Something About Us

Part Two

Part Two

 Mr. Park did not call last night. I came home expecting a fuming father waiting to chew me out once I got home from the game but nothing had happened.
    Mr. Park was a dick indeed.

*

    The new student arrived on Friday morning. He walked into the class slowly and nervously as though he was afraid he was going to step on a mine and blow up the class.
      He was taller than my height of 5"11 but shorter then Holiday's 6"2. His eyes brown, his hair black and straight. The only thing extraordinary about this new kid was his skin; every square inch was covered with freckles. Only his lips and the palms of his hands were spared from the onslaught. Aside from that he looked like he got a tan standing in front of a screen door.
    Mr. Park sat at the front of the room with a bucket that exuded a strong, sweet and sour smell. Smelt like rotten fruit. Several boxes of non-latex gloves, and two clear plastic cases filled with goggles - the type that made my nose itch adorned Mr. Park's desk. Off to the side of the classroom there lay metal trays, metal pins and a box of tools ranging from scissors to forceps to scalpels.
   Hunter partnered up with the girl he currently had a crush on - Meryl or something like that - and I would have been a cock-blocker if I insisted he partnered with me. But now I had this new kid to partner with. He looked friendly enough.
    "I'm Seven," he said offering me a hand. His eye contact with me was unflinching and unrelenting. His side of the handshake gripped me so tight the bones in my hand felt like they were crunched.
    "I'm Ryan. How about I get the tools and you pick the frog and the tray?" I suggested. Hunter had already left our pair of desks to go join Meryl, so Seven moved next to me.  
      "No, I want to pick the tools. You can get the frog. I'll get your goggles too," Seven said. He bounced over to the other side of the class and I went up to Mr. Park to select a frog.
    Mr. Park eyed me uneasily while I walked to the front of the class. I knew better then to ask him why he hadn't called my parents; it would have looked like I wanted him to call. And what if he had forgotten? Why would I remind him?
    I grabbed a pair of gloves and wiggled my fingers into them. I glanced into the bucket - where the source of the sourly sweet smell was coming from. The water in the bucket was milky and translucent. Several grey-green frogs floated in the juice. My chest expanded as I took a breath and I plunged my hand down and picked a frog. It's joints rigid, one of the arms draped over its face, like a dramatic girl covering her eyes after witnessing something shocking.
    I cradled the slick frog and walked over to the set of trays. I plopped the frog into the bottom of the tray and counted out thirteen sharp pins.
   Seven was already back at our desks laying out the tools he had picked. "Oh boy, I feel sorry for this little guy. He didn't want to die at all," Seven muttered. A pair of goggles dangled from his hand another pair was on his head.
    "Yeah it kinda sucks. Being raised to die just to be dissected by a bunch of high school kids. Hey, how do you know it's a boy?" I took the goggles from him, our hands touched and he turned red.
    Seven shrugged. "I just have a feeling." Seven pinned the frog to the tray, stabbing it through its front feet. He held out a pin for me and I put down the last leg, feeling the pin pierce through bone and flesh.
    We worked quickly. Seven cut the flesh of the frog's chest and stomach carefully managing not to accidentally slice the muscles beneath.
      "These chest muscles look like chicken breasts," I said. Seven laughed at once.
     "No wonder French people eat them," Seven replied with a laugh. He probed the chest flesh and rubbed his stomach making me laugh again.
     Once we unearthed the frog's innards I found its organs were floating in that sickly sweet juice.
    "See; it is a boy. All of the girls had eggs inside of them. This guy has none," Seven pointed out. Mr. Park said once we had finished dissecting the frog, locating a few key organs and filling in our lab books we were free to explore the frog's anatomy.
     Once Seven and I got that out of the way, we were free to do what we liked with the frog's carcass. "Let's check out its brain!" Seven said clapping his hands eagerly. The gloves made a wet-squelching sound every time they met because the frog-juice was still on his hands.
     "How are we going to crack open the skull?"
     "It's a frog, not a human or anything," Seven said with a laugh. "Just leave it to me, lovely." He began to hum a jaunty tune as he unpinned the frog.
     The sound of a needle being torn off a record played in my mind. What?! Lovely!? I needed Hunter or TJ to talk to. It wouldn't make sense to tell Holiday about this, he'd just get upset and storm down to the school to beat him up.
      Across the room Hunter was doing all the work with the frog even though Meryl was his partner. Meryl just sat there with a hand hovering over her chest and her pink frosted lips in a scowl. Hunter offered Meryl the scissors and she shuddered causing him to laugh.
     When I glanced back at Seven the tip of the scissors lodged deep into the frog's head. The scissors stuck straight up and out without any support. Alarmed I looked at Seven and we both burst out laughing.
     "You two are having too much fun over here," Mr. Park appeared behind us. He had his hands on his hips and his multi-coloured eyes were searching our frog. Our lab books were open beside the tray so he saw we had filled them out correctly, but at the sight of the frog with the scissors in its head his eyes widened. "Well, that's one way to get to the brain," he said, a small smile on his lips.
        Seven and I couldn't manage to get any further into the frog's skull then that. For such a small creature its head was surprisingly tough. At the end of the class while we were swabbing down the desks, the usually talkative Seven got quiet. Whenever our eyes would meet, he would blush furiously.
       Weird.