“Father, do you think we could move
to another town?”
He looked up from his bowl of
chicken soup. His glasses were so steamed from the heat of the soup I couldn’t
see his eyes. “Victoria! Why would you want to move?” He wiped his mouth with a
napkin. “We’ve just gotten the house back into living condition, and—”
“I just hate school.”
“I know you do,” he sighed. “You’ve
never really liked it. And I guess I can’t blame you.” He looked at me closely.
“It’s pretty boring for you, isn’t it?”
I felt tears in my eyes. “It’s just
so stupid, Father. And now the stupid
science teacher is making me work with some stupid kid on a stupid Science Fair
project.”
“That’s a lot of stupid.” He waited.
“So what’s the problem? Is it someone you don’t like?”
“I hate him.”
“Him? You’re paired with a boy?”
“Yes, him, I’m paired with a boy!” I barked. “But it’s not that …” I couldn’t think of how to
finish what I’d started.
“You don’t object to working with a
boy, then?”
“No, not really.”
“You just don’t like working with anyone, is that it?”
I looked at my father, who, I
realized, could not really see at all because of the thick coating of condensed
soup-steam on his glasses. Silently, I rose from my chair and left the
room. Later, I wondered how long he’d
sat there before he realized I wasn’t in the room anymore.
The next day’s science class arrived
too fast—much too fast. For after we turned in our homework, and after Mr. Gisborne
talked about football for fifteen minutes (more or less his average), he said
we would have the rest of the period to go to the library. “I want you with
your partners,” he announced, “and I want you talking about your science fair
projects.”
Half the class was out the door by
the time he finished talking, but it didn’t seem to bother him very much. The
last three out of the room, in this order, were Gil, Mr. Gisborne, and I.
“So have you got any ideas,
Victoria?” Gil asked.
We had been sitting in silence in
the library for a few minutes, unlike most of the rest of the kids in the
class, who were talking about anything except science—until Mr. Gisborne,
clipboard in hand, came by their table. Then there was some science talk, but
it ended abruptly as soon as he moved on to the next table.
I had decided I wasn’t going to say
a word. But now Gil had asked me a direct question, so I couldn’t really ignore
him any longer.
“Do I have any ideas?” I repeated.
“That’s right,” he said. “For a
project? Something we could do together?”
“How about something with human
anatomy?” I began.
Gil began writing human anatomy on a sheet of paper.
“Sounds interesting,” he said.
“Yeah,” I went on. “I could
vivisect you and explain to the judges what all your inside parts are.”
“Vivisect?”
“Dissect means to cut open something dead,” I explained.
“And vivisect is—”
“For something alive.”
“Well, that’s nice,” Gil sighed. “At
least you’re not going to kill me. We’re making progress here.”
I had to smile. This kid seemed to
have a little bit of a sense of humor.
“There’s only two problems with
that idea,” he went on.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“One … I hate pain.”
“Well, get used to it.”
“And two … it’ll be such a good
project that we will get to go to the state science fair.”
“Why is that a problem?”
“Because I’ll be dead after the
first night,” he said. “And I don’t
think you could convince anyone else to, you know, take my place.”
“Well, what makes you think we’ll
get to go to the state competition?”
“Whose got better-looking guts than
I do?” he asked with mock seriousness. “They could win a beauty contest, no
doubt about it.”
I couldn’t help it … I was smiling
again.
“You’re pretty ridiculous,” I said
finally.
“I know,” he replied. “Maybe that’s why Mr. Gisborne put us
together.”
I was about to snap back at him for
that insult when I saw Gil’s eyes look behind me, and I smelled Mr. Gisborne’s
musky aftershave that was so powerful he must have splashed it on after every
class all day long.
“You two making any progress?” he
inquired.
“We’re thinking about human
anatomy,” Gil offered.
“No,” said Mr. Gisborne.
“No?” Gil and I responded in
unison.
“I want you to do something real,” he said, “not something with just
charts and drawings. And since you can’t
bring in a dead body …”
“We can’t?” replied Gil with pretended disappointment.
“What about a live one?” I asked.
Mr. Gisborne stared at me, his face
slowly moving from white to pink to red. “Now look here … uh …” He was
consulting his clipboard, trying to figure out my name.
“Vickie,” I said. “Vickie Stone.”
“That’s right … Vickie,” he said. “Now
look here, this is no place for jokes and other attempts at being funny.” His
voice got louder, and people around were starting to notice. “I’m getting sick
of all this disrespect! All this make-fun-of-the-teacher stuff. If you want to
be funny,” he snarled, “you can just march down to the office, and then we’ll
see how funny you are.”
“Mr. Gisborne,” said Gil, “she
wasn’t trying to insult you. She was just—”
“Down to the office!” Mr. Gisborne
bellowed in the now-silent library. “Both
of you!” Everyone was now staring at us.
They couldn’t believe, I’m sure, that two of the quietest kids in the whole
school had somehow done something to make Mr. Gisborne so angry. As we moved
toward the door, I passed Harriet’s table. She reached out and touched my arm. Gently.
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