Fancy White Trash by Marjetta Geerling Read Free Book Online Page B

my Biology II teacher, Mr. Kimball, about having female problems. He lets it go, and I wonder what excuse Cody is giving his teacher.
    Mr. Kimball asks us to get our textbooks and open to chapter four. There is a full-color blowup of a fruit fly on the first page. Ugly little buggers.
    â€œPerhaps those of you who took Bio I with me last year remember the famous scientist Gregor Mendel and his ground-breaking experiments with pea plants?” Mr. Kimball asks in what is clearly a rhetorical tone, because he plows ahead without even looking to see if anyone is raising their hand. “Or perhaps not. There has, after all, been a summer recess, which I suspect has had an adverse effect on your memory.”
    He pauses to allow time for us to laugh, then shushes us with one of his trademark looks. “Since genetics is a special interest of mine, I thought we’d jump ahead in the text and start this year off with an in-depth study of Mr. Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance and how they shaped genetic research. From there, we’ll finish off the unit by bringing it all to the present with a look at what’s happening in genetics today.”
    â€œLike cloning?” someone in the back asks.
    Mr. Kimball dances his eyebrows. “And so much more!”
    â€œWill all this be on the AP test in the spring?” Lucas Fielding, who was in Bio I with me last year, asks. He has a new haircut—shorter around the ears and a little messy on top— that’s way more flattering than the flattop he had last year.
    Mr. Kimball’s lips thin. He’s that weird age men get when they’re old, but you can’t really tell their age. Forty? Fifty? He clears his throat and says in his always scratchy voice, “Never fear, Mr. Fielding, you’ll be amply prepared for the Advanced Placement exam.”
    Lucas’s shoulders relax and he flips to page seventy in the book. I use the eraser on my pencil to turn a few pages. Charts and more charts. It’s going to be a long semester.
    â€œTwo more weeks.” Cody kicks rocks out of his way as we walk the mile from our bus stop to home. Two more weeks until he’s driving and dust up our noses as we trudge along in the August heat with overweight book bags is a thing of the past. My Bio II book alone weighs about twenty pounds. I should’ve left it in my locker, but something tells me I’m going to need a lot of boning up on my genetics tables if I’m going to pass this class.
    A car slows down behind us. Cody tenses.
    â€œGet in.” It’s Jackson in his ’98 gray Corolla. “Too hot to walk in this.”
    I worry for a second that he’ll peel out as soon as we open the doors, a trick he thought was oh so funny when he first got his license, but he doesn’t. We climb into the back of the car, which Jackson has turned into an arctic zone. The A/C is so loud I can barely hear the radio.
    â€œRough day?” Jackson asks when neither of us speaks. He studies us in the rearview mirror. “What’s that?”
    Cody slaps a hand low on his neck, just under his collar. “What’s what?”
    â€œThat.”
    â€œNothing.” Cody doesn’t move his hand.
    Jackson smiles knowingly into the mirror. “It’s a hickey, isn’t it? C’mon, man, ’fess up.”
    My eyes burn holes in the side of Cody’s head. He doesn’t turn. I am forced to wrestle his hand away from his neck.
    â€œIt is a hickey! Cody, who?”
    He shrugs and turns red, and the smattering of freckles across his nose blend away. “No one you know.”
    â€œImpossible. Need I remind you how small our school is?”
    Cody lowers his hand. “She’s a freshman. Just forget it.”
    She?
    â€œShe who?” Jackson is the one who says it. Our eyes meet in the mirror.
    Cody’s jaw slams shut. “Nobody, okay? Leave it.”
    I bounce a little on the seat. “At least tell