Free Snark and Circumstance by Stephanie Wardrop Page B

animal is already dead, you know. It’s not like you have to stalk it through the woods and kill it with your bare hands.”
    “You’d prefer that?”
    He narrows his eyes slightly and sits back in his chair. “Our first lab is a worm. A worm.”
    “Which is a living creature. Or was a living creature, until it was killed so a bunch of high-school kids can poke around its vital organs. That’s sick, isn’t it?”
    “It’s a worm.” He’s studying me carefully now, the way you would look at someone you’re trapped in an elevator with as you start to suspect they may be certifiably crazy. “What kind of life do you think it had before it came here to the lab?”
    “I’m sure it wasn’t as exciting or important as yours,” I snap. “But maybe his ancestors were here even before yours.”
    “‘His?’” Michael is laughing under his breath now and my face gets really hot. “Are you going to name the animals, too?”
    The bell rings. I start dumping my books and notebooks into my bag and answer, “No, because as I said, I am not going to be part of the dissections.”
    Michael stacks his books into a pile and pulls them toward him.
    “Then I am going to need a more rational lab partner,” he says as he stands up, “because you are not going to sit here and draw hearts and flowers and peace signs while I do all the work.”
    “Fine,” I say through gritted teeth as we both speed walk to Miss Grogan’s cluttered desk.
    Michael announces before I can say anything, “I need another lab partner.”
    Miss Grogan frowns so hard the lines around her mouth almost swallow her lips. “Absolutely not. This is advanced biology, people, not a game of musical chairs.”
    “Are there alternative assignments to the dissection?” I ask and Miss Grogan looks at me as if she’d like to take a scalpel to me to reveal what could possibly be inside such a ridiculous girl.
    “Again. This is advanced biology. Dissection is a requirement.”
    Michael smirks at me again but before he can gloat, Miss Grogan says, “I suggest you two work this out before the first lab next week.”
    He just turns and stalks toward the door.
    “We’ll figure this out,” I say after him, feeling like a puppy nipping at his heels as we navigate the crowded hallways. “It will be months before we get to actual animals, and when we do, I’ll write up all the reports. I’ll do all the drawings and the typing. Everything but—”
    “Everything but the actual work,” he says and takes a sharp turn down the social studies hallway. I decide to just let him go. It’s a better alternative to what I’d really like to do to him.
    As a vegan, I am committed to nonviolence, in all aspects of life.
    But I’d really like to kick Michael Endicott in the shins right now.
     

Chapter 2: Never Bargain with Your Mother
     
    I tell my sister Tori all about him as we walk home together. Our younger sisters aren’t with us because Cassie stayed behind for cheerleading and Leigh has a ride from our mom to either her dance lessons in East Longbourne or something at her church. It could be a tag sale for the homeless, or a book burning. I can’t keep track of all her saintly endeavors.
    Tori might not be a saint but she is almost annoyingly reasonable and suggests when I finish my tirade, “Well, it was his first day. Maybe he was nervous, too?”
    “Yeah,” I agree as I hoist my bag onto my shoulder. “Maybe Michael Endicott—of the Longbourne Endicotts—has OCD and he really needs that particular seat to feel safe or something. Maybe he’s off his medication today. Maybe I induced some kind of episode in him, and now he’s home, frothing at the mouth. And beating his chest with one fist . . .”
    I trail off as Tori shakes her head and ignores my delight in my own morbid imagination. “It sounds like he really cares about his grade and is worried about what your sitting out the labs will mean to it.”
    “Some things are more important than