Best Friends Through Eternity (9 page)

N
ext morning, we’re off to the science center for our field trip. Fifty-four kids fit on a bus, which means both our grade nine classes squeeze together in that enclosed area. Windows are shut and frosted over, so we can’t even see outside. The smell of wet coats and cherry bubble gum overwhelms me, and because there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else to look, my eyes drift to the new official couple.

They come out in a big way: beautiful and in a world of their own, like actors in a perfume commercial. Jazz leans her head full of shiny black hair on Cameron’s shoulder. He strokes it, strokes her face and kisses her. Their love doesn’t seem like a game he’s playing to make Vanessa jealous. Something temporary. It looks gentle and sweet, a real feeling that’s growing bigger.

Doesn’t everyone want to experience love like that?
Certainly I do. Instead, I sit next to Max, the round-faced boy with the square bangs. That feels easy and comfortable, like sitting on a blanket on the beach. Not that beach where Kim is waiting for me, though.

In the seat ahead of us, Vanessa sits alone with her forehead pressed against the frozen window. She hasn’t even rubbed a looking hole out of the white. I can smell her burnt-tire anger, like a car accident when the driver desperately brakes.

Max chatters at me about the things he found out about the exhibit, when he searched for it on the Internet last night. Apparently Gunther von Hagens is the one who devised the plastination method to preserve the entire body from the inside out. “The idea came to him at the butcher. He decided to try the same meat slicer on a human liver. Which made it way easier to cut it all up and saturate it with polymer.”

Vanessa turns around. “You’re making me sick; why don’t you just shut up?”

My mouth drops open—I can’t help but gape. She looks pale and she isn’t wearing any makeup. What’s up with her? Does she think she can entice Cameron back with her white eyelashes and faded eyes?

She snaps around in her seat again to sulk at the pane full of frost.

Max stops talking and wags his eyebrows at me to make fun of Vanessa. Still, he clams up as she commanded, and really, what could she do to make him? Somehow he knows enough not to cross her. I wish he had the courage to stand
up to her. Then I would know I can count on him. Besides, I really want to know more about von Hagens’s procedure.

It takes about forty-five minutes to get to the science center. When the bus rolls to a stop by the student entrance, we file out. Seat by seat. Vanessa, Abbi, Kierstead and a couple of other volleyball girls hang together.

We stay clear of them as we stroll through the grand hall to the Body Worlds exhibit. Max continues his explanation about how von Hagens devised ways to suck out all the fat and water from a body. And how he experimented with combinations of rubber, epoxy and polyester, injecting them in to preserve not just one organ but entire corpses. “After he fills them with the plastic, he just positions the body however he wants it and lets it harden. The whole process takes about fifteen hundred hours.”

We arrive at the entrance to the exhibition, where there’s a large sign warning that photography is strictly forbidden. Around the corner sits a man, head leaning against his hand, as though he’s thinking. Only he has no skin or hair. His eyeballs look weird, bulging, and his irises are blue, contrasting sharply with the red of his plastinated flesh. According to the write-up on the wall next to him, the eyeballs are the only artificial things about any of the displays. Herr von Hagens can’t find a way to preserve them.

Vanessa hangs back, but Mr. Brewster catches her. “Do I have to go in? I’m not feeling good,” she tells him.

You can see he’s torn. He has to think for a moment.

“I can stay with her,” Kierstead offers, twirling a strand of hair around her finger.

“Me, too,” Abbi says.

Too many girls surround him; he backs away. “No, you can’t all miss this exhibit. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” He takes Vanessa by the elbow. “Come inside the room at least. You don’t have to look at the bodies, but I need to know what you’re doing.”

I shake my head at Max as we brush past them. Ahead of us the royal couple stands admiring the first display, a body riding a stallion. The skinned horse rears up on its hind legs, and its front legs claw at the air with a lot of attitude. For a dead horse, that is.

Jasmine points to the stallion’s flank, where a missing slice of flesh reveals the stomach and intestines. Cameron gestures to the riding crop clenched in the bony fingers of the rider. He’s split into two halves for us all to view his insides. Jazz and Cameron look happy and cozy holding hands as they gaze in wonder at the cadavers.

Both as one, they murmur, “Cool, eh?” to Max and me as we scoot ahead of them.

We check out the athlete cadavers on display. Lots of muscles and sinews. Some exposed organs. “Look at how intricate the veins are,” I say. I like the look of determination on their faces.

We also see an ape. Apart from the head, which looks distinctively monkey-shaped, and the thighs, so much heavier
with muscle than those of the human athletes, the rest of the body seems very Homo sapiens. A really good exhibit to argue for evolution. Max takes out his cell phone and snaps a photo of the skinned ape.

“You know you’re not allowed to take pictures,” I tell him.

“As long as I don’t sell them, nobody’s going to say anything,” he answers.

I look around. No white coats come rushing for us. “Gee, I wouldn’t mind having some photos of all this. It’s great.”

“I’ll send you some.”

Next up is a woman sitting, looking very relaxed for a corpse with her belly cut open. The opening in her body allows us to see her fetus. I don’t feel sad about the possibilities that ended for this person or her child. Even the first time through this exhibit, without Max, I felt detached. Which would have been a good thing if I could have carried out my plans for life. I wanted to go into research eventually.

Now, knowing that the real essence of me can interact with Kimberly on a beach, while my body sleeps on a hospital bed, makes me even more detached.

Still, I do feel a tiny prickle of sadness at the thought that I will never carry a baby the way this woman did. For that matter, I will never carry one in my arms, either. I didn’t even know I wanted to have kids till I looked at the thirty-three-week-old fetus. Perfect little toes, perfect fingers—only something obviously went wrong in its life. It was
cheated of even more possibilities than I have been. I hear some squeals and turn around.

In the center of the room is an exhibit that attracts a crowd of our classmates. “Come on. Let’s check it out,” Max says.

We can’t make out what the draw is till we push closer. Morgan giggles nervously as I squeeze in beside her. There, crouching in front of us, a man and a woman seem oddly joined together.

“They’re having sex,” Gwyn says as though she’s disgusted.

“It’s not like it was their choice,” Emma answers her. “Somebody just posed them like that.”

“Why would anyone let someone do that to them?” Morgan asks.

“For science,” I answer.

“They donate their bodies. Look on that wall; the donor form is there,” Max tells her.

I frown. I would have donated my body to science if someone had asked me. Only I would have liked control of how I was displayed. For sure not like this couple in front of us.

Vanessa still drifts around, almost ghostlike. As we move away from the couple, she moves in.

Mr. Brewster directs us to a cart covered with a white cloth. It looks like some serving cart for a fancy dinner, only sitting on this tablecloth are organs.

“Go ahead. Pick one up,” the girl in the lab coat says. “Sarah,” her name-tag reads.

Max grins as he picks up a dark brown half-moon. “It
feels like Plasticine when you’ve left it out too long.” He passes it to me.

“That’s a liver,” Sarah tells us. “What do you think this is?” She hands me an off-white slab of meat with a tube coming from its side.

I squeeze. It feels spongy, like a Nerf organ.

She gives Max one that looks gray and black. “Here’s a big hint. That one belongs to a smoker,” she tells him.

“Lungs,” I answer.

“Imagine breathing through it. Like inhaling through charcoal.” Max’s eyes bug.

Sarah raises her eyebrows. “Can’t feel great.”

Someone shoves into me. “This is just a stupid display,” Vanessa snaps. “My grandmother and grandfather smoke. They’re like a hundred years old.”

“Maybe the smoking only makes them look a hundred years old,” Max suggests.

I grin. “Yeah, smoking does cause wrinkles.”

Vanessa’s eyes narrow as she gives me her killer look.

Okay, bad move teasing her. She has no sense of humor. Still, how can anyone think that purposely inhaling burning anything wouldn’t be harmful?

Max and I drift away, looking at more bodies and organs and even the veins in a brain. Fascinating stuff.

Before we leave the exhibit, I head for the washroom, happy to have cruised through Body Worlds twice in one week (if you count my last lifetime). Safe and sitting
anonymously inside a stall, I hear Vanessa come in crying.

“Not everyone gets lung cancer,” I hear Kierstead tell her.

“My mother smokes,” Vanessa sobs. “She’s done it since she was twelve. So she’s got those black lungs.”

I hear Vanessa blow her nose, and I flush and step out of my stall. Last time through this week, I might have stayed hidden in there till they left.

“Lung cancer isn’t the only problem smoking causes,” I tell her as I wash my hands.

“Shut up,” Kierstead snaps at me. “Can’t you see she’s upset?”

But as I pull the paper towel from the dispenser, I continue nonchalantly, “There’s emphysema and cardiovascular disease.” I saw them all hanging out at the far edge of the football field, Vanessa and her team members, puffing their lungs out. I know Vanessa isn’t only worried about her mom or her grandparents. “Really, Vanessa, you should quit smoking.”

“Easy for you to say; you’re a toothpick.”

“Take up jogging. Better for volleyball than smoking.”
Too cocky?
I turn to head out the door.

Kierstead steps in front of me. “You’re such a snot, you know that?” Bared teeth and wrinkled nose, her face looms ugly in front of mine, all her faked sweet silliness gone.

I speak into that anger. “Within twenty minutes of your last cigarette, your body starts to heal itself. Your skin will improve. Your breath will, too.”

“Think you’re so smart!” Kierstead shoves me hard against the wall.

I feel my ribs crunch. Amazing how much it hurts, considering I never felt the train throw me. I slide down. It isn’t the pain, it’s the fear of what will come that is the worst.

By the time my butt touches the floor, I think, no matter what, I’m not going to live this week cowering. So I take a breath and speak at Vanessa. “If your mom quits, her risk of heart attack will drop within twenty-four hours.” I peel myself away from the wall and off the floor, staggering to my feet. “After forty-eight hours, her nerve endings will repair themselves.”

Vanessa raises a fist and I duck around her, grabbing hold of the door handle.

“All I’m saying is that it’s not too late for any of you.” I quickly pull at it and slip out.

“Over here,” Max calls. “What’s wrong with you? You look funny.”

I hold my ribs. “Nothing. Just told Vanessa she should quit smoking.”

“Oh man, do you have a death wish or something?” He grabs my arm and drags me away quickly.

“No, definitely not. Dying is something I really don’t want to do right now.”

B
y the time we walk home that afternoon, the snow has turned crunchy again. The cold air stings our faces like a slap—even Jazz’s cheeks turn pink—and I find myself looking over my shoulder.

I’m supposed to help my best friend against those hard-eyed jocks. But not only did she flaunt her happiness in Vanessa’s face, I also gave out health lectures in the washroom. Surely, between the two of us, we bumped up our date with the volleyball team. Will they catch up with us at the overpass today instead of Monday?

Jazz doesn’t notice me speeding up our walk. She just prattles away in faster white-puff breaths about the exhibit. “Did you see they had the donor form on the wall display? Can you imagine wanting to donate your body after seeing the exhibit?”

“Yeah.” To study biology, I would have had to look at some donor’s cadaver one day. I frown as I think about all
the diseases I won’t be able to find the cure for, the discoveries I’ll never make. Before that day on the train track, I hadn’t even thought about dying, let alone donating any part of my body.

“It’s so dehumanizing. A real person becomes a posable statue,” Jazz continues.

“It helps educate the public. Wouldn’t you donate your body for science?” I ask.

“And have some medical students laugh at my lack of boobs? No way.”

“Think of it differently. Because of your body, some doctor will learn how to save someone else.”