“Hey, Heather.” It’s Phil, the boy with the messy ponytail that I’d spied on the first day. “You nervous?”
Obviously.
“I’m just really tired from staying up all night,” I say.
Phil reaches into his pocket and produces a small container filled with tiny white pills.
“Want one?” he asks.
I can’t even conceal my horror. Oh my God. He’s offering medrugs. Phil is the kid in our class who’s dealing! And he just offered them to me—in front ofeveryone!
“Um, are those…?”
“Mint-flavored caffeine tablets,” Phil says. “Got ’em at the gift shop.”
“Oh.” My heart slows to a less frightening speed. “No, thanks.”
“Are you sure?” Phil asks. “It’s like drinking a cup of coffee, but you don’t have to pee!”
I shake my head and wander off in search of Abe. Instead, I find Rachel leaning against the wall, her long dark-brown hair hanging loose around her shoulders and obscuring the lettering on her T-shirt. She’s tapping her toes against the floor impatiently, and every few minutes, she lets out an irritated sigh.
Mason is standing next to Rachel, looking fresh as a daisy. He’s also staring so blatantly at her chest that I can’t help but say something.
“What are you looking at?” I bark at him.
Boy, I’m irritable today.
Mason lifts his eyes and looks at me in surprise. “I’m trying to read her T-shirt.”
Oh. I guess that could be true.
Rachel smiles at him. “It says, ‘I am the doctor my mother wanted me to marry.’”
Mason starts to laugh. He looks Rachel straight in the eyes and says, “Not yet you’re not.”
The doors to the anatomy lab open, and the students file in like we’re on some kind of death march. The first part of the exam is the practical, where various structures on different cadavers are tagged with pins, and the students are given a sheet of paper and clipboard on which to record their findings. I have to confess, the clipboard makes me feel very professional.
I whip out my lucky pen, a black ballpoint with a rubber handgrip that I’ve been using since college. I used my lucky pen for every big exam in college, and on the one occasion I forgot the pen, during an exam on electricity and magnetism, I got a big fat F.
I choose my own cadaver as my starting point and uncap my lucky pen. Our cadaver’s insides are nearly perfect, thanks to Mason’s immaculate dissections and the fact that Frank was inexplicably healthy when he died. I clutch my clipboard to my chest, trying to stop shaking, although it’s hard after all that coffee. My breaths are coming too fast, and my fingertips start to tingle. I’m hyperventilating. I need a paper bag.
“Are you okay, Heather?” Abe has materialized at my side, looking concerned.
I look him over and am relieved that his short red hair seems as disheveled as the rest of my classmates’, and he has familiar dark circles under his eyes.
“I’m fine,” I reply.
And I mean it. Now that Abe is standing next to me, I feel about one hundred percent better. There’s something about hispresence that calms me down. Don’t laugh, but I sometimes feel like he’s my guardian angel.
Dr. Conlon limps to the front of the room. All eyes are on him, waiting for his instructions. He smiles, his blue eyes twinkling, “Why does everyone look so nervous?”
Nobody laughs.Just start the exam, you asshole.
Dr. Conlon clears his throat: “As I went over with you before, you’ve got one minute to identify each pinned structure and one minute for each X-ray. When the time is up, I’ll call out ‘next station.’” He looks around the room. “And don’t worry. The test really isn’t that hard. Any questions?”
No hands go up.
He holds up a stopwatch in his left hand, “Okay, then, begin!”
