We identify them among ourselves, and then call Mr. Gy over. We don’t get them all right (curse you, esophagus!), but we do well enough that the rat’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt.
“Good job,” says Mr. Gy. “There’s going to be a quiz, so keep practicing until all three of you are comfortable identifying everything.”
Mr. Gy walks over to watch the kids who are dissecting an alligator. (I’m kidding. It’s a frog. Just making sure you’re paying attention.)
“Do you know all the parts?” I ask Blake.
He nods. “The caudate lobe is my favorite.”
“Of course it is.”
“I hope this rat doesn’t come back to life and seek vengeance,” he adds.
With anybody else, I’d be thrilled to chat about zombie rats, but I don’t want to squander that subject on Blake. I ignore his comment and focus my attention on the guts.
“Do you need the tools anymore?” Audrey asks. “If you don’t, I’ll wash them off.”
“I wouldn’t mind poking around in there a little more,” says Blake.
“I’ll wash them off now,” says Audrey.
Even if my girlfriend doesn’t know that Blake is pure evil, she now knows that he’s uncool.
Audrey goes over to the sink. Her back is to us, which means that she doesn’t see Blake poke his gloved index finger into the rat.
“Knock it off,” I whisper.
“What’s the matter?” he whispers back. “Worried about maintaining an antiseptic environment for our patient? I don’t think Roberto has to worry about infection.”
I don’t answer him. I shouldn’t have to explain why it’s not okay to stick your finger into a dissected rat.
Blake glances around the classroom. Nobody is paying attention.
He reaches into the rat and scoops up some…uh, contents.
Please don’t eat it, I think. Please, please, please don’t eat it.
He doesn’t eat it. Even Blake has higher standards than that.
He holds up his hand and looks into my eyes.
If he throws that at me, he’ll regret it until his dying day, which will be today. If he throws it at me, I’ll make sure that he’s expelled and that Aunt Mary and Uncle Clark have to cut their stupid cruise short to come get him. There is no decision he can make in life that’s worse than throwing rat innards at me.
He doesn’t throw it at me.
He throws them at himself.
Roberto’s insides strike Blake directly in the forehead. He recoils and cries out in disgust. “Ew! Rod, dude!”
Everybody in the class turns to look.
Blake frantically wipes his face with the back of his hand. “Ew, ew, ew! What’s the matter with you?”
“Are you out of your mind?” asks Mr. Gy, striding toward me with the look of a teacher who assumed that he could trust us to do dissections without starting a food fight.
“I didn’t do it!” I insist. “He did it to himself!”
“I get that you’re cousins and used to horsing around with each other, but this is completely unacceptable. Get him a wet towel!”
“He threw it in his own face!” I say.
I look over at Audrey, who is staring at me with her mouth wide open.
“I said to get him a wet towel,” Mr. Gy tells me. I’ve never seen a teacher look so angry.
“So gross…so gross,” says Blake. “It got on the floor too. I’ll get the towel.”
He steps forward, pretends to slip on something slimy, and falls to the floor as everybody in the biology lab gasps. I’ll give him credit for being committed to the role. That fall looks like it hurt.
I’ve never been afraid of a challenge, but trying to convince everybody that Blake threw the rat guts in his own face is not going to be easy. Blake definitely wins this round.
14.
Recap for those who skipped chapter thirteen due to the grossness factor: Our hero, Rod, was in biology class, where he was lab partners with his amazing girlfriend, Audrey, and his rotten cousin, Blake. After successfully dissecting a rat and identifying its parts, Audrey stepped away from the table, at which point Blake threw some rat bits into his own face, but he pretended that Rod did it! That’s right. He framed Rod! What’s up with that?
Official apology for those who skipped chapter thirteen due to the grossness factor and then still had to read about rat guts in the recap: Sorry.
Blake and I sit in Principal Gordon’s office. Principal Gordon is a medium-sized man with a small head and large arms. He’s a friendly guy when he’s addressing the school at assemblies or when you pass him in the hallway, but he doesn’t like troublemakers. I know students who’ve found themselves in my current position, and they’ve spun tales of a man who made them feel like he would devote every waking moment for the rest of his long, long life to making them pay for their transgressions. They’d be forty years old with a spouse, children, a beautiful home, a lucrative and personally satisfying job, and think to themselves, Yep, everything sure worked out. Moments later Principal Gordon would step out from behind a tree and reveal that this was all part of his elaborate plan for vengeance. The spouse, the kids, the home, the job—all of them had been set up by Principal Gordon, and he was taking them away, leaving the misbehaving student alone, homeless, jobless, and weeping softly as storm clouds formed in the dark sky.
This always seemed far-fetched. Still, it successfully conveyed the message that it was better not to find yourself in the principal’s office.
“Mr. Conklin,” he says with the frown of a person who could destroy a student’s future. “I haven’t seen you in my office before.”
“No, sir,” I say. My school record is flawless. I save the antics for the stage.
“Let me make sure I understand what happened. You were in lab, learning about the interior of a rodent, and you flung viscera into Mr. Montgomery’s
