Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature (3 page)

“All the other potatoes are much fatter,” I said, patting her on the head. “And you have a much better personality.”

I felt kind of stupid, but kind of not. The truth is, it was fun to play around. It's been too long since anyone wanted to just hang out with me and goof off.

“Good,” Casey said, slamming the potato to his desk. “Now let's chop this thing to bits.”

I should get to my homework soon. I actually have a fair amount to do. But I'm guessing I'll have plenty of time tonight. I don't imagine Mom will call me down to help with dinner—she hasn't for the past month, so why start now? It's a weird sort of punishment, not having to set the table or peel the carrots or whatever anymore, but I know what she means by it. She doesn't want me around her right now. She's still too upset.

And then there's my father's inability lately to ever look me in the eye. I say something, and if I'm lucky he mumbles something back, but he won't grace me with a look.

Good times.

Look, let's start over. There has to be a better way of handling all of this.

First of all, I can't let these people get to me anymore. Everything happens for a reason, right? Things are awful and ugly right now, but maybe they had to be that way for me to ever break free. Because I knew last year what these people were doing was wrong, but I just didn't have the guts to do anything about it. So now God has taken care of that for me by getting me kicked out of the church. I should be grateful. Really.

Second, I need to focus all of my energies on something positive. So starting right now, I am going to throw myself into my schoolwork. I am going to get straight A's this year and win every award there is to win—including Ms. Shepherd's weird potato prize. Maybe that will prove to my parents that I'm not a total reject as a child. If I can't fix what I've already done, at least I can do better in the future.

Plus, concentrating on school will keep me completely occupied, and my former friends will have to notice they haven't turned me into a quivering hunk of weeniness just because they've ostracized me.

So:

1. Start doing my homework the second I get home from school every day.
   

2. Take on any extra-credit projects any teacher offers.
   

3. Work extra hard in the subjects that aren't my best, like math and science.
   

4. Win every single prize and award there is to win.
   

5. Get straight A's this year and every year.
   

6. Get better grades than Teresa or anyone else.
   

7. Make a bunch of new friends who are smarter and more fun than the ones I used to have.
   

That ought to rub their noses in it. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord, but sometimes it's hard not to get a jump on it yourself.

Seven

Day two of Her Miserable Life.

Started with a lovely scene at the start of Mr. Kuhl-man's class, when I overheard Bethany tell Teresa, “My dad said to meet at our house tomorrow night.”

Great. A meeting at Pastor Wells's house means something new is in the works. What fire and brimstone does he plan on unleashing this time? Is he really going to start some new campaign even though the Pierces are probably going to win millions of dollars against him and the church because of the last one? What is he thinking?

But it's not my problem this time. I am so glad. I never realized how wonderful it would feel to be free of the whole thing. I'm sorry my parents might lose their business over this, but I'm not sorry for speaking up. Somebody had to say something.

So while Teresa and Bethany huddled together, and Teresa made sure to speak clearly and loudly so I could overhear them, I just kept my head down and waited for the bell. And the whole time I felt like shouting,
WHO CARES? Because I really don't. I've participated in my last act of Christian aggression, thank you. I am cured for life.

Bethany glanced over at me a few times, like she felt guilty I could overhear.

Well, Bethany should feel guilty, but not for that. I have to believe that in her heart of hearts she knows she's as responsible as her father is for this whole mess. It may have been Pastor Wells's idea to start that whole campaign at our school, but Bethany's the one who took charge of carrying it out. I'm sure her intentions were noble, knowing her, but she should have thought of the consequences.

Thank God the bell for class finally rang and Teresa had to shut up.

Today we started
A Tale of Two Cities,
by Charles Dickens. Mr. Kuhlman has this great books-on-tape kind of voice, and he read aloud from the first few pages while we followed along. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. …”

You said it, Dickens. Except for the “best of times” part.

Eight

Casey said, “Let's start with the least obvious facts. Then work backwards.”

All around us, people were weighing their potatoes, fondling their potatoes, measuring them, sniffing them— it was a potato orgy.

But Casey and I were Scientific.

Casey brought a whole bag of stuff from home today: baseball, softball, cantaloupe, paint-chip color chart, Crayola box (the megabox, to make sure we matched the colors exactly), printouts from the internet, some measuring tool called calipers (“I wasn't sure if she'd have any in here,” he explained. I nodded, since I wasn't sure, either— what a caliper is, I mean), an awl (“I'm probably not supposed to bring that on campus—probably counts as a sharp”), a paperback science fiction novel titled
Gaunt Messenger
(“There's a great sequence in there where they live on nothing but potatoes for eight months—we should throw in a few lines from that”)—who knows what else. I was simply amazed. I only brought my fuzzy notebook.

“We're going to compare and contrast the potato to all these other things,” Casey explained about the baseball and softball and cantaloupe. “Distill and eliminate all the common properties.”

I kept nodding. What else could I do? Some people have Science Brain, some don't. Compare and contrast that.

We found an unoccupied corner of the room and got to work. We were in the middle of adding dried figs to one side of the scale (think Teresa's partner brought dried figs? Sucka) when Ms. Shepherd came over to us, watched for a second, took a sip of her Starbucks (delivered by the same giant—she must have a contract with him), nodded, and moved on without a word. Maybe she thinks we're geniuses. Maybe she thinks we're freaks. In either case, takes one to know one.

Because I looked her up on the internet, all right. Wow. Undergrad at Brown University, PhD at Harvard. She has her own website, with a blog she updates every week or so. The last entry talked about some trip she took to Bermuda over the summer, and how they drive on the left side of the road there, and she kept turning her head the wrong way to look for oncoming traffic and almost got mowed down by a moped. She also wrote something about a guy named “Herc,” and she wasn't sure if that was short for “Hercules,” but she doubted it. She didn't really say how she knew him.

She was there for a science conference. She won an award for some discovery or research paper or something— it wasn't too clear. She was pretty modest about it. She just
said she had a hard time dressing up for the awards dinner because the last time she wore high heels she was about twelve, but her colleagues assured her this was a heels event. But by the time the emcee announced her name, her feet hurt so badly she just walked up to the podium barefoot. She didn't think anyone noticed.

I asked Casey if he read that.

“Sure. You should have seen one of the ones from June. She picked up some rash while camping in the Adirondacks, and then she took in her own skin and blood samples to a lab and it turned out to be some new parasite no one's ever heard of before.” Casey snapped his fingers. “Another discovery, just like that. She's brilliant.”

“How long have you been reading her blog?”

“Three years.”

“Why? Two-point-five,” I added, giving him the caliper measurement of one of the potato's eyes.

“My sister had her freshman year. We're both big fans.”

I can't imagine being a “big fan” of a teacher I'd never even had. Casey must not get out much.

“So why do you think she's teaching high school, then?” I asked. “I mean, if she's so brilliant.”

“Check her FAQs. Her high school biology teacher is the one who turned her on to science. She feels it's her mission to pass it on. You forgot that one.” Casey pointed to a blemish on the surface of the potato. “Looks like the Big Dipper.”

I traced it onto our paper next to my other sketches of strange features on the potato's surface. One of them looked like half of Mickey Mouse's head.

“We need to do a summary,” Casey said. “Eyes, bumps, discolorations—”

But Ms. Shepherd called time. Hard to believe how quickly it had passed. Guess the minutes just slip away when you're loving your potato like we were.

“I'll review these tonight,” Ms. Shepherd said of our reports. She held up the oddly shaped package once more. “Tomorrow, some lucky team …” She smiled mysteriously. “Hope you can all sleep tonight.”

“You know we're going to win,” Casey told me as we gathered our books. “Whatever it is, we'll split it.”

“It was all you,” I pointed out. “I couldn't have thought of any of that.”

He switched to British. “Don't be so modest. I depend on you, Watson.”

I was working on something witty to say back when suddenly someone rammed me from behind and gouged my pelvis against the desk.

I spun around in time to see Teresa keep on walking toward the door. She looked quite pleased with herself. Another slam and run just like Adam's in the hall. Must have been last week's Sunday-school lesson.

“Excuse you,” Casey called after her. Teresa didn't even bother turning around.

“Well,” Casey said. “Obviously a close personal friend.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You okay?”

I nodded. It was so humiliating, letting him see me get bullied like that—and me not doing anything about it.
The least I could do was look brave. I resisted rubbing the spot where my desk had hit.

“So, what's Miss Q-Tip have against you?”

I don't know why that never occurred to me before. Probably because you don't make up a mean nickname for someone until she stops being your best friend. “Long story.”

“Once upon a time, Q-Tip and Mena …” He rolled his hand in the air to prompt me onward.

I shook my head. “Trust me, you don't want to know.”

“Then I'll just have to make something up. She stole your identity, poisoned your dog—”

“Casey—”

“—drugged you at a sleepover party and let someone tattoo a pirate ship on your bum.”

“Bingo. How'd you know?”

“Same thing happened to me once.”

If I hadn't been so tired from the whole Teresa thing this morning—two, count them, two class periods of fun— I might have joked around a little longer. But I felt like taking a rest.

“Well … I gotta go.” I shouldered my backpack and started for the door.

Ms. Shepherd was up front, browsing through our potato reports while she waited for her next class.
“Gaunt Messenger,”
she said to Casey. “Interesting.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He glanced at me, then suddenly seemed in a big hurry to gather his stuff.

“One of his best,” Ms. Shepherd said.

“Yeah. Thanks.” Casey had a weird look on his face. He headed for the door.

Now it was my turn to be curious. I followed him into the hall. “So?”

“What?”

“What was that about?”

“I don't know,” Casey said. “I guess she just likes that book.”

“Then why did you say ‘thanks’? Like you had something to do with it?”

“It's … one of my dad's books. He wrote it.”

“No way.”

“Yeah. Well, see you tomorrow.” Casey merged into hallway traffic and left me behind.

I turned to see Ms. Shepherd standing in her doorway.

“Didn't notice the name Connor on the cover?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

She clicked her tongue. “Better work on your powers of observation, Ms. Reece.”

Nine

We won. I knew we would. Casey is too smart not to win. He says some of my ideas were pretty great, too, but trust me—it was all him.

I have to admit I felt a little smug this morning as the two of us went to the front of the room to claim our prize. I even sneaked a peek at Teresa and saw exactly what I wanted to see: Displeasure. Jealousy. Good. Suck on that.

And then Ms. Shepherd presented us with our trophy. Casey and I struggled to unwrap it.

“Good tape job, huh?” Ms. Shepherd said proudly. “Might want to use your teeth.”

We didn't, so it took a while to unwrap, but finally what did our eyes behold?

A stuffed animal, and I don't mean stuffed as in cute and cuddly, pick it up at Toys “R” Us. I mean stuffed as in taxidermed.

Oh. My. Gosh.

Casey smiled like he'd just won fifty bucks.

It was a dead rabbit—no, not a rabbit—a freakish,
mutated, hideous bunny-like creature with antlers growing out of its head. It was a real dead animal—I felt its fur.

People craned out of their desks. “What the—” someone started to say.

“What is it, you ask?” said Ms. Shepherd. “Any guesses?”

Of course Casey would know. “It's a jackalope.”

“Correct! Ding, ding, ding—a young man who knows his science. This, my friends, is indeed the mighty jackalope. Also known as deerbunny, killer rabbit, warrior rabbit,
Wolpertinger
in German. The result of crossbreeding between the Australian pygmy deer and the carnivorous European jackrabbit. May I borrow that?”

Casey handed her our prize and shot me a look of utter delight. I couldn't see what he was so pleased about—that thing was disgusting. There was no way I was ever touching it again.

“Note the sharp, vicious teeth,” Ms. Shepherd said. “The elongated jackrabbit ears, the double-pronged antlers, the powerful hindquarters—”

“That's fake!” Jesse Pruitt shouted. (Church. Hates me.)

“What do you mean, fake?” Ms. Shepherd said. “It's as real as I am. You can see it, touch it—” She sniffed it and made a face. “Certainly smell it. It's right here where you can all observe it, right? So how can it not be real?”