The nice little story from English 320

Biology of Rae
Chapter 1
I leaned over the prostrate fetal pig, held my breath, and looked down. Its pale green-white skin triggered my gag reflex and I had to gasp for air. I opened my mouth, but inhaling that odor felt like I was licking the four-legged lump on the lab tray. I snapped my mouth shut and sucked a breath in through my nose. Formaldehyde. Pickled pig. Its acrid smell matched the pre-vomit taste burning in the back of my throat.
“Make the first incision in the center of the chest cavity. Apply steady pressure, no sawing motions,” instructed Dr. Bowman. I wasn’t about to apply pressure to anything but the hand clamped firmly over my mouth. Thank goodness for lab partners. I grimaced at Jameson.
He was the ideal lab partner—good at science and too nice to let a woozy girl get her hands dirty with dissection. He tossed his head, flicking a stray honey-brown curl out of his eyes, and grinned. He always did that, taking my intense expressions and mirroring them back at me in an exponentially positive way. When he smiles, the ground wobbles—or maybe that’s just me. His smiles are wide enough to shake the earth all the way in California; they should be measured on the Richter scale. This grin was a 4.7.
“If you don’t breath, you’ll pass out,” he said.
“If I do breath I’ll pass out,” I replied.
“If you’re gonna pass out anyway, you might as well breathe while you’re doing it.”
I loosened my grip on my mouth and took a tentative breath. No way. I clamped my hand back over my mouth and shook my head vigorously, my sharp elbow carving a crescent in the air. On the third shake it collided with something squishy—something squishy that gasped. Dr. Bowman was at my shoulder, now cradling his abdomen.
“Miss Peris, I’ll need to see you after class,” he panted. I gulped. Dr. Bowman returned his attention to the class. I turned to Jameson in panic.
“Can they give you detention in college?” I said.
He shook his head. “No, he’ll probably just kill you and preserve your body in formaldehyde for future students to dissect.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re such a pest.” The bell rang. In a flurry of notebooks, rubber gloves, and pig parts, the classroom cleared around me. Jameson winked encouragement as he ducked out the door. I gathered my books, prolonging the trudge to Dr. Bowman’s desk.
“You seem to be struggling in class,” sad Dr. Bowman. I nodded. School had only been in session for two weeks and already I was getting in trouble. “Is your lab partner distracting you?” Jameson? Distracting me? Hardly! My voice had decided to take a vacation, so all I could do was wobble my head “no” like a dash-board ornament.
“That’s good to know. In any case, I think you might be looking for extra credit opportunities, am I right?”
I wobbled my head yes.
“I need a writing assistant,” said Dr. Bowman. I stopped wobbling. A writing assistant? Was he serious?
My voice came back from its cruise to the Bahamas. “Dr. Bowman, I don’t know anything about biology. I am hardly pulling a B in your Bio 100 class as it is.”
“I know. But no one else turns in papers with quite as much rhetorical flair as you do.” True, I was probably the only student in the history of the school to describe the nomenclature system as pulchritudinous. Dr. Bowman continued, “I am working on some articles to submit to the journal of Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology. And I need an editor.”
I negotiated for 10% extra credit and we closed the deal. He would have a writing assistant and, with Jameson’s help and a 10% extra credit boost, I might just not fail biology.
Chapter 2
The door to room number 912 stood open. The elevator was broken, so I had hiked the eight flights of stairs lugging a backpack heavier than a small child. I stopped short of the entrance and sagged against the wall, trying desperately to catch my breath before going in. It didn’t help. My mouth still felt like I had swallowed Velcro and my lungs screamed obscenities at me. Oh well. They’d get over it. I squared my shoulders and stepped into the doorway.
Kelly, my lanky blond roommate, was sprawled out on the bed nearest the door with her boyfriend Ronny. She always looked lankier like that, wrapped around Mr. Neon-blue Mohawk. I cleared my throat uncomfortably.
Twice.
Finally Mr. Mohawk came up for air. He glanced at the nuisance that had interrupted his Friday afternoon and was sent sprawling as Kelly jumped to her feet. Like a peppy volcano she erupted with gossip, spewing juicy tidbits in her wake as she paced. She didn’t walk—she float-pranced, like a gazelle strapped to helium balloons.
I plopped down on my bed and squinted to see Kelly against the backdrop of her walls. Kelly’s half of the room exploded with color. Her bed was spread with a shockingly pink quilt and topped with a mountain of every-colored pillow, so many that it appeared she was sandbagging her bed for war with the gay community. Pop band posters bloomed on the walls, a tribute to every sappy music chapter since 5th grade.
I laid back, nestling my head into my white pillowcase, staring up at my white ceiling and my white walls. Ahhhh, how soothing. Mohawk Man was still on the floor, reading a discarded copy of Seventeen. From his intermittent snickering I assumed he had discovered the intimacy section. Kelly continued to simmer.
“He’ll be here in a few minutes,” Kelly said.
“What?” I had been tuning out her chatter, but that statement pulled me upright like reigns on a horse—the mention of a “he” other than Ronny in our dorm. I lunged out of bed, falling like an unsteady colt. My eyes rolled over the untidy heaps coming out of the floor like anthills. Candy wrappers. Books. Underwear. They all had to be moved, stat.
“Tell me more about this guy,” I said, stuffing laundry into my hamper.
Kelly smirked. She knew I hadn’t been listening. “His name is Grant and he’s in my Philosophy class. And he’s dreamy.” I wonder why Ronny was never bothered by Kelly’s admiration of other boys. He didn’t even seem to mind that she got hit on every day. I mean, it made sense. She was the human incarnation of Barbie.
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THIS IS WAY LATER IN THE BOOK
“Mail’s here!” yelled Kelly. She danced in waving a handful of envelopes. She tossed the junk mail on my desk and started opening the other five letters as she climbed through her pillows onto her bed. “Derek, Tom, Michael, Hank . . . hey Rae! You got a real letter!” She flung it at me Frisbee style and it skidded under my bed.
“Thanks.” I got down on my hands and knees and fished the packet out from the dust bunnies and debris. A letter? Who would be sending me a letter? Mom would never take the time to write. I examined the envelope. The direction was typed, but it didn’t have a stamp. Someone would have had to put the letter in our box personally.
I opened the flap and drew out a single typed sheet:
Dearest Rae,
Don’t move
the perfect arc of cheek
against my hand,
the trickling, tickling breath
upon my thumb,
the eyelash veil hiding
the reflection of my soul.
Don’t move
the graceful curve of throat
beneath my fingers,
the lips that form my name
against my palm.
Don’t move.
Don’t move, my love,


or I will kill you.
I stared at the innocuous white page and black letters—so precise, so neat. So menacing. My hand began to shake. I felt like I was inhaling swamp water.
“Kelly,” I choked around an imaginary clod of bog. She looked up from her pile of fan mail and saw me flapping my letter in the air like Gilligan trying to flag down a rescue plane. She pranced over and leaped on my bed.
“Is it from a boy?” she asked. I thrust the letter at her, anxious to get it out of my hands. I hugged my knees to my chest and watched Kelly’s face as I sang Jail House Rock loudly in my head. Kelly’s look of mischievous anticipation faded into a furrowed brow and then into a wrinkle of disgust.
“Creepy! Who writes stuff like that? You should call the cops,” Kelly said. She studied the note again. “Yep, definitely creepy.”