Dead Romantic (9 page)

‘Like a fish finger or something?' I said. ‘Like, if you gave a fish finger the brain of a mouse, maybe?'

Zoe looked at me. ‘No. You can't reanimate something that was never animated in the first place.'

‘Oh right. Why not? A fish finger used to be a fish.'

‘A subject has to have a circulatory system, a brain,
musculoskeletal and nervous systems. And preferably no breadcrumbs.'

‘Just a suggestion,' I said. ‘Can I help you do it? Would you let me be involved?'

She looked at me. ‘Yes. You can. You said you trusted me?'

‘I do, Zoe, I do. For deffs.'

‘Then you can't disapprove if I decide to do something a little . . . off the wall?'

‘No, of course not. I promise.'

Suddenly her face was a concrete building with a flaming blue fire flickering in the upstairs windows. And then she just said it.

‘I want to try it on a human.'

‘A what?'

‘A human.'

‘A human what?'

‘A human being,' she said. ‘I've been considering it for a while. Imagine if I applied these methods to a human and it worked. I wouldn't just break down the boundaries of science, I'd obliterate them!'

‘But, how?' I said. ‘Do you mean digging someone up?'

‘No, I need to push the science as far as it will go. Really put my father's methods into action. How about we create a human as near perfect as we can imagine? Perfect face. Perfect body. Perfect brain. How about I create
you
the perfect boyfriend?'

‘What?'

‘For your Halloween party. We could assemble from all the best parts of different boys – a strong body, healthy
lungs, good legs, a superlative brain – and electrocute him back to life as a complete human being. And of course I will be able to present him to the British Medical Association and restore my father's reputation. And you, well, you could finally have your perfect boyfriend.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes, really.'

My very own Electrocutie. Bliss, I thought. ‘But hang on a minute, isn't this all a bit . . . impossible?'

‘You'd have thought bringing those hamsters back to life was impossible not so long ago,' she said.

‘Yeah, but . . .'

‘You'd have thought reattaching a dog's head and having him run around and chew slippers again was impossible an hour ago.'

‘Yeah, I guess.'

‘Imagine all those faces at the Halloween party when you walk in with the most desirable boy any of them has ever clapped eyes on. Think how jealous all the other girls at college will be. Think how jealous
Damian
will be.'

I looked down at Pee Wee who sat beside my feet, chewing happily on Zoe's slipper. Maybe it was because I'd had a door slammed into my face or maybe it was my loneliness, but it was all actually making sense to me. A whole new boy, just for me. A beautiful boy who would make everyone totally jelly pants, and completely wipe away the hideous memory of tonight and freshers' night and every other hideous night forever. ‘You really think it could work?'

‘You doubt me?' she said.

‘No way. I just . . . can't imagine someone as perfect as the boy you're talking about. And even if I could, I can't imagine him falling in love with me.'

‘Well, start imagining,' said Zoe.

I felt a bubbliness in my stomach. Suddenly, I was dead excited. ‘Oh my God, yes please, let's do it!' I said, launching myself at her for a hug. ‘I'm no good at science though, stitching and chemicals and all that. You'll have to teach me.'

Zoe looked at me. ‘Your role as my assistant will be to aid me in obtaining my components, hand me my instruments, clear away detritus, etcetera. And of course, keep our secret. I can't present this to our A level group like the hamsters.'

‘Why?' I said. ‘It would make a great joint coursework project.'

‘Well, there's the tiny problem that we will be breaking the law. We won't have the consent of the previous owners to make you a boyfriend from their limbs or organs, so it will require some degree of stealth.'

‘Okay,' I said. Love against all the odds it would have to be. Criminal, forbidden love. Love at a high price, but totes worth it.

‘But once I've proved it works, it won't matter one jot. Nobody will care because what we will have done will be so awe-inspiring, so unbelievable that the law will be irrelevant. So this must remain between us for now, until I'm sure it works.'

I nodded. ‘But where will we get all the different boy parts from?'

We stood at the window as lightning flashed in the sky outside. I followed Zoe's stare back down towards the town lights.

‘They're all down there, somewhere,' she said, grinning, ‘like the pieces of a jigsaw, just waiting to be put together.'

 

 

 

 

E
ven though the parentals were pretty worried about my purple nose when they saw it the next morning and did the whole ‘Maybe we should take you down the A&E' bit, I somehow managed to keep Pee Wee away from them. I fed him the cereal meant for room three when Mum was out of the kitchen and then we headed to Wonkies, the seafront cafe overlooking the Bracht, where Zoe had asked to meet up for a planning session. On the way there, Pee Wee attacked a Pomeranian and I had to tell him off. But I gave him a treat for letting go of the Pomeranian's leg eventually, and because I felt really bad about telling him off.

Zoe had got to the cafe before me. We settled ourselves at a four-seater table by a window overlooking the beach.
They'd just switched the fryers on, and rather than going for the usual doughnuts or bacon and eggs you were expected to eat at this time on a Wednesday morning, I asked for cod and chips and a hot chocolate. I was celebrating the end of dieting forever. Zoe asked for a glass of water.

‘Why did you want to meet so early?' I said, taking off my arm warmers and tucking them inside my bag beside Pee Wee's sleeping body.

‘Because there's much to do,' said Zoe, as I lined up my condiments in front of me. I was going to have ketchup, brown sauce, tartare sauce, curry sauce and mayo. I'd always wanted to try full fat mayo on chips and now I had my chance.

The waitress came over with our order. I'd forgotten I'd asked for buttered bread with my fish as well and my heart did a little leap when I saw it on the side plate. I gazed at the glorious squashy mess of crispy golden cod and the mountain of chips before me. Now that I didn't care about staying thin to find a boyfriend, it was faboosies to finally be able to eat as much as I liked. Our homemade boyfriend wouldn't mind if I was fat. He would think bigger girls who ate like pigs were actually the best and that's how every girl should be. I'd teach him that. Zoe said we could teach him anything if he had the right brain. Zoe was watching me.

‘What?' I said.

‘You're guzzling that like you haven't eaten in days,' she said.

‘I love fish and chips,' I said, offering her my pot of
curry sauce. ‘Dip a chip in there, it's awesies!' She shook her head. ‘This is so good. I wish I'd got large now.'

‘Camille, we have some serious matters to discuss now. Are you going to be able to leave your breakfast long enough to join me or am I doing this alone?'

‘Yeah,' I said through my crammed mouth.

‘Right, so, first things first. Here's what you need to know,' she said, taking a large lined notepad from her bag. The pages were filled with the messiest writing I'd ever seen. She thumbed through to a page where there was an inky drawing. She flipped the book round and showed it to me. It was of a blue lizard.

‘Camille, say hello to Ambystoma zoexanthe. The blueblooded salamander.'

‘Hello . . . blue-blooded salamander,' I said. ‘Hang on. There was one of those in a glass case in your hallway.'

‘Well remembered,' she said. ‘This is the main ingredient of the serum. My father went travelling early in his career and spent some time on an island called Tdk Benar in the Indian Ocean, where they are native. He was researching human stem cells in the brain and bonemarrow and methods of self-renewal in already existing organisms and he'd heard about this creature.'

‘Coolio,' I said, still tucking in. She was talking about science; I was eating. We were both happy.

‘He wanted to know if a restorative could be developed for a human being. He studied these creatures. Their habitat. Interactions. Reproductive habits. Gestational periods. And he learned something extraordinary about them.'

‘Neat,' I said. There was a flood of spit in my mouth
and I just couldn't get the chips in quick enough to soak it up. I shook some more vinegar on.

‘The blue-blooded salamander,' said Zoe, ‘could replicate its limbs and repair its wounds in much the same way as an axolotl or a starfish or a flatworm can. If it loses a limb to a predator, it will re-grow that limb.'

‘Wow, that's clever,' I said through my mouthful.

‘Lumbriculus variegatus, a species of black worm, can regenerate an entirely new body. So if you cut it in half, each half will regrow. This salamander had a regenerative blood type, extremely rare in the natural world. My father harvested, tested and adapted it, and after six hundred and fifty attempts, he came up with serum 651. It's a combination of various coagulants, plus the blood and endocrine glands of this salamander, methadrelanol hydraglycerine, hydrocanthium, glycerol, distilled water, aloe vera, powdered metallinium and sulfa, which was a type of medicinal powder used to bind wounds on soldiers on the battlefield.'

‘There were quite a lot of words there I didn't understand. Do I need to?'

‘No,' she continued. ‘You just need to understand the basics, that the serum can completely regenerate damaged tissue.'

‘That's quite impressive, isn't it?' I licked salt off my lips and squinted at the sun pouring through our window.

‘Quite impressive?' said Zoe, standing up the menu to shade our table from the sun's rays. ‘My father discovered
the
key ingredient necessary for the regeneration of human tissue. And this is it.' She lightly tapped the drawing in
her book. ‘Ambystoma zoexanthe. I'm named after it.'

‘Zoexanthe, that's your name? That's so cool.' I made a chip, curry sauce, mayo and batter sandwich. Utterly Yumsville.

Zoe nodded, brushing her black hair away from her face. ‘So basically, this is the glue that will hold your perfect man together. Now I am no judge of male beauty, so that's where you come in. What are you looking for in a perfect partner?'

‘Well, I want us to make an impression when we walk into the Halloween party together, like Cinderella does at the ball in the Disney film. He has to look like a man version of Cinderella, so he's got to have the face of, like, a model or something. A square jaw and all that.'

‘Right,' said Zoe, making a note in her book.

‘And a really fit body, like, super fit. Fitter than Damian de Jager. Fitter than
any
boy in college actually. A proper athlete's body. Like that lifeguard at the pool who's always doing one-handed press-ups. His body is UN-BE-lievable. He's got that lumpy stomach thing too. Dashboard.'

‘Washboard,' Zoe corrected. ‘Right, right.'

‘And his hair has to be really soft and quite thick. And nice feet, no second-toe-longer-than-the-big-toe business going on. And above all else, he has to love me. Like, proper love me. Couldn't-live-without-me kind of love me. And a bit intelligent, I s'pose, but not more intelligent than me.'

‘I pick the brain,' said Zoe. ‘I just need you for the aesthetics.'

‘I can't stand athletics,' I said, remembering my
disastrous 800 metres on sports day in the last year of school. ‘I'm quite good at discus though.'

‘Aesthetics,' said Zoe. ‘What he looks like. The parts that really matter – the brain and the internal organs – I'll need to source myself. The fundamentals have to be correct before we go wrapping them in shiny paper.'

‘But do you really think it'll work on humans, Zo?' I said. ‘I mean, if surgeons could really stitch people's arms on or give dead people new heads and bring them back to life, well, wouldn't they have done it by now?'

‘They
have
done it with limbs,' she replied, sketching some hair on the faceless boy she'd been drawing. ‘They've done quadruple limb transplants, face transplants. Medicine is progressing so quickly in this area. We're just skipping over a couple of chapters.'

‘I can't wait,' I squealed. ‘I really can't wait.' I chewed my bottom lip. ‘I'm going to buy him a suit too, to wear at the party. A really nice one and we'll get his hair done so it's all sweepy and sexy and bang on trend. But what about making him a good person and making him kind and, most important of all, making him love me? Could we really train him to be whatever I wanted him to be?'