Marisa de los Santos - Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos Read Free Book Online Page A

about the separation of church and state, but decided that Mr. Tripp probably wanted to answer his own question.
    Mr. Tripp turned around and smacked the word on the board, then boomed, “Evolution!”
    Like the rest of the kids in the room, Dev wasn’t sure if Mr. Tripp was answering his own question or if he was just repeating part of the question, so, like the rest of the kids, Dev kept quiet.
    “Evolution is why we’re able to sit here and discuss evolution!” Mr. Tripp went on. “Monkeys can’t discuss evolution. Goldfish can’t discuss evolution. You know why?”
    Of course they all knew why. Everyone knew why goldfish couldn’t discuss evolution. Probably every kid in the room, at least every kid who’d stayed tuned in up to this point, was listing the reasons in her or his head: hard to talk underwater, no books about evolution available to goldfish. Just for starters. But no one opened her or his mouth. Clearly, the guy was on a roll; no one was stupid enough to get in his way. Yet.
    “Because they haven’t evolved enough! Human beings are the most evolved animals on the planet—and we are animals, make no mistake!” Mr. Tripp’s finger was stabbing the air and his forehead was beginning to glisten. He took a deep breath. “Human beings are the pinnacle of evolution!”
    And even now, even after everything that had happened afterward, Dev was glad he’d ignored all the signals—and the signals were as loud and clear as spinning red lights and that repeated foghorn-type blaring that Dev assumed happens in nuclear plants at the start of a meltdown—that he should keep his mouth completely, possibly permanently shut. Even now, he was glad he’d spoken up. Because this was Darwin they were talking about.
    Still, he had hesitated before raising his hand because he’d felt a little bad for Mr. Tripp. What Dev would figure out very soon thereafter was that all that bluster and drama, that bad imitation of Robin Williams in one of his inspiring-mentor roles stemmed from the fact that Mr. Tripp was a self-important, histrionic, humorless jerk. A class A windbag. But Dev didn’t know this, yet. Just then, the possibility still existed that Mr. Tripp was honestly trying to inspire them, and one look around the room told Dev that none of the students in it was going to be jumping on top of a desk to spout poetry anytime soon, himself included. Still, this was science class. If no one spoke up, all the kids who were paying attention to Mr. Tripp would walk out of science class thinking something was scientific fact that wasn’t.
    Dev raised his hand, although from the startled, pained expression on Mr. Tripp’s face you would’ve thought Dev had thrown a spitball at him instead.
    “Do we have a question?” asked Mr. Tripp.
    “Well, not really a question,” said Dev. “But I don’t think that’s right, what you said.”
    “Excuse me?” Mr. Tripp walked around from behind his desk and stood just a foot or two in front of Dev. Dev noticed that Mr. Tripp’s short-sleeved button-down shirt was getting dark under the arms.
    “I mean, definitely, the part’s right about humans being the only species that can formulate an idea like the theory of evolution. If Darwin had been a goldfish, forget about it.” Dev smiled at Mr. Tripp, as a few other kids in the class laughed, but to put it mildly, the smile and the laughter didn’t lighten up the atmosphere in the room. Dev felt his own palms starting to sweat, but he kept talking.
    “Well, you can sort of see how people might think that humans are the pinnacle of evolution because we have high reasoning and creativity and supercomplex brains. I think a lot of people think that, in fact.”
    “But not you,” said Mr. Tripp sarcastically. “And you would be?”
    “Dev,” said Dev, suddenly feeling exhausted. “But, okay, the goal of evolution isn’t complexity or high reasoning. Evolution is about having certain traits that enable you to survive