Very Bad Things (4 page)

“Phew!” Katie said, scooting in beside her.

Two seconds later, the bus lurched away from the curb.

“That was close,” Tessa remarked, not wanting to sound pissed even if she was a little. “I was afraid you’d get left behind.”

“I wouldn’t bail on you,” Katie said, and slid her book bag under the seat.

“Not even for Romeo?”

“He’s got things to do.”

“Like explain to Daddy why the house smells like a brewery?” Tessa asked.

“He has to find something that’s missing,” Katie said, staring out the window.

Tessa changed the subject. “You okay? You’re not worried about seeing a dead guy, are you? Promise you won’t heave like you did when we had to dissect a baby pig.”

“I’m seriously praying I don’t lose it.” Katie reached for Tessa’s hand. “But I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about
you
. Are you cool with going to the morgue? It’s right across from the cemetery. I know you try to hide it, but it has to eat at you, what with your whole family buried there and—”

“I’m fine.” Tessa didn’t let Katie finish. “I’m over it. That was a long time ago,” she added, tucking pale hair behind her ears. But Katie’s brown eyes got soft, and it was clear that her friend didn’t believe her. “I’m all right. Really,” Tessa insisted.

Still, Katie gave her hand a squeeze.

Tessa pulled her hand from Katie’s and gazed down at her lap. She’d lied when she’d said it didn’t bother her to see the cemetery. It bothered her a lot.

It had been ten years since the fire had reduced her family to tombstones in the Barnard Township Cemetery: one marker each for her parents and her older brother, Peter. Tessa did try really hard not to think about it. But no matter how often she told herself she couldn’t change what had happened that night, a part of her felt guilty and always would.

It didn’t help that everyone at Whitney knew about her past, or at least knew the gossip. Sometimes she wished she could tell them the whole truth instead of leaving it buried. But Tessa couldn’t set things straight. It was impossible. So she’d gotten used to the whispers. Those she could tolerate. But when someone made jokes about it, like Steve Getty’s “playing with fire” crack, that was harder to swallow.

He’ll get what’s coming
, she told herself. Guys like him could weasel out of trouble only so many times.

Besides, people like Steve Getty didn’t matter. She didn’t need everyone to like her. Katie was the only friend she needed, the only one who’d never judged her. Katie didn’t listen to the rumors. And that was why Tessa would be there for Katie when she finally saw Mark Summers for who he really was. When he broke her friend’s heart for good, Tessa would be the one who helped her pick up the pieces.

T
he body lay naked in the center of the room.

Beneath the harsh lights, the skin appeared yellow and waxen. The small group of AP Biology students stood in a loose circle around it. They all wore latex gloves and plastic aprons that crackled when they moved. A strained silence made every breath and anxious cough seem twice as loud.

“Ladies and gentleman, I’d like you to meet Mr. Thaddeus Ogden, who very kindly donated his body and his organs to Barnard Hospital’s cadaver lab so that young minds like yours might consider careers in the medical field,” Dr. Albert Arnold said, standing in front of the gurney. He gently patted Mr. Ogden’s lifeless shoulder. “The Whitney sisters’ foundation supports much of the research we do, and a good number of doctors and scientists, myself included, are Whitney alums. Most began their path to medicine right here where you are now, with the same hands-on experience.”

“He doesn’t look real, does he?” Tessa whispered in Katie’s ear. “The body, I mean, not Dr. Arnold.”

“Real enough,” Katie whispered back. As she’d predicted, she felt like throwing up.

She couldn’t stand the smell of formaldehyde. The stuff out-and-out reeked and, once it got into your nose, it was there to stay. You could pop a can of cheese Pringles and breathe it in after spending an hour poking open the insides of a pickled frog—or a mouse or a piglet—but the stink wouldn’t go away. And this time, they weren’t dissecting a pint-sized critter or even a medium-sized one, which was bad enough. This morning, their corpse du jour was big and entirely human.

“Blech.” The noise inadvertently escaped her.

“If you’re gonna hurl, don’t do it on my kicks,” Steve Getty said, loudly enough for the whole room to hear. He made a show of stepping farther away from her, garnering snickers from his buddies.

“Maybe I’ll aim for them,” she replied.

“My dear, there’s no need to be squeamish,” Dr. Arnold said, looking directly at her. “Mr. Ogden’s a very willing volunteer. He’s not going to sit up and say ‘Ouch.’ ”

“That’s reassuring,” Katie murmured, hoping the image of a dead Mr. Ogden popping upright wouldn’t stick in her head.

It wasn’t that she was afraid of slicing through skin and finding guts and bones. It was touching something dead that had been alive, that had once felt things, maybe even loved or
at least been hungry and sleepy and
breathing
. Worse still, the corpse on the slab looked a lot like her granddad, who’d died the year before her father. Her dad’s casket had been closed and covered with a spray of roses. But her granddad’s had been open. So the last time she saw him was at the visitation. Afterward, she wished she’d just remembered him as he was: alive and happy, not made up and dressed up, with bloodless hands folded neatly on his chest.

Don’t look at his face
, she told herself.
Anywhere but the face
. Or else she would be reminded that Mr. Ogden wasn’t made of wax but skin and bones.

“So,” Dr. Arnold asked eagerly, looking at the students around him, “which one of you wants to take the first stab?”

Katie focused on the doctor instead of the dead man. He was seriously working the mad-scientist thing, she thought, with his bulging eyes and tufts of gray hair and the way he poked at the air with the thin blade clutched in his latex-gloved hand. She’d heard that he used to be Barnard’s medical examiner before he took over the cadaver lab. She imagined him walking around the morgue at night, chatting with the corpses.
Well, hello, Mrs. Smith. Not too cold in there, are you?

She must’ve made a funny noise, as Tessa gave her a weird look.

“You okay?” her roommate whispered.

Katie nodded, though she felt anything but.

“Hey, I think Katie’s volunteering,” Steve Getty said loudly, then leaned over to hiss, “Or are you chicken?
Baawk baawk
.”

“Bite me,” she murmured, feeling Dr. Arnold’s overly bright gaze lock on her like a guided missile.

“Young lady, are you up to the challenge? As I said before, you won’t hurt him. Mr. Ogden possesses a superhumanly high pain threshold,” the lab director quipped, raising tangled eyebrows as he extended the scalpel. “I’ll even make it easy on you. Would you like to cut our cadaver’s flexor tendons so we can examine his ulnar artery? It’s as good a place to start as any.”

“Me?” Katie’s hands were sweating in her latex gloves. She rubbed them down the front of the surgical apron they’d all been made to wear. She had her hair tucked up in a scrub cap, and her scalp was starting to itch. “No, thanks. I’m sure there’s someone else who’d like to go first.”

She glanced hopefully at the other faces in the circle, but no one seemed eager to step forward.

Dr. Arnold wasn’t about to let her off the hook. “Don’t you want to play
CSI
? I thought everyone did.”

“I’m pretty sure they don’t use real bodies on TV,” Katie replied.

“Aw, c’mon, don’t be a wuss,” Steve Getty said, and Katie felt his meaty paw on her back, propelling her forward. She stumbled toward Dr. Arnold, who caught her arm, stopping her forward motion before she ended up flinging herself across Mr. Ogden on the slab.

“Now, now, no need to shove,” Dr. Arnold said.

Katie gave Steve a nasty look. Then she glanced helplessly at Tessa, who looked so mad she’d turned purple.

“Well, my dear, why don’t you go ahead and kick things off since you’re up here.” The doctor passed her the scalpel. “Just take a deep breath, relax, and approach it clinically. Go on.” He put a hand on her shoulder, turning her toward the corpse.

A deep breath was the last thing Katie needed. The formaldehyde stink was already making her dizzy.

As the circle of classmates closed in on her, Katie swallowed and took a step nearer Mr. Ogden.
You can do this
, she told herself, holding the thin blade in her hand as she lowered it to the dead man’s wrist. Behind her back, Steve made clucking noises. Katie tried to ignore him, though she felt the weight of everyone’s eyes. Her hands began to sweat inside her gloves.

“I’ve clearly marked the area over the tendon,” Dr. Arnold was saying. “Once you’re done, I’ll do some pinning and then we’ll give everyone a chance to look.” His voice buzzed in her ears like a hive of bees.

Katie stared at the blue marks on the skin at the cadaver’s wrist, trying hard not to glance at the face with its sunken cheeks and eyes closed in a forever kind of sleep.

Were you married, Mr. Ogden? Did you like your job? Did you die alone, or with someone holding your hand?

She pursed her lips, pressing down on the scalpel, denting the skin but not piercing it. Corpses didn’t bleed, right? But what if he did sit up? she thought. She’d heard of it happening before. What was it called? Rigor mortis? No, that wasn’t it. Involuntary muscle contraction?

“She doesn’t want to do it, for God’s sake!” Tessa’s voice rang out, followed by the
clop-clop
of her footsteps. Then she nudged Katie aside and took the surgical blade from her trembling fingers.

“Miss Lupinski?” Dr. Arnold asked, squinting at Tessa. “Are you certain
you’re
up to the task?”

“Yes,” Tessa said simply, and, without hesitation, she sliced firmly into Mr. Ogden, following the perpendicular lines that Dr. Arnold had mapped out. Within minutes, she had the flaps pinned back so all the tendons and veins and the artery were visible.

Déjà vu
, Katie thought as she stood there and watched. It was like freshman biology all over again, when she’d wimped out and Tessa had taken charge of their first frog, slicing it open with the same decisiveness.

When Tessa was done, she stepped away from the corpse, saying nothing. She quietly returned the scalpel to the lab director before stepping back into her place in the circle to Katie’s left.

“Bravo, my dear. Well done,” Dr. Arnold cheered.

Steve let out a low whistle. “That is one stone-cold bitch,” he murmured from Katie’s right, just loud enough for her to hear.

“T
hanks for the save,” Katie said to Tessa once they were on the bus, heading back to Whitney. “I should’ve stabbed Steve with the scalpel while I had the chance.”

“He probably would’ve enjoyed it,” Tessa said. “He’s a hockey player. They’re like vampires. They get off on blood.”

“He’s been giving me a hard time since Mark and I got together. He’d love to break us up, just to mess with Mark’s head. Steve hates that Mark is captain
and
a power forward,” Katie said, because it was the truth. “He wants Mark out so he can be the star, but it’s not going to happen.”

Tessa pulled out her phone and stared at the screen like her life depended on it.

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all, huh?
Katie thought. Okay, so maybe Steve Getty wasn’t the only one who wished she and Mark would split up. He could stand in line behind Joelle Needham and Tessa.

Whatever.

Katie turned away from her friend and gazed out at the scenery, grabbing hold of the seat in front of her as the bus hit a bump in the road. The country lane that connected the quaint town of Barnard with the private grounds of Whitney Prep was a mixture of potholes and gravel. If you didn’t know better, you wouldn’t have a clue that such an unassuming path led to hundreds of acres of landscaped grounds full of ivy and roses, encircled by towering pines. On sunny days, Katie thought the campus looked picture perfect, like something you’d see on a postcard. When it was gloomy, she found the historic brick and stone buildings pretty creepy, with their Gothic arches and murky stained-glass windows.