Stephanie shrugs an apology before running off to catch up with her friends. There's something in her eyes that reads like a light sadness. If she reached out to me, maybe I could help her.
We sit down in silence to eat. I'm trying not to tremble over the verbal assault. Quite frankly, I'd rather have a ghost try to take over my body than deal with another scene like that. Thank heavens the school day's almost over and I can avoid her, for the most part.
Jason holds my hand under the table and leans close. "I think you're awesome, Kendall Moorehead."
"Me too," Taylor pipes up.
"Ditto" from Becca.
"Yeah," Celia says with a mouthful of mashed potatoes. "Besides, you have a much better ass than hers, hands down."
And with that, I almost pass out from laughing so hard.
***
Physiology Class.
The good thing is I love the teacher, Ms. Pritchard, who's young and hip and really makes the subject interesting. I mean, I want to be a city planner, like my dad, so the human body and how it works is the farthest thing from my academic interest, but Ms. Pritchard is a great teacher and makes the class actually enjoyable.
The bad thing is Courtney Langdon takes physiology with me. (She does sit all the way across the room though!)
"Good afternoon, y'all," Ms. Pritchard begins. "We're starting a new project today that we'll be working on for a few weeks. It will make up forty percent of your final grade for the semester. It's going to entail completely dissecting a fetal pig and cataloging all of the parts."
Ewwww ...
"All right!" one of the guys shouts from the back.
"That's jank!" another says.
"That'll play havoc on my manicure," Courtney quips.
Yeah, it's going to be really gross, but I'll just concentrate on the same mental exercises I use for tuning in to my intuition and try not to see the baby pig as something that was once living and is now a science project. Even though I deal with the dead, they were people once and still are. What if the pig has a spirit that won't like what we're doing to it?
Kendall, you're just being silly now, Emily whispers in my head.
It's like having my mother with me twenty-four/seven sometimes! Emily, be quiet!
Ms. Pritchard grabs a sheet of paper and continues. "You'll be working in pairs on the assignment. I'll just go down the class roster and match you up alphabetically."
As she's calling out pairs of names, I quickly run through the ABC song and want to do a Homer Simpson "D'oh" when I realize that L and M are next-door neighbors. (Okay, that's how Mom always said it.) Oh no, say it's not so. Pleeeeeeease!
"Langdon and Moorehead," the teacher says.
Son of a ... well, a bitch. What else is there to say?
Courtney glares icy gray eyes across the room at me. Like I planned this!
I don't know whether to move my stuff over to Courtney's area or wait for her to join me. I'm sure it'll be a cold day in hell before she makes the first move, so I decide to be the bigger person.
Plopping my backpack down at her lab table, I force a smile. As if anyone could be pleased to be matched up with her. "So, we're partners on this, huh?" I say, sitting on the stool.
Without acknowledging my presence, she sings out, "Such a freeeeeak ... such a freeeeeak."
"Look," I say, wanting to touch her arm but afraid of how she'll react. "We're going to have to work together, so you might as well call me by my name. It's not Boo. It's not Ghost Girl. And I don't remember seeing Freak on my birth certificate either. It's Kendall. Got it?"
My leg quivers on the high stool a bit. I can put up a good front with difficult people when I have to. (Oddly enough, I don't have any problem dealing with aggressive spirits.) Loreen has been teaching me lately about auras that come from our chakras. According to yoga principles, the human body has seven centers of energies, or chakras. It's a whole metaphysical thing that I can't really explain right now. Since I'm new to reading auras and not completely trained yet, I'm mostly seeing white hazes around people. However, suffice it to say that Courtney is emanating an amazing red glow that signifies possible anger (duh), a high emotional state (double duh), or conflict in the air (ding, ding, ding ... we have a winner!).
"I don't care