Reese and I don’t have any classes together this semester, which means lunch is the only time I get to see her at school. We’ve shared the same little table along the wall with windows since freshman year, and as usual she makes it there before me, since she packs her own food.
“This semester already sucks,” she says as soon as I set my tray down and slouch into the seat across from hers. “I thought most of my teachers would let seniors coast, but I already have another essay for AP French, plus a paper to write for lit, and I have cheer practice until four today, which is so stupid because we’ve been doing the same routines since football season—I think we know them by now.” She steals one of my fries. “And I have cramps. So yeah. How’s your day going?”
“Wow. Better than yours, apparently.”
Reese looks down at her salad and sighs before spearing a piece of lettuce. She’s forever trying to convince me salads can taste as good as French fries. And granted, the ones she puts together do have a bit more oomph to them than the sad-looking (and tasting) iceberg blends my mother always makes. But I still don’t like salad, plus every time I eat lettuce it gets stuck in my teeth, and I’m pretty sure no one but Reese would tell me it’s there, so I generally abstain.
I reach into my bag and pull out the brownies. “Will chocolate help?”
“Always.” She immediately unwraps the cling film and picks off a corner. “Oh man, so good.”
“Except for the part where they’re somehow burned on the edges yet raw in the middle?”
She shrugs. “I like them.”
“I made them in Life Skills. You’ll never guess who I got partnered with.”
“Who?” Her voice is bright, excited, like I’m about to tell her there’s a sexy new kid she didn’t know about until just now.
I shove a fry into my mouth. “Webster freaking Casey.”
Her chewing slows, a surreptitious smile forming. “How’d that go?”
“He sat right next to me. Like, he chose that seat when there were several others available. Why would he do that?” Reese opens her mouth to respond, but I’m already on a roll. “To screw with me, that’s why. And you know he’s not going to pull his weight, so I’m going to have to carry our grade all semester, including the two weeks we’re required to take care of a fake baby, which—I can’t even think about that right now. He’s just the worst.”
Reese dips her head and tries to hide behind a sheet of blond hair that is somehow still perfectly sleek and not at all frizzy despite the weather and the fact Reese has gym class second period. But I know her face too well.
“It’s not funny!” I insist.
“I wasn’t laughing!” Her brown eyes go wide and innocent. She bats mascara-coated lashes, makes what I call her Cartoon Princess Face. “Did you at least ask him about Holland?”
“Sort of.”
“So, no.”
“I did ask, and then after putting me through an entire hour of his pain-in-the-ass antics, he grabs my notebook and allegedly writes down Holland’s number.”
“Wait, what? You got his number?”
“Allegedly,” I repeat.
Reese squints at me. “I don’t know what that means in this context.”
“Well, he wrote down a number, but I’m not entirely convinced it belongs to his cousin.”
“Who else’s would it be?”
“I don’t know. Like, a strip club’s? Or the library? Somewhere he knows I would never go, or that he wants to make fun of me for going to all the time. Oh my god, what if it’s his? What if he’s catfishing me?”
Though when I used to have Webster’s number saved in my phone, I remember it having a Chicago area code. But that was over a year ago. He could have changed it by now.
“Are you honestly that paranoid?”
“The correct question would be whether Webster is that much of a vindictive asshole. And I think we both know the answer is yes.”
Reese rolls her eyes but pulls out her own phone. “One way to find out.”
“Are you calling him?” I sound more than a little panicked. She shoots me a look like I should know better, but when Reese gets her mind set on something...her boundaries are not always what I would consider reasonable. Plus, this isn’t the first time Reese has dated someone in Webster’s circle. And she’s nice to everybody, including him. So despite her vowing to hate him forever on my behalf, I’m always a little afraid they’ll become actual friends.
She taps out a text and, fifteen seconds later, Kevin slides into the seat next to hers and pecks her cheek. “Hey, babe.”
“Oh, good, let’s involve more people.”
Kevin and I had English lit together last year, and based on the Shakespearean performance he gave for extra credit, I get the sense he’s not easily embarrassed. I, on the other hand, feel like I’ve already torn through a lifetime’s worth of humiliating moments and would really prefer to avoid any unnecessary witnesses to future indignities.
But Reese ignores me and smiles at Kevin. “Hey. Do you have Webster Casey’s number?”
Kevin casts a curious glance in my direction. “Yeah... Why?”
“Ongoing investigation.”
He frowns like he’s equal parts confused and amused, and pulls his phone out of his pocket. He scrolls through for a minute, then holds it out to her. She looks at it, then back at my notebook.
“Different number,” Reese concludes and hands Kevin’s phone back.
“Okay, well, that still doesn’t prove it’s Holland’s.”
“You are ridiculous. Just text him!”
Kevin leans forward. “So are these brownies up for grabs?”
I push them closer to him. “Even if it is Holland’s number, how desperate does it look to text him right away?”
“Zero percent desperate. He already made the first move!” Reese turns to Kevin. “If you gave someone your number, you’d want them to text right away, wouldn’t you?”
Kevin eyes her like it’s a trick question. “Who am I giving my number to?”
“No, just, hypothetically.”
“Well...when I gave you my number, I hoped you’d call. So...yes?” He lifts his brows in a hopeful way, then shifts his gaze to me, as if waiting for confirmation he gave the right answer.
“See?” Reese says, as though this exercise proved anything besides Kevin’s devotion to her.
“Yeah...no.”
Reese scowls and Kevin leans back in his seat. “Are my services no longer needed?”
“Thanks for your help,” Reese says. “You can get back to your lunch.”
“See you after practice?”
“Yep.”
He smiles and kisses her once more. Then hesitates and grabs another brownie. “Bye, Aubrey. Thanks for the brownies.”
I wave. “Ugh. You guys are so cute I want to vomit.”
“Thanks.” She beams for another second, then taps the table. “Okay, do it.”
I stuff a fry in my mouth. “And say what?”
“Umm...oh! How about, ‘remember that time your tongue was in my mouth?’”
“Nice. Subtle.” I grab my notebook and program the number into my phone as Holland, probably. I tap out a few different texts, delete each one, and finally shove the phone back in my bag without sending anything. “Maybe later.”
Reese lets out an exasperated sigh and throws a fry at me. I catch it in my mouth. We both go wide-eyed with our hands up for a celebratory second, then her shoulders sink and she says, “You know what I think? I think your expectations are too high.”
“You think my expectations are too high?”
“Yeah, you’re looking at this all wrong, like a text is some kind of commitment. Just keep it casual.”
I give her a pointed look.
She lifts her hands. “Okay, obviously that advice is kind of ironic coming from me. But just because I always end up in a relationship doesn’t mean you have to.”
“True...”
Reese perks up. She has me on the line now and isn’t letting go. “Bayes’ rule!”
“What?”
She claps her hands, apparently thrilled with herself, which makes me even more wary. “We learned about it in stats class. So basically, with Bayesian probability, you update your beliefs...or like, the probability that something you think you know is actually true, as new information comes in. So—you think dating is a waste of time. But you had fun with Holland on New Year’s, right?”
“I mean...yeah. I did.”
“So what makes you think you won’t have fun again? The more you hang out with him, the more information you’ll have to inform your decision.” She picks up her fork and spears her last bite of salad triumphantly. “Don’t think of it as dating, think of it as gathering evidence.”
My mouth twists to the side. Reese really does know me too well. “We have a home game next Friday, right?”
Reese puts the lid back on her empty salad Tupperware and folds her arms across the table. “Why yes, we do. Against West Rochester, in fact. Might you be interested in attending?”
“It has been a while since I came to watch my favorite cheerleader.” The bell rings to signal passing time. I shove my last few fries into my mouth and swing my backpack onto my shoulders. “Here.” I wrap up the rest of the brownies and drop them into her tote. “In case you need a snack before practice.”
“Ooh, thank you.” She loops her arm through mine as we walk out of the caf. “Seriously though, I’m excited about Holland. There’s just one issue we haven’t talked about...”
A traffic jam forms as everyone files into the hallway. We stop behind a few slow-moving sophomores, and I glance over at her with a stomach-clenchy feeling. “What?”
“Just...do you think Holland will be jealous of your illegitimate child with Webster?”
I blink at her, then shake my head and start walking again. “I hate you.”
She snorts a laugh and squeezes my arm tighter, tries to slow me down. “I’m kidding! Holland seems like a stand-up guy—I’m sure he’ll love the baby like his own!”
I count myself lucky to have Anatomy at the end of the day. Especially now that we’re starting our dissection lab. I take my seat in the back and my lab partner, Veronica, nods her head in a greeting.
“Hey.”
She’s not the chatty type, which is half the reason I like working with her. She takes this class as seriously as I do.
Back in ninth grade, Veronica was fully integrated in the popular crowd. Friends with people like Sam and Mike, though the two of them weren’t together yet. I’m pretty sure Veronica’s antisocial attitude stems from when Sam allegedly caught her hooking up with the guy Sam liked at some party. Which probably also explains why Veronica King is a slut was scratched into the wall of the girls’ bathroom.
Regardless of the validity of those rumors, they don’t affect her ability to finish lab work, so I really couldn’t care less.
“How was your break?” I ask while everyone gets settled.
“Mediocre. Yours?”
I glance at my phone. My thumb hovers over Holland, probably’s number. Reese did make an interesting argument at lunch. I spent the last two passing times reading about Bayes’ rule, and while I’d normally do a lot more research before making a decision...Reese’s whole point was to keep things casual.
I can totally be casual. “Yeah, same.”
She gives a half smile before slipping back into her usual poker face.
In the last few minutes before class gets started, I open a text message and type out, Hey. It’s Aubrey Cash.
I debate typing a longer explanation about how Webster gave me his number, but duh, he would know that already. I hit Send and shove my phone into my bag. We’re not supposed to have them out at school, and anyway, I refuse to sit here staring at the screen, waiting for him to reply.
“Okay,” Mrs. Landis says to get everyone’s attention. “Today is the big day. In a moment, you will be assigned a cat to dissect over the next two months. But before we get into that, let’s cover some ground rules. Safety goggles must be worn at all times...”
Mrs. Landis spends the next twenty minutes going over the proper way to hold and pass scalpels, and a long list of unacceptable behaviors that include, but are not limited to: using your cat corpse as a puppet, taking any portion of the body out of the room, or recording choreographed videos of the cats “dancing.” The truly horrifying thing is that everything on this list must have been done by previous students at some point. She reminds those who look squeamish at the mention of skinning the cats that we all knew this was a requirement of the course, and that with time we’ll all get used to the smell of formaldehyde.
Granted, I have a pretty strong stomach. But as we pick out a cat wrapped in a thick plastic bag from the literal BARREL OF DEAD CATS in the back of the room, and pull it out and onto the metal tray on our table, the smell hits me and I start feeling really sorry for the kids who have to take this class right before lunch.
Veronica blows out a long breath. “Maybe we should name him?”
“Really?”
“Is that inappropriate? I was just thinking it would help humanize him. I don’t want to become one of those doctors who forgets their patients are real people, you know? Or cats. Whatever.”
I’ve heard about that. How surgeons sometimes become so desensitized in their jobs that they barely treat the patients like humans anymore. Of course, in my case, the patients would be animals. Veronica knows I want to be a vet, and she’s planning on going pre-med.
“Did you hear back from MSU, by the way?” she asks without looking up from the still-unnamed cat.
“Yeah. I got in.” My shiny acceptance letter to the Michigan State Honors College came right before Christmas.
She smiles, a little fuller than I’ve ever seen before. It erases her sharp edges and even draws out dimples. It’s unnerving. “Good. I knew you would.”
“Thanks. Any news on your end?”
“My top choice is in Boston. They don’t send decisions for another month.”
“Well, keep me posted.”
She nods, then returns her focus to the cat. “Okay...so...I guess we just...”
She gestures to the cat with her scalpel. I glance enviously at Veronica’s ponytail and take off my gloves to dig through my bag for a couple bobby pins. Once my hair is secured out of my face, I pull my latex gloves on again, then clear my throat. “We can do this.”
We both make cuts on opposite side of the cat, and like Mrs. Landis demonstrated, we start swiping the scalpel along the thin line of fascia connecting the skin to muscle.
“This is weirdly satisfying.”
Veronica cuts a look at me.
I wrinkle my nose. “Does that make me sound like a psychopath?”
Her face remains expressionless. “Little bit. But you’re right, it kind of is.”
We work in silence for a few minutes, until Veronica cuts free the first patch of fur. She stares at it in her hand for a moment, lips smashed together in what looks like a mixture of disgust and curiosity.
“Guess this is good practice,” I say. “You’ll need a strong stomach in med school.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
We manage to make some progress over the next half hour...which is a weird way of thinking about skinning a cat. In the last few minutes of class, we put it back into storage and clean up our lab.
As we’re walking out, I say, “How about Salem? He is a black cat, after all.”
Veronica’s face is a neutral mask, but she nods once. “I dig it.”
We part ways and I stop by my locker to get the books I need for homework. Due to the unfortunate alphabet system, my locker is positioned right beside Webster’s. Thankfully, he hasn’t actually visited his locker all year. Huddled against the metal door, which holds pictures of me and Reese, and one of my old guinea pig, Rosie, held up by a cake-shaped magnet Reese got me for my last birthday, I pull out my phone and check for messages.
My stomach does a little flip. He wrote back.
Aubrey TBD Cash! Good to hear from you—I thought for sure you’d lose my number.
I type out a reply: Not yet.
Right away a bubble appears to indicate he’s typing. He sends a new picture of Lucy the pit bull. Dude really does know the way to my heart. I reply with a series of exclamation points.
Plenty more where that came from. So, how was your day?
I shut my locker and head to the student parking lot, nearly bumping into someone every few feet as I try to type and walk at the same time. It takes everything I have not to touch my phone once I get in the car. And for the first time since I can remember, I’m smiling the whole drive home.