Okay if you will please open your Biology textbooks please,” Mrs Rodgers said to the class.
I quickly opened the book. I was strangely uncomfortable sitting at my desk, with my legs swinging under it. My pen didn’t tap at the book like it normally did.
“Now?” Mrs Rodgers smiled, “Will anyone tell me why we will be dissecting frogs?”
I groaned. I’ve always hated Biology. In England we didn’t have to do any of the dissecting, all we did is absorb the knowledge and get tested on it.
Looking up at me with her glasses perched on her nose she looked at me expectantly, “Why don’t you tell us?”
“It’s because the “frog’s anatomy is similar to the Human’s anatomy”’.
“Where did you get that information from. You quoted right out of my book in precise words.”
“I already memorised that book two years ago,” I said, remembering how we had to. For homework. I was always in advanced studies.
“Really,” she said with a smug grin, “Quote line 24, page 123.”
‘“Water molecules are charged, with the oxygen atom being slightly negative and the hydrogen atoms being slightly positive. . . The line stops there and the paragraph continued on to . . . “These opposite charges attract each other, forming hydrogen bonds. These are weak, long distance bonds that are very common and very important in biology.”’
She looked down at her book and I smirked at her with a knowing look, “Did I get it right?” I asked her smugly. She nodded with a look of confusion.
“Word for word. Now let’s go back to Anatomies . . .”
I felt someone prod my shoulder gently with the end of their pencil. I turned to see Paper-guy looking at me strangely.
“How’d you do that?” he mouthed when the teacher wasn’t looking.
“It’s in there.” I whispered back pointing to my noggin.
“Word for word?”
“Yes,” I said sounding a little offended – because I kind of was.
He turned back toward his book and then something like a light bulb went off inside of his head because he turned back to me again.
“By the way, I’m Landon.”
Instead of nodding I shut my textbook and started doodling some more.
“Excuse me, Miss Brooks, are you paying any attention to me.”
“Nope.” I shrugged.
She looked angry for a second squinting her eyes, “Why ever not.”
“I know all of this stuff and all of your stuff. Why do I have to learn everything I already know?”
“What are you suggesting?” she asked me with an angry face.
“I’m suggesting that maybe I should be doing work a little more up my game.”
“Okay, you have a different project from everybody else. 5000 words on the progression of every known human cycle.”
Everyone gasped at her ‘cruelty’ and I shrugged, “Done that in the 10th grade. I have it still, if you want.”
“You can’t have. It’s college work.”
“I was in advanced studies, Ms.”
“So you’re a clever one then aren’t you?”
“You could say that. In some aspects, I guess so.”
She stood up and walked down to the cupboards pulling out two college advanced textbooks and pushed them down onto my desk.
“Complete every exercise by Monday Morning.” She said simply. Everyone gasped and there was a lot of –that’s-so-unfair-ings and –wow-that-is-mean-ings.
I smiled, “It’ll be in. You can count on it,” I winked with a devilish smile.
I liked how school life was doing; I had the rest of the lesson to do the work because I knew how to dissect and knew how the anatomies worked so I didn’t need to perform the operation.
The textbooks were massive and I only got through about one and half by the time the bell rung.
Gathering my books up, I walked to the door.
“Amy, a word please,” Miss said. I turned around on my heel and walked towards her desk, her papers crisp and clean with a pot of pens on her left.
“It’s quite . . .” she chose her words carefully before continuing, “unusual for a girl of your age to be doing this level of science, don’t you agree?”
“Gramps calls me gifted. Abi calls me nerdy. And you’re calling it unusual?”
“How much of that assignment I gave you have you completed already?” she asked with an arched eyebrow, staring at me as if I were the strangest thing she’d ever come across.
“I have thirty-seven more exercises to complete.” I told her looking down at my toes.
“Dismissed.” She sighed turning back to her paperwork.
It was different being witty and smart. I wasn’t picked on like I presumed I would be. Everyone in my Biology class looked as if they respected me.
Dylan – drake – fell into step beside me and eyed me carefully, “What have you done now?”
“It’s caught round already? Gee, this school gets the gossip fast!”
“No,” he shook his head, “Landon told me you were . . . different – but in an okay way.”
“That means the world to me! I’ve always cared so much about what others think of me. Especially Landon!” I said in a fake southern accent.
He rolled his eyes, “So what did you do?” he asked again.
“You know how I was in advanced studies?”
“No, I don’t know that,” he said in his own sarcastic tone.
“Well, the teacher got really freaked out. You know how I memorised the whole text book, she thought it was unusual . . .” I said with a sigh.
He laughed, “It is . . . unusual,” he said in a mocking tone.
“Yeah, but she didn’t have to say it!” I snapped in a grouch.
“Since when do you care?”
“I don’t. It’s confusing. Honestly.”
“You’re one weird person, Amy Brooks.” Dylan chuckled.
I smiled and looked him up and down, “Ditto.”
YOU ARE READING
The Other Side
Teen FictionTansy May's life has been nothing but an unfortunate roller-coaster of events; from thinking she was going to be burned to death by a bunch of crazy religionists, to being taken to another side of the world that she only thought existed in movies. ...
