1. Hope that Blake doesn’t sit at my table.
2. If he does, try to avoid knocking myself unconscious from repeatedly bashing my head against the table in frustration.
It turns out that I don’t even see Blake. Maybe he’s eating outside. Maybe he’ll eat outside every day for the next three months, and it’ll be one less problem for me to deal with. Knowing Blake, he’s probably having sushi delivered.
Mel and Audrey, perhaps noticing a twitch in my eyebrow, do not mention Blake the entire time. It’s half an hour of happiness.
Fifth period is fine. Sixth period, physical education, is also fine because running while a gym teacher yells at me to run faster is a hobby of mine. (I’m actually a good runner. All the jumping around I do while playing music keeps me in good shape.)
Seventh period, as you may or may not recall, is biology. I’ve always enjoyed this class. Not enough to become a doctor or marine biologist, but enough to look forward to the labs and stuff. Audrey is my lab partner, but even if my lab partner was Stinky Frank, the Deodorant-Free Kid, I’d enjoy it.
But today, there’s a new student in seventh-period biology, one I want to be farther away from than Stinky Frank. And that student is…you know.
(Fun fact: One day Stinky Frank came into school wearing an automobile air freshener around his neck. He has a good sense of humor about his aromatic challenges. I think it gives him a sense of identity and purpose. He’s very odd but always kind.)
Mr. Gy doesn’t make Blake stand in front of the class and tell them a little about himself. “Gretchen is out today, but she’ll be your lab partner in the future,” Mr. Gy tells him. “For now, your cousin can show you the ropes.”
Blake walks over to my and Audrey’s station. Today we’re doing dissections.
I quickly hold my notebook over the specimen, as it occurs to me that this might be really upsetting for him. (Blake, not the specimen, although I suppose things aren’t going so great for the specimen either.) It’s probably the last thing he wants to dissect.
“Maybe you should join one of the other tables,” I say. “Julie and Mark are dissecting a squid.”
“What are you dissecting?” Blake asks.
“You don’t want to know.”
“What is it?” he presses.
“A rat.”
“Oh, cool!”
“I thought you loved rats.”
“I do. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to dissect one.”
I move my notebook. The dead rat is on its back in a tray. If you read the warning at the beginning of this chapter and assumed I was talking about snot or something, you have my permission to skip to the next chapter. We are, indeed, going to cut this rat open. It’s for science.
“Awesome,” Blake says with way too much enthusiasm. “Can we get started, or are there instructions?”
“There are instructions,” says Audrey.
Blake looks disappointed.
Next to the tray is a piece of paper with a drawing of a rat showing where to make the incisions and written step-by-step instructions about how to cut up the rat and what we’re supposed to learn while we’re doing it. We have a tiny pair of scissors, which we will use to make an incision in the abdominal wall.
“What should we name it?” asks Blake.
“Nothing,” I say.
“How about Reginald the Rat? Ronald the Rat? Roberto the Rat? It doesn’t matter to me as long as it starts with an R.”
“We don’t name specimens before we dissect them,” says Audrey. “That’s cruel.”
“Why is it cruel?”
“Because then you think about how the rat used to be alive.”
“Not me,” says Blake. “When I think of Roberto the Rat, I think of a cartoon character.”
“I thought you hated cartoons,” I say.
“I do. That’s why it doesn’t bug me to dissect Roberto the Rat.”
I pick up the scissors. “I’ll be making the incision.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll cackle while you do it.”
“I will not cackle,” he insists.
“Fine. You’ll giggle.”
“I can’t believe that we have the same grandparents and yet you think I’d cackle and giggle while I slice up a rat.”
“I can’t believe we’re related either, but here we are.”
“Is everything all right?” asks Mr. Gy from across the room.
“Yes, sir,” I say. “Just working out our plan of attack.”
“Follow the instructions on the paper.”
“We will.”
I touch the scissors to Roberto’s tummy, and then I [description deleted]. After that, I [worse description deleted], making sure not to damage the underlying structures. Then I open the flaps.
“Now it says to rinse out the body cavity,” says Blake. “Can I give him the shower?”
I shake my head. “You’re an observer for today.”
The three of us being lab partners today is actually working out really well. Blake is no longer the charming guy who offers constructive criticism on a musical performance. He’s the creepy guy who wants to leer at rat guts. Audrey is finally seeing the true Blake.
Audrey picks up the tray. “I’ll rinse it out,” she says, walking over to the sink.
“You’re a lucky man,” says Blake. “I don’t know many girls who would volunteer to rinse out a dead rat’s body cavity.”
“We’re in biology class.”
“Still…”
Moments later Audrey returns with the freshly rinsed rat. Now our task is to look at various organs and glands and correctly identify them. Some are easy. (Everybody knows what lungs look like.) And some are difficult. (Do you know where the thymus gland is?) When we think we’ve got it right, we’re supposed to alert Mr. Gy, who will observe as we point to and name each blob of rat gunk.
He walks over, and Audrey and I trade off identifying the parts in the first layer. “Excellent,” says Mr. Gy. “Now remove the peritoneum.”
“What’s the peritoneum?” Blake asks.
I look down at the sheet. “A membrane.”
“Nice.”
You don’t want to read about me removing a membrane (or do you?) (weirdo), especially because I don’t get it completely right the first time. But soon we have a whole new layer of
