arms and legs tied to four horses which would run in different directions. Or thrown off a high cliff on one of the rocky islands around the Mediterranean. Maybe coated with honey and tossed into a ring of lions. There wouldn’t have been any trial.

  My lawyer that smells like cabbage gave an opening statement about how I killed Logan in self-defense because he was hurting Melanie. All the witnesses would prove it, he promised—Melanie’s mom, me, and Melanie herself. Of course, I knew what Melanie was really going to say. Even though I hadn’t technically been near her with my body, I knew all about what was going on in her life and in her mind. Like I said, I saw her every night while lying in bed—and I’m not talking about my imagination. I already knew that she had gotten taller, changed her hair from straight to frizzy, that her bra size had increased, and she had started wearing Uggs. Nobody had told me this stuff.

  I’ll tell you how I figured it out. This part of the story starts a few months after I had first been put in prison. I was all alone in my cell when some visitors came by…

  It was dark in my cell. I was doing something to myself that I had learned about when I was Logan. When I had transformed back into my twelve-year-old self I figured out that I could still do it. It was my main form of entertainment in my cell, since they won’t let me have any television (might electrocute myself), no books (paper cuts!), and no video games (see the part about the television). I was thinking about Melanie. It was always the same fantasy. We lived together at the top of a floating tower in the middle of the vast, starry universe.

  The tower soared through the distant reaches of space, past black holes and colorful bands of dust that spiraled together into beautiful patterns. Asteroids and comets whizzed by, leaving trails of ice and dust, but we only paid attention to each other. The impossibly high tower had no visible bottom—it spanned solar systems, galaxies, possibly the whole universe. At the top was a circular landing with stone turrets in the walls. There sat Ganymede—the human boy who became a Greek god, and Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty. I hold a golden chalice and feed her nectar and ambrosia. If some drips down her chin, I kiss it away. The ancient Greek civilization has long since abandoned us, so we have nothing to do but love each other.

  I had once been satisfied with just a hug and a kiss, but that slowly changed after my whole Logan experience. Those totally new, alien desires found me on that tower top and tried to infiltrate my body like a virus. I fought them off for awhile, shooting arrows at them from between the tower turrets, but they eventually overcame me, seeped into my brain, and turned me into one of them. Melanie and I share a blanket and one tiny pillow that leans against a smooth spot in the stone wall—the one place where I haven’t scratched “Ganymede loves Aphrodite” with my fingernails. It was on one of these romantic nights, as our tower whizzed past the constellation Pegasus, that I heard an oinking noise come from the door of my cell.

  A pig was nearby.

  “This looks like the right door, Oinkleberry,” a voice said. It sounded like that crusty old Ricky from the mysterious garage sale! I quickly pulled up my pajama-bottoms and scrambled over to the door. I saw the shadow of an old guy with a cane, and a pig holding a box in its mouth. A warm putrid smell made me want to gag.

  “Hey, what the hell’s going on?” I whispered. “That thing you sold me ruined my life.”

  “Indeed, it has,” Ricky sai
d. “No returns. No returns. The customer is always wrong. But the crowd’s a-loving it. You’re a celebrity, boy, all the way to the distant corners of our world.” He banged his cane against the floor and began laughing. His veins began glowing in the darkness—this time bright yellow—complicated freeways of twisty bumps that cast a dim glow on the walls of the hallway. His rotting brown teeth glinted when he spoke.

  “Who are you? What happened to that meadow with the cottage?”

  “You need a new toy,” Ricky said, grabbing the box out of Oinkleberry’s mouth. “Your current form of entertainment won’t do. Not at all. Crowd’s not gonna understand. Now, c’mon. Take this, don’t be scared. There’s a good lad.” He handed me the box through the bars in my door.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a present,” Ricky said. “We chose it from your past, and it will define your future. A present! Ha! Oh my, how I love your language. Now, boy, make sure you read the instructions this time. Let’s go, Oinkleberry. My new rocking chair is getting cold.” He slammed his cane against the floor. The pig made a bleating noise and pushed its snout into my hand, creating a major electric shock that lit up my room for a moment. A few seconds later my visitors were gone, and I was left alone holding the cardboard box. Shivering, I clutched my chest to make sure my heart was still beating.

  I turned on the ceiling light, hoping that the guards were too busy sleeping to notice that I was up past my bedtime. I peered into the box. Inside sat a small plastic holder with a cardboard label at the top, the kind that hangs at the checkout line in a supermarket. The words “Roleplaying Ring. Ages 12+” spanned the label. A shiny gold ring with a green gemstone sat inside the plastic packaging material. A small piece of paper folded into a dense square was jammed below the ring.