Dead Romantic (5 page)

She didn't say anything.

‘If you tell me what you were doing . . .'

She stopped briefly, threw me a blue-eyed glare and went back to her work. She was so cool and intelligent. And not to mention pretty. And it amazed me how . . .

‘Miss Mabb, pay attention to your own specimen, please,' came Mr Chaney's crackly old voice suddenly.

‘Sorry, sir,' I said, almost falling off my stool. A smile split Zoe's mouth.

‘I mean, I won't tell anyone what you were doing. Not that I know anyway. Can I . . . come with you, next time? I want to see.'

‘See what?' she said. By this time, her hamster had been skinned so perfectly he looked like a sausage lying on a tiny fur rug.

I whispered, checking to see if Chaney had turned back to the board. ‘Bodies and stuff. I don't want to rob anything though . . .'

‘You'd better make a start,' she said, looking across at my hamster. ‘He tours the workstations.'

I frowned, looking at my hamster every which way. ‘I don't know how to do it without slicing into anything. You don't fancy doing mine as well, do you?'

Chaney's crackly old notes rose again into the lab's petshoppy air. ‘Now the inner organs are exposed. Can you identify the liver? Yes. Good, very good.'

Zoe had already identified the squiggly organ stuff and started stitching her hamster back up the middle. When she was done and when Chaney's back was turned again, Zoe switched her dissection pan with mine and started on my hamster, all without saying a word.

‘Thanks a really lot,' I said.

She sliced down my hamster like she was cutting into a tiny pie and picked up her magnifying glass to get a closer look. Chaney started doing his rounds, so I picked up my scalpel and poked at Zoe's hamster sausage like I was interested. He stopped at our table. For a split second I thought he was going to make some comment about us switching hamsters, but amazingly he didn't.

‘Excellent, Camille. You're a natural, it would seem!'

‘Thanks,' I said, my voice breaking in shock. He moved on to the next desk and I twirled my scalpel around in my fingers like a baton, rather pleased with my first ever praise from Chaney. I looked at Zoe. ‘Thanks, Zoe.'

She turned her head, stared at me, and went back to her surgery.

I continued to twirl my scalpel until the knife nicked my thumb.

‘Ah!' I unzipped my pencil case and reached in to grab a happy flower dressing. ‘Are you going to the Halloween party?' I said when Chaney had clacked back towards his desk.

‘Pardon?' she asked.

‘The Halloween party. It's at the end of the month.'

‘So why are you asking me at the beginning of the month?' she muttered.

‘Well, it's quite a big event,' I explained, ‘and I heard people usually start asking people out now and hiring their fancy dresses and limos and everything. It's like a second prom. We have to have special outfits and masks and stuff, which the Art Department are making, and the boys have to ask us to dance, it's like the law of the party. And we have, like, a buffet and one of those horse things you hit with a stick. I've got an orange dress and I'm going as a pumpkin.'

She looked up. ‘And you have to go, to dispel the memories of the Eat, Drink and Be Merry, I take it?'

‘Pretty much,' I nodded.

‘Is that all people care about here, parties?' she said. ‘Is that all they like to do, stumble from one party to the next? Freshers'. Halloween. Christmas, Valentine's?'

‘Pretty much,' I said again.

‘What types of human waste will they persuade you to ingest for that one?' she muttered.

‘Halloween will be different,' I said, trying not to let her comment sting me.

‘I'll have to make sure I'm either dead or in jail by then,' said Zoe.

The strip light was flashing above Mr Chaney's chair.
He set down his papers and stood on top of his desk to wiggle about with the little thing at the end of it.

‘I suppose he's the preferred dancing partner,' said Zoe, tapping the spine of my ring binder where ages ago I'd written ‘Mrs de Jager' in bubble writing.

‘Yeah, totes,' I said, going violently hot in the cheeks yet again as I tried scratching over the bubble-writing with my Biro. (One day, I'm going to have surgery on my cheeks to take the blush out of them, it's so annoying.) ‘Except Damian's asked Lynx to go with him. Lynx is – was – one of my best friends . . .'

‘De Jager,' Zoe interrupted. ‘Yes, he's in my Chemistry class,' she murmured. ‘I caught him in the teachers' store cupboard last week, stealing chemicals.'

‘Did you report him?'

‘No,' she scowled at me.

‘Why were you in the teachers' store cupboard?' I asked her.

‘I hope you've been listening, Camille. You won't know what to do next.' Chaney stepped down from his chair but the strip light was still flashing.

‘Yes, sir.' I really wasn't listening any more though, it had to be said.

‘And here we have it,' he announced, pointing to the whiteboard diagram of a squiggly brain thing. ‘When you have cut through the abdominal wall you will have exposed the large intestine . . . What's so amusing, Tamsin?'

Mr Chaney was telling off Tamsin Double-Barrelled for laughing at her hamster's bottom, while Harvey With A Squint and Kayden No Neck were in hysterics, having
stitched both their hamsters together. I watched Zoe working on her hamster and within seconds, she had stitched it totally back up again, her fingers so furious they could have been playing a really fast tune on a piano. Chaney went back to fussing about the strip light and announced he was going to have to get a new bulb from the store cupboard.

‘Damian's cute though, isn't he?' I grinned. ‘I mean, he's a bit of a head case but he is lush. I thought I might be in love with him but . . .'

‘I'm not really interested in boys,' said Zoe.

‘What?' I said, trying not to let my face in on the fact my brain was shocked. ‘Well, that's great. That's really cool. But I wouldn't tell anyone that you're . . . like that if I were you. Not yet anyway. Your old school was probably really relaxed about it but girls here might get funny. You know. It might stop you fitting in.'

‘Funny about what?'

‘Well, girls worry when they know a new girl might . . . fancy them.'

‘Why would I
fancy
them?'

‘You said you weren't interested in boys.'

‘I'm not interested in boys. And before you ask, I don't
fancy
girls either.'

I chuckled. ‘Well, what else is there?'

‘Science,' she said. She removed a black zip-up case from her bag and opened it. Inside were lots of syringes filled with a blue liquid, as blue as her eyes.

I frowned. She, in her starey way, stared back at me. How weird. I'd never met anyone who fancied science
before. I'd watched this documentary once about a woman who was in love with the Berlin Wall but cheated on it with the fence post in her garden. Sometimes I wished I could be happy with a fence post. But I wasn't. I wanted a boyfriend. A sweet, sexy, funny, warm boyfriend who'd treat me well and hug me all the time. Was it too much to ask? I'd love to hug a boy. Or just have my hand held for a bit. I dreamed about it. I ached for it. Hang on, I'd thought boy. Not girl. Maybe I wasn't a lesbian after all?

Clink clink.

When I looked up, Zoe was standing before the store cupboard. She had slid the top bolt across. Chaney's muffled shouts were coming from inside.

‘Gather around, everyone. I want to show you something,' she announced.

‘Zoe, you open this door right now!'
Chaney's cries from the cupboard again.

‘Mr Chaney!' Tamsin Double-Barrelled screamed, lunging for the door.

Zoe stood in her way. ‘I think we'll leave things as they are, for now,' she said, slowly producing from nowhere one of the syringes, three-quarters full of blue liquid. Tamsin Double-Barrelled backed away, before darting towards the main door and out of the room. Two other girls followed and all three of them ran crying past outside the window. Everyone else from the Three Joshes to Oliver Big Hair stayed put.

Duff duff duff. ‘Help! Someone get help!'

‘Now, as I said, gather round,' said Zoe again, smiling.
‘And bring your hamsters, whatever stage of dissection they are at.'

We all did as she said, like she had cast some spell on us. My hamster looked pretty gunky but I scraped it off my dissection pan and brought it to her.

On the desk, Zoe had placed two leads with crocodile clips at the ends, a small black bag and a block of wood with knobs on. She took her hamster and laid it in front of her. She circled over its heart with her fingertip.

Duff duff duff duff duff.

‘He wouldn't appreciate this. But I know you will.' She smiled, and for a second I thought I saw a glint on one of her teeth. She took a pair of thin rubber gloves from a box on the desk. ‘Now, this hamster is dead, do you all agree?'

Silence.

‘Your hamster is dead.' She pointed to Laura Yellow Boots. ‘And
your
hamster is dead.' She pointed to William Pratt. ‘And
your
hamster is dead.' She pointed to me. ‘You all saw me open this hamster up and put it back together, yes?'

I nodded again. My hamster was probably deader than anybody's. Chaney was still going ballistic in the cupboard.
Duff duff duff bang!

Zoe looked at all of us in turn. ‘You will all look back on this day and say, “I was there.” You won't believe you are seeing this. But you will see it.' She was laughing. I thought someone had told a joke I'd missed.

I started laughing too, because mad laughter is kind of infectious. No one else did though. Another girl stepped quietly out of the room.

Holding up the syringe, she announced, ‘I have injected this hamster with some of what is in this syringe. I administered it to its lower extremities and directly to the heart, which I checked was healthy when I opened it up.'

‘What's the blue stuff?' I asked, then put my hand over my mouth, thinking maybe it wasn't the time to ask questions.

I could have sworn she smiled at me before saying, ‘Good question. Inside the syringe is Ambystoma zoexanthe serum 651. This serum has the power to not only regenerate damaged tissue, but also repair wounds, fissures and abrasions. It is also a magnificent electrical conductor and it is the glue that is starting to put this little hamster together again.'

‘Woah, sweet,' Hindu Josh With The Headphones muttered.

‘And now . . .' Zoe announced, brandishing the two leads. She clipped one end of each lead on to the hamster's front paws, attaching the other ends to the battery in the middle of the wooden block. ‘We apply electrical pulses to prompt muscle contraction. This is galvanism. Electricity, you see, holds the very key to life.'

‘But that hamster's dead,' said Skinny Josh On Crutches. ‘It's so dead.'

Watching the wall clock, Zoe flicked the battery switch up to five.

‘Oh. My. God,' breathed William Pratt.

We watched the hamster's body. It was still as a stone. After a second, it twitched. Sparks crackled from the metal clips on its paws. The paws fluttered, then flopped. Zoe
took the clips off. The paws fluttered again. The eyes opened.

‘Oh my God!' It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen in my entire life. I know judges on talent shows said this kind of thing every time someone sang in tune, but this actually especially was amazing. The amazingest.

The long cut on the hamster's stomach had disappeared. I hadn't noticed when, it had just gone. The hamster moved. Stretched out. There were gasps. Within seconds, its body was squirming to right itself. Scratchy Max ran out. Josie With The Humungous Handbag started crying and Emma With The Nose Ring slapped both her hands over her mouth. Within a minute, the hamster was sniffing around the desk, finding a peanut Zoe had put there for it.

‘You see what has happened?' said Zoe, switching off the battery. ‘The serum, or Ambystoma zoexanthe serum 651 as it is properly known, has worked its way through this creature's body and repaired the dead tissue. The electric impulses have reanimated its musculature and restarted its heart.'

‘That's . . . incredible!' I said.

‘That's science,' she said.

‘But, it was definitely dead, wasn't it?' said Blonde Josh In The Liverpool Shirt.

‘Yes, it was,' said Zoe, her face alive with excitement.

Duff duff duff duff. ‘ZOE LUTWYCHE, OPEN THIS DOOR IMMEDIATELY!'

‘As you can see, this hamster is alive when moments ago we had all taken it to be deceased. With the help of
this,' she said, picking up the empty syringe, ‘we have achieved the unthinkable. Stroke it. Feel its
warmth
!'

It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen since I'd been alive. It beat all the magic tricks I'd ever seen and all the cartwheels I'd ever done and finding a dead woman. Anyway, it was truly awesies.

‘Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhhh!'
William Pratt's delayed scream set several girls off screaming and this set off Chaney's banging again.
Duff duff duff duff duff.

In his haste to get out, Oliver Big Hair fell backwards over a stool. Josie With The Humungous Handbag crashed straight into Laura Yellow Boots, who'd already pushed over Hindu Josh With The Headphones in her hurry to get out of the room. Hindu Josh now looked like he was going to throw up in the fish tank. All the commotion must have frightened the poor hamster because he scuttled to the edge of the desk and took a running jump.

Everyone not puking or fainting hurtled around the classroom, searching for the tiny fur-ball as it darted along the skirting boards. Stools clattered to the floor, tables scraped back, brooms brushed, glass smashed, feet stamped, arms flapped.