Roland looks at me as if I am being slightly masochistic, but once again he’s caught up in the expectant stares all around us, and he goes ahead and does it again. This time he holds the switch down longer until the howling in my ears is deafening.
“That’s enough,” he says as he sees the results on the screen start to look a bit questionable. “I don’t know why it seems to be hitting you so hard, but I think it’s time to stop.”
I hear what he’s saying.
I’ve proven that my experiment works, and you’ve done your part to get your extra credit.
But I’m not done yet.
I grab the remote from his hand and hit the switch again. When I do, the surge of electricity makes me drop the remote to the ground, jamming the switch in its engaged position.
He reaches for it and tries to pull it back up, but it’s stuck.
Then he looks up to see the voltage knob that he can now see from behind me as the electricity starts to make me lean a little bit out of position. Roland’s eyes open wide, but he remains frozen to the spot.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the science teacher who’s overseeing the assembly catches sight of his look and immediately dismisses the audience to go back to their classes.
“Show’s over,” the teacher says, hurriedly rushing up onto the stage. “Hurry up and go before you’re all late to class.”
The two of them grab all of the wires and cords and unplug then until the entire machine shuts down. As soon as it does, the howling in my ears abates.
The tingling pain rushes in as it leaves, making me double over in my chair as the curtains are quickly drawn in front of my face.
“What the hell was that?” the teacher asks my electrocutioner as he storms back up onto the stage after switching off the electricity just to be safe. He takes a closer look at the machine and balks. “You could kill a person at those levels!”
“I didn’t set the voltage to that level,” Roland explains to the teacher. “I swear sir, I had it set to the lowest voltage possible!”
“Then how did it get there?” the teacher asks as he points to the voltage selection.
Roland turns to me.
“She must have changed it,” he says, accusatorially.
He’s right, of course. I did.
But the teacher just glares at me in disbelief and lets us both off with a warning so long as we get off his stage … now.
Roland whirls on me as soon as we’re out of earshot and demands I never speak to him again.
I couldn’t care less. I just wanted more of that feeling. I wanted to hear the sound of wolf calls in my ears or in my head, or anywhere.
Still, it’s somehow not enough.
On my walk home from school, I stop in the convenience store.
I realize as soon as I go to check my loose change that I accidentally left my wallet at home, but once again, a thought that would usually make me balk makes a thrill race through me instead.
The owner of the store has always been really nice to me, so I kind of feel bad about what I’m about to do.
But this growing feeling inside me outweighs my guilt.
I say hello to the owner as I walk inside the store and then wait for him to busy himself with some restocking before I attempt to shove a soda bottle into the pocket of my hoodie. I do it quickly, then walk
around the shop a bit more and pretend like I’m looking for something that isn’t there.
I feel more sick than thrilled.
There are a couple other people in the store too, so it’s not as if he can keep eyes on what everyone’s doing at once. The longer I linger, the more guilty I feel … but it’d be too obvious to slip the soda out now.