Snark and Circumstance (Novella) - By Stephanie Wardrop Page 0,17

of the dissection, which, while I am no Picasso, at least resembles a form of plant life. “And you can do the labeling. Your handwriting is much neater than mine.”

He looks over at my drawing and smiles sheepishly. “Yours is a lot better,” he admits.

“So let’s do this fifty-fifty. For now, at least. We’ll figure out the animal half later.”

He extends his hand and we shake on it, and he watches as I finish the last bits of the drawing and makes sure I have enough room for the labels. We’re both sort of smiling at our work at the end of class when the principal, Mr. Dover, comes in and announces, “Georgiana Barrett. I need to see you after class.”

“That can’t be good,” Michael chuckles as the class shuffles out and he passes by me at Miss Grogan’s desk. Whatever happened, she’s not looking too happy about it, but at least Mr. Dover doesn’t look upset. When he does, the bald top half of his head turns the color of an eggplant and right now his liver spots are still visible.

“Barrett, I read your article in the alternative paper about dissections,” he says as Miss Grogan’s lips twist into pretzel form and she looks down at a stack of tests on her desk. “Barry Greenberg, a gifted sophomore, had wanted to take advanced biology this year, but apparently his doctor forbade him due to his excessive allergies. Apparently, if he even looks at a latex glove, he blows up like a puffer fish, and no one wanted to take a chance with the chemical preservatives. But your article posed an alternative that I think we’d be willing to try.” At this he looks over at Miss Grogan, who doesn’t look up. “You and Barry can run a pilot program of the dissection apps this year, with Miss Grogan supervising and reporting back to me about their suitability. You can borrow the school’s iPads if you need to, but they don’t leave the building, got that?”

I nod vigorously.

“And what I told you about Barry and his allergies—that’s confidential.”

I nod again, more solemnly this time.

“Okay then. Sounds good?”

“It sounds very good,” I assure him and I walk off to my next class with a sense of relief and accomplishment. I decide that since I just made a deal with Michael, I should stick to it because it’s the right thing to do and I don’t want him to be able to say, in any way, that I ruined his bio lab grade. So I plan to still be at dissections to draw the carnage for him and I’ll do my own labs during my study period.

Which seems pretty generous to me, but when I tell Michael this in homeroom the next day, he just shrugs, as if the thought of my relation to his bio lab grade had never even crossed his mind.

“Oh,” is all he says. “Okay.” Then the bell rings, he picks up his books, and walks out into the hallway while I seem to have been superglued to my seat.

I can’t believe it.

Doesn’t he understand how repellant—and how ethically wrong—it will be for me to sit there during every lab and watch him slice open some poor creature that did nothing wrong in this world, whose only crime was to be born a supposedly lesser being, born just to end up on a dissection tray reeking of formaldehyde or whatever they use to preserve its carcass? I am seriously going to have to keep from vomiting—and crying—every single lab period, but I decided to work with him anyway because I know Tori was right. His principles aren’t mine, and I shouldn’t expect them to be. But shouldn’t he at least acknowledge that I’ve accepted his, however morally retarded they may be?

I grab my books and hurry out into the hall, chasing after Michael’s retreating back until I catch up with him. I grab his elbow and he jerks around, startled, and I’m kind of panting from running and my heart is attempting to break through my rib cage.

“Look,” I sputter, “This lab thing—this compromise—is a big deal for me, okay?”

“Okay,” he agrees, uncertainly.

“I mean, it’s going to be really hard for me to do.”

He looks around at the people pushing past us to get to class on time and sighs, then shakes his head.

“Then don’t do it,” he says, shrugging one shoulder and turning back down the hallway, where he disappears into a French classroom.

Dealing with him is