Flight Read Free Page B

Yogiyums. I could have starved to death!”
    The vehemence of her denial made Nasty
Nancy’s hair, which resembled a large red-dyed cotton ball, toss
about like tumbleweed stuck on a fence post.
    “I hate Yogiyums.”
    “You’ve been known to inhale what you
hate.”
    “Not Yogiyums. They’re like mayonnaise-filled
marshmallows.”
    Despite knowing that speed and Nasty Nancy
were antithetical, Prissi pleaded, “C’mon. Hurry up. We’ll be
late.”
    “Doesn’t matter to me. I’m not even close to
Screw Crew and spring break starts in five days. After that, the
academic gods wipe the slate clean—which means what? Isn’t slate a
kind of rock? Why does it need to be wiped?”
    “African thing. Tell you later. Gotta
go.”
    “To see Dr. Crab?”
    Looking around, but not seeing the Weiners,
Prissi resumed flogging toward class. As she half-flew and half
jogged toward the worn double doors of the scientatory, she
returned to her memory of that first day, of how Dr. Smarkzy had
stood quietly in front of the class, waiting for the bell to briz.
It was only his eyes, amazingly bright and improbably turquoise,
that led Prissi to guess that his mouth was twisted in a grin, not
a grimace. Afraid to defy his direction, Prissi had moved to the
spot he had indicated. She reluctantly had climbed onto her perch
and had been horrified at the thought of spending a year with such
a repulsive looking person.
    Six months later, Prissi could not deny that
Vartan Smarkzy was ill-made. In fact, she had had to concede that
point to Nasty Nancy more than once. But, and this is what her
roomie did not get, any distraction that Smarkzy’s looks might
cause stopped the moment when his sparkling eyes, melodic voice and
irresistible enthusiasm for teaching science began.
    Prissi was half-way through the door to Room
320A of the Katharine Zoeg Scientatory just as the bell brizzed.
When Prissi hesitated at the door, Dr. Smarkzy shifted his
smartstick from the glowing three-foot hologram of pockmarked
tissue caused by the prion responsible for bovine spongiform
encephalopathy to Prissi and then down to her seat in the first row
of perches. While the chagrined teener made her way toward her
perch, ignoring the smirks and sibilant sniggers of her classmates,
Smarkzy drew his neck down into his shoulders like a turtle waiting
for a fish. The second Prissi perched, Smarkzy, like a mad
Wagnerian conductor, was using his smartstick to lead the class to
a deeper understanding of the Escher-like folds and structures of
prions and their effects in DNA.
    DNA. Stairway to a trillion
possibilities.
    Although her mother and father always had
laughed at the absurdity when Prissi would accuse them of not being
her real parents, Prissi often wondered whether she was made from
her parents’ DNA. As early as fourth grade, when she began to learn
of all the parenting possibilities—GEEs (genetically-enhanced
embryos), surrogation, hy-babes (hybrid babies with either sperm or
egg from a donor), and the ancient stand-by, adoption, Prissi had
fantasized about how she came to be with the people who called
themselves her parents. Those tales, first thought while lying on a
cot under mosquito netting on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika,
usually involved exotic people in even more exotic
circumstances.
    Prissi stared at the ladder of life pulsing
inside its glowing sac at the front of the room and considered the
wisdom of bringing some of her parents’ DNA back after winter break
to prove that she could not possibly be their spawn.
    Prissi snorted so loudly that Smarkzy’s
smartstick swung in her direction. Her face reddening in dismay,
Prissi covered her mouth to squelch another outburst.
    Spawn. Prissi Langue loved that word. Evil
spawn. Like corn smut, but with shoes and underwear. Prissi toyed
with the idea of bringing back a gatherum of hair from her father’s
brush, then bribing an honor’s senior to type it to see if she
really was flesh of his flesh.