The body lay naked in the center of the room.

Beneath the harsh lights, the skin appeared yellow and waxen. The small group of AP Biology students stood in a loose circle around it. They all wore latex gloves and plastic aprons that crackled when they moved. A strained silence made every breath and anxious cough seem twice as loud.

“Ladies and gentleman, I’d like you to meet Mr. Thaddeus Ogden, who very kindly donated his body and his organs to Barnard Hospital’s cadaver lab so that young minds like yours might consider careers in the medical field,” Dr. Albert Arnold said, standing in front of the gurney. He gently patted Mr. Ogden’s lifeless shoulder. “The Whitney sisters’ foundation supports much of the research we do, and a good number of doctors and scientists, myself included, are Whitney alums. Most began their path to medicine right here where you are now, with the same hands-on experience.”

“He doesn’t look real, does he?” Tessa whispered in Katie’s ear. “The body, I mean, not Dr. Arnold.”

“Real enough,” Katie whispered back. As she’d predicted, she felt like throwing up.

She couldn’t stand the smell of formaldehyde. The stuff out-and-out reeked and, once it got into your nose, it was there to stay. You could pop a can of cheese Pringles and breathe it in after spending an hour poking open the insides of a pickled frog—or a mouse or a piglet—but the stink wouldn’t go away. And this time, they weren’t dissecting a pint-sized critter or even a medium-sized one, which was bad enough. This morning, their corpse du jour was big and entirely human.

“Blech.” The noise inadvertently escaped her.

“If you’re gonna hurl, don’t do it on my kicks,” Steve Getty said, loudly enough for the whole room to hear. He made a show of stepping farther away from her, garnering snickers from his buddies.

“Maybe I’ll aim for them,” she replied.

“My dear, there’s no need to be squeamish,” Dr. Arnold said, looking directly at her. “Mr. Ogden’s a very willing volunteer. He’s not going to sit up and say ‘Ouch.’ ”

“That’s reassuring,” Katie murmured, hoping the image of a dead Mr. Ogden popping upright wouldn’t stick in her head.

It wasn’t that she was afraid of slicing through skin and finding guts and bones. It was touching something dead that had been alive, that had once felt things, maybe even loved or at least been hungry and sleepy and breathing. Worse still, the corpse on the slab looked a lot like her granddad, who’d died the year before her father. Her dad’s casket had been closed and covered with a spray of roses. But her granddad’s had been open. So the last time she saw him was at the visitation. Afterward, she wished she’d just remembered him as he was: alive and happy, not made up and dressed up, with bloodless hands folded neatly on his chest.

Don’t look at his face, she told herself. Anywhere but the face. Or else she would be reminded that Mr. Ogden wasn’t made of wax but skin and bones.

“So,” Dr. Arnold asked eagerly, looking at the students around him, “which one of you wants to take the first stab?”

Katie focused on the doctor instead of the dead man. He was seriously working the mad-scientist thing, she thought, with his bulging eyes and tufts of gray hair and the way he poked at the air with the thin blade clutched in his latex-gloved hand. She’d heard that he used to be Barnard’s medical examiner before he took over the cadaver lab. She imagined him walking around the morgue at night, chatting with the corpses. Well, hello, Mrs. Smith. Not too cold in there, are you?

She must’ve made a funny noise, as Tessa gave her a weird look.

“You okay?” her roommate whispered.

Katie nodded, though she felt anything but.

“Hey, I think Katie’s volunteering,” Steve Getty said loudly, then leaned over to hiss, “Or are you chicken? Baawk baawk.”

“Bite me,” she murmured, feeling Dr. Arnold’s overly bright gaze lock on her like a guided missile.

“Young lady, are you up to the challenge? As I said before, you won’t hurt him. Mr. Ogden possesses a superhumanly high pain threshold,” the lab director quipped, raising tangled eyebrows as he extended the scalpel. “I’ll even make it easy on you. Would you like to cut our cadaver’s flexor tendons so we can examine his ulnar artery? It’s as good a place to start as any.”

“Me?” Katie’s hands were sweating in her latex gloves. She rubbed them down the front of the surgical apron they’d all been made to wear. She had her hair tucked up in a scrub cap, and her scalp was starting to itch. “No, thanks. I’m sure there’s someone else who’d like to go first.”

She glanced hopefully at the other faces in the circle, but no one seemed eager to step forward.

Dr. Arnold wasn’t about to let her off the hook. “Don’t you want to play CSI? I thought everyone did.”

“I’m pretty sure they don’t use real bodies on TV,” Katie replied.

“Aw, c’mon, don’t be a wuss,” Steve Getty said, and Katie felt his meaty paw on her back, propelling her forward. She stumbled toward Dr. Arnold, who caught her arm, stopping her forward motion before she ended up flinging herself across Mr. Ogden on the slab.

“Now, now, no need to shove,” Dr. Arnold said.

Katie gave Steve a nasty look. Then she glanced helplessly at Tessa, who looked so mad she’d turned purple.

“Well, my dear, why don’t you go ahead and kick things off since you’re up here.” The doctor passed her the scalpel. “Just take a deep breath, relax, and approach it clinically. Go on.” He put a hand on her shoulder, turning her toward the corpse.

A deep breath was the last thing Katie needed. The formaldehyde stink was already making her dizzy.

As the circle of classmates closed in on her, Katie swallowed and took a step nearer Mr. Ogden. You can do this, she told herself, holding the thin blade in her hand as she lowered it to the dead man’s wrist. Behind her back, Steve made clucking noises. Katie tried to ignore him, though she felt the weight of everyone’s eyes. Her hands began to sweat inside her gloves.

“I’ve clearly marked the area over the tendon,” Dr. Arnold was saying. “Once you’re done, I’ll do some pinning and then we’ll give everyone a chance to look.” His voice buzzed in her ears like a hive of bees.

Katie stared at the blue marks on the skin at the cadaver’s wrist, trying hard not to glance at the face with its sunken cheeks and eyes closed in a forever kind of sleep.

Were you married, Mr. Ogden? Did you like your job? Did you die alone, or with someone holding your hand?

She pursed her lips, pressing down on the scalpel, denting the skin but not piercing it. Corpses didn’t bleed, right? But what if he did sit up? she thought. She’d heard of it happening before. What was it called? Rigor mortis? No, that wasn’t it. Involuntary muscle contraction?

“She doesn’t want to do it, for God’s sake!” Tessa’s voice rang out, followed by the clop-clop of her footsteps. Then she nudged Katie aside and took the surgical blade from her trembling fingers.

“Miss Lupinski?” Dr. Arnold asked, squinting at Tessa. “Are you certain you’re up to the task?”

“Yes,” Tessa said simply, and, without hesitation, she sliced firmly into Mr. Ogden, following the perpendicular lines that Dr. Arnold had mapped out. Within minutes, she had the flaps pinned back so all the tendons and veins and the artery were visible.

Déjà vu, Katie thought as she stood there and watched. It was like freshman biology all over again, when she’d wimped out and Tessa had taken charge of their first frog, slicing it open with the same decisiveness.

When Tessa was done, she stepped away from the corpse, saying nothing. She quietly returned the scalpel to the lab director before stepping back into her place in the circle to Katie’s left.

“Bravo, my dear. Well done,” Dr. Arnold cheered.

Steve let out a low whistle. “That is one stone-cold bitch,” he murmured from Katie’s right, just loud enough for her to hear.