Vibes Read Free Page B

laughs.
    Ha ha ha.
    David pretends to be amused as he leans over the tiny cadaver. "I found this poor little guy this weekend. He'd frozen the night before. I thought this would be a great opportunity to begin our unit on anatomy."
    I look around the room to see if anyone is buying his story about the caterpillar's natural death. Last year, when he tried to show the tenth-graders the internal organs of a frog, Brian stormed into the room, red-faced, and gave David a lecture about the sanctity of all life. David is no longer allowed to use animals in his classes. We can't even have bug collections. This is the one thing I agree with Brian about. How would you feel if a huge frog drugged you, cut you open, and splayed you on a corkboard so the tadpoles could jab at your liver?
    "Crowd around, everyone," David says as he waves us up. We all stand around him while he pokes tweezers around the caterpillar's eensie-weensie internal organs. We trade off with magnifying glasses so everyone can get a big, gross eyeful.
    Once David is done with the caterpillar, he hands out a chart of human anatomy. I see what's coming, so I raise my hand and stand right in front of David's face. Whenever I feel partner work coming on, I go to the bathroom so that by the time I come back everyone already has a partner and I can work alone. I practically beg David with my eyebrows,
Please let me go!
But he's onto me, because he thinks,
Not this time, Kristi,
just before he announces, "Everyone find a partner and quiz each other about internal organs."
    Time for Plan B:
Initiate isolation sequence.
    I discreetly slip my earphones on. Maria Callas is getting to the first big crescendo when I feel a pressure on my arm. Hildie is standing over me, and when I look at her she rolls her eyes. "Everyone else has a partner. David said I should work with you." This is when I notice that Bella Polokov is not here today, which means that poor Hildie is without her usual ally.
    I would rather be consumed by a million caterpillars in an act of misguided revenge than work with my treacherous former best friend, but all I can do is shrug. She sits next to me, crossing one perfectly toned leg over the other. She looks at me uncertainly as she thinks,
I may as well make the best of this.
"Who first?" she says.
    "I don't care," I say.
    Here we go again with the martyr routine,
I hear her thinking. "Okay. Where is the stomach?"
    I point to the heart.
    "No, Kristi. Where really?"
    I point to the brain.
    "No!" she says, already frustrated.
    "I'm pretty sure that's it, Hil," I say innocently. "That's got to be the stomach. Yup. I'm one hundred percent sure." (One good thing about hating your former best friend is that you know
exactly
how to push her buttons.)
    "It's the brain and you know it." She frowns as her crystalline eyes search the room.
    "That's right. See if
David
can tell us.
David
will know.
David
is so
smart
."
    She jabs her hand into the air, savagely arching her back for emphasis. If anyone else tried a move like that they'd look spastic, but Hildie executes it perfectly. An Olympic committee would give her all sixes.
    David comes over and says, "Yes," as if he's so tired, he can barely utter the word.
    "Kristi keeps saying the brain is the stomach and I can't work with her." Hildie pouts her pink lips at him.
    I concentrate my beam on her. One of these days I'll figure out how to make her head explode with my psychic waves.
    David nods wisely. "Do you need to start your contemplation early today, Kristi?"
    "Yes. I need to go contemplate really, really bad," I say to him. He hands me a slip of paper with the assignment. I take the paper and leave the classroom. I don't even look at stupid Hildie because I can hear her thinking as I go:
Why is she such a bitch?

THE CONTEMPLATION ROOM
    Absolutely no one is allowed to speak in the Contemplation Room. Brian once said he almost named it the Temple, but he thought that the word was too suggestive of religion and he