Free Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson Page A

Waiting for a prince to come and princessify her with a smooch? I stand over her with my knife. Ms. Keen's voice fades to a mosquito whine. My throat closes off. It is hard to breathe. I put out my hand to steady myself against the table. David pins her froggy hands to the dissec- tion tray. He spreads her froggy legs and pins her froggy feet. I have to slice open her belly. She doesn't say a word. She is al- ready dead. A scream starts in my gut — I can feel the cut, smell the dirt, leaves in my hair. I don't remember passing out. David says I hit my head on the edge of the table on my way down. The nurse calls my mom because I need stitches. The doctor stares into the back of my eyes with a bright light. Can she read the thoughts hidden there? If she can, what will she do? Call the cops? Send me to the nuthouse? Do I want her to? I just want to sleep. The 81 whole point of not talking about it, of silencing the memory, is to make it go away. It won't. I'll need brain surgery to cut it out of my head. Maybe I should wait until David Petrakis is a doctor, let him do it. MODEL CITIZEN Heather has landed a modeling job at a department store in the mall. She says she was buying socks with her mother the week after her braces came off and some lady asked if she modeled. I suspect the fact that her dad works for the mall management company had something to do with it. The modeling gig is paying off in major Martha points. They all want to be Heather's New Best Friend. But she asks me to go with her for the bathing suit shoot. I think she's afraid to screw up in front of them. Heather's mother drives us. She asks if I want to be a model. Heather says I am too shy. I look at her mother's eyes watching me in the rearview mirror and hide my mouth with my fingers. The scabs on my lips are es- pecially gross in that little rectangle mirror. Of course I want to be a model. I want to paint my eyelids gold. I saw that on a magazine cover and it looked amazing — turned the model into a sexy alien that everyone would look at but nobody dared touch. I like cheeseburgers too much to be a model. Heather has stopped eating and complains about fluid retention. She 82 should worry more about brain retention, the way she's diet- ing away her gray matter. At last check, she was wearing a size one and a half, and she just has to get down to a size one. The photo shoot is in a building cold enough to store ice. Heather looks like our Thanksgiving turkey wearing a blue bikini. Her goose bumps are bigger than her boobs. I'm shiver- ing, and I'm wearing my ski jacket and a wool sweater. The photographer turns up the radio and starts bossing the girls around. Heather totally gets into it. She throws her head back, stares at the camera, flashes her teeth. The photographer keeps saying, "Sexy, sexy, very cute. Look this way. Sexy, think beach, think boys." It creeps me out. Heather sneezes in the middle of a group pose and her mother runs in with tissues. It must be catching. My throat is killing me. I want a nap. I don't buy the gold eyeshadow, but I do pick up a bottle of Black Death nail polish. It's gloomy, with squiggly lines of red in it. My nails are bitten to the bleeding point, so it will look natural. I need to get a shirt that matches. Something in a tu- bercular gray. DEATH BY ALGEBRA Mr. Stetman won't give up. He is determined to prove once and for all that algebra is something we will use the rest of our lives. If he succeeds, I think they should give him the Teacher of the Century Award and a two-week vacation in Hawaii, all expenses paid. 83 He comes to class each day with a new Real-Life Application. It is sweet that he cares enough about algebra and his students to want to bring them together. He's like a grandfather who wants to fix up two young kids that he just knows would make a great couple. Only the kids have nothing in common and they hate each other. Today's Application has something to do with buying guppies at the pet store,