I made a break for the doors the moment assembly finished, but I wasn’t quick enough to escape Brandy. Her shrill voice stopped me in my tracks.
“Allison Miller! I thought we discussed proper assembly behaviour last week. If you want your iPod back you’ll have to show me that you’re mature enough to control yourself.”
She was right. We had discussed proper assembly behaviour. We’d also discussed proper classroom behaviour, proper public transport behaviour, proper school uniform and proper manners. In fact, since starting at Whitlam I’d had more “discussions” with Ms Brand in her tiny broom cupboard of an office than I’d had with any other teacher in the entire eleven years I’d been at school so far. And they all ended with her sighing and giving me the same line, the one she delivered now: “Why can’t you be more like your sister?”
I learned somewhere around the middle of Year Eight that she didn’t want to be told the answer.
“Branded?” asked Maz when I finally made it out of the hall.
“The curse of Larrie’s little sister strikes again. At this rate I’ll be lucky to get my iPod back before we finish Year Twelve ourselves.”
“You need some of these,” said Simon, putting his fingers to his ears and producing two tiny earphones. “They’re wireless. I’ve been listening to a Stephen Hawking podcast.”
“Where were these two weeks ago when Brandy sprung me with my earbuds in during detention?” I demanded.
“I hadn’t made them yet.”
“You made these?” said Maz. “Simon, you’re freaking brilliant! You could make a fortune out of this.”
“Nah, it’s a pretty simple hack. I’ll make you some if you like, Al.”
For a so-called genius, Simon can be incredibly thick. “They’re not much good to me without an iPod,” I pointed out.
“Oh … yeah.” His face went nearly as red as his hair, and he mumbled something about having to drop by the school office before taking off in the other direction.
Maz and I dawdled to class, putting off getting to Science for as long as we could.
“You shouldn’t be so mean to him.”
“To who?” I asked, as if I didn’t know I was about to get lecture #126 in the Be Nice to Simon series.
“Come on, the poor guy’s got it bad for you and you treat him like something you trod in.”
“That’s because nothing else I’ve tried has made him accept the fact that I’m not interested in him and never will be. It’s not my fault the guy can’t take a hint.”
“I don’t hear you complaining when he’s doing all your lab work for you.”
I stopped at the door to the Science lab. “Is this the point where you ask me why I can’t be more like my sister and treat the whole world like my best friend? ’Cos you sound exactly like Brandy right now.”
Maz clutched her chest like she’d been shot. “You really know how to hit a girl where it hurts,” she said, falling to her knees.
“Maryanne Dekker, get up and get in here!” thundered Ms Morales, holding the door open and pointing to where the rest of our class was waiting to begin the lesson.
“Sorry, Miss. I was trying–”
Ms Morales held up her hand to stop Maz talking. “Save the explanations for detention. Now move it.”
I pulled Maz up before Ms Morales found an excuse to give me a detention too. Aside from Brandy, Morales is my biggest detractor (or Larrie’s biggest fan, depending on how you look at it). She makes her classes sit in alphabetical order at the lab benches, which means I have to sit two rows back from Maz. Even worse, since Brian Mansford had to repeat Year Nine, the name before mine on the class roll is Lutz. Simon Lutz.
“One person from each bench, come and collect your specimen,” said Ms Morales.
Simon was out of his seat before she’d finished speaking, as eager as an industrious beaver at the start of dam-building season.
“Miss, do we really have to do this with actual frogs?” I asked. “I’ve heard about schools where they do virtual dissection, you know, on computers. They say it’s just like the real thing, except no innocent amphibians have to die for it.”
Ms Morales was unmoved. “I’ve already told you, Allison, if you don’t want to pass this biology unit, you’re welcome to opt out of dissection, but I suggest you think carefully about whether you can afford to lose those marks. Perhaps your sister can help you get over your squeamishness? She’s got a steady hand with a scalpel.”
I’d already asked Larrie to help me with dissection – by signing my petition to have it removed from the Year Ten Science syllabus. I had nearly one hundred signatures and I knew hers would be the ringing endorsement the school would demand before making a change. After all, if Larissa Miller, aspiring vet and Schools Science Olympiad silver medal winner for Biology, thought that dissection wasn’t necessary then it simply must be true.
Larrie refused to oblige. She said it was because it was good for us to learn from real organs and muscles and bones, but I knew it was to spite me. I should’ve done a petition demanding more dissection, then she would’ve kicked up a stink and got it banned.
“Want to make the first cut?” asked Simon, offering me his scalpel.
I could barely bring myself to look at the pathetic little blob of browny-green with its arms and legs pinned to the tray, let alone cut into it. “You go ahead. I’ll watch.”
I don’t know which was more stomach churning: listening to Simon’s running commentary on the dissection (“And now I’m cutting through the abdominal wall – it’s springier than you’d expect.”), or the overwhelming smell of formaldehyde.
One problem with having a really sensitive sense of smell is that odours that other people find unpleasant (like wet dog or the school canteen on meat pie day) are totally unbearable to me. The formaldehyde-soaked frog smelt like pickles in vinegar with a side order of acid. It burned my nostrils, and when I switched to breathing through my mouth, I could taste it on the back of my tongue. Even if I’d been the most enthusiastic dissector, I couldn’t have concentrated on the job.
I looked for something to take my mind off the stinky, grisly scene in front of me. Luckily, more interesting things were going on outside, i.e. the Year Eleven guys playing soccer on the lawn behind the Science block. My eyes followed Josh Turner, captain of Whitlam’s A-grade soccer team and official #2 School Hunk (as voted by the girls in Years Nine to Twelve at the beginning of term one), tracing his path as he weaved between two players to steal the ball and kick a swift goal. It was poetry in motion.
Ms Morales came around to check on our progress. “Very nice, Simon,” she said, inspecting his work. “But this is meant to be a joint exercise.”
“Yes, Miss. I made the initial incisions. Al was about to take over for the organ removal.”
“Excellent,” said Ms Morales, an evil glint in her eye. “I’ll be interested to see whether fine cutting skills run in the Miller family.”
Simon passed me the scalpel and slid the tray in front of me. My mind raced, searching for a way out of the humiliation that was certain to follow. Could I faint? Vomit? Run from the lab screaming? Thankfully, a loud crash from Maz and Prad’s bench sent Ms Morales scuttling away to tell them off. Simon took the scalpel back.
“What’s the big idea putting me on the spot like that with Morales?” I demanded.
“Would you have preferred me to say that you didn’t intend to do any of the dissection?” he said, without taking his eyes off the frog’s innards. “Anyway, if she’d stayed, I would’ve talked you through removing the heart. It would have been fine.”
I folded my arms across my chest and turned back to the window. The Year Elevens had finished their game and were standing around their bags, in no rush to get to whichever class they were meant to be in. Perhaps he felt my gaze, but something made Josh glance up at the window of the Science lab and for a second our eyes met. It was long enough for me to fall deeply in crush.