Missing a Human Heart

“Jason!” I finally shouted in frustration. “For the love of all that is holy, put the beak down!”

My idiot lab partner, Jason Fuller, was using the skeletal beak of the squid we were dissecting to annoy the girl next to him. He opened and closed it while talking in a weird voice.

“I’m an alien. I’m going to eat your brains!” he said, aiming the beak at Allie Orr’s head. She gave a small, pathetic shriek.

“Stop it, Jason!” she exclaimed feebly. “That’s gross!”

I rolled my eyes and grabbed Jason’s wrist, pulling him back to our table.

“For once in your life, would you stop tormenting every girl in the class and help me finish this?” I asked angrily. Jason always teased all the girls except me. I didn’t know why. I was as attractive as any of them, right? Sure, I always kept my brown hair tied back in a braid, and I didn’t wear make-up, but I wasn’t hideous.

“Okay,” Jason grumbled. I didn’t understand him. Why take Anatomy and Physiology if he wasn’t serious about it?

I bent over the squid again, carefully slicing open its stomach. There were still tiny pieces of fish bones inside.

I heard Jason chuckling and looked up. He had taken the pen-like gladius, which I had already removed, and dipped it in the ink sac. He was now drawing a penis on a piece of paper. I groaned and closed my eyes, slowly counting to ten.

Mr. Kaufman had paired me with Jason at the beginning of the year.

“He needs someone with your level of maturity to guide him,” Mr. Kaufman had explained with a smile. It never changed. It was the same as the fourth grade, when I was always paired with the mentally disabled boy while the teacher’s aide went outside to smoke.

“You’re a leader, Pamela,” teachers like Mr. Kaufman always told me. I didn’t want to be a leader. I wanted to be left alone.

The good thing about being partnered with Jason was that he wasn’t squeamish about anything. He was currently squeezing the squid’s eyeball out of its socket with his bare fingers. He laughed like the stupid little boy he was as it popped into his hand.

Somehow, we finished the dissection and cleaned everything up. I grabbed my backpack and left as soon as the bell rang.

“Ew. You smell like dead fish,” Pandora wrinkled her nose as I opened our locker.

“Squid,” I reminded my twin sister, grabbing my Chemistry book.

“You know, I was thinking about that article…” Pandora started hesitantly.

“What article?” I frowned, not really paying attention. Where had I put my goggles? They had probably fallen from my neat, tidy shelf into the void that belonged to Pandora.

“You know, about the mutant people,” she said. It still took me a minute to remember.

“Oh, that?” I rolled my eyes. “Give it a rest, Pandora. The guy is in jail.” I leaned into locker and dug through the junk at the bottom of the locker. Was that mouse poop?

“But the ones they couldn’t find! Where are they?” Pandora asked insistently.

“Waiting for you to walk down the wrong alley,” I sighed, finally finding my goggles underneath an old muffin wrapper. “I hope you run into one. I’d love to dissect it.”

“Pamela, that’s disgusting!” Pandora exclaimed, looking horrified.

“I knew you’d say that,” I smirked, closing our locker.

Once school was finally over, we walked to the crowded parking lot. It was the twelfth of the month, an even day, so Pandora climbed into the driver’s seat of our car. I carefully pulled out my color-coded binder and rearranged papers as she weaved through cars and managed to get out of the parking lot and onto the street.

“I think that if I was a mutant person, I’d want to keep looking for a cure,” Pandora remarked. I laughed in amazement.

“Really, Pandora. You’re like a broken record sometimes,” I said, shaking my head.

“And you are a nerd, Camel,” Pandora shot back.

“Am not, Panda.”

“You are too! You’re the only junior in Calc II! On Saturday nights, you read the U.S. History chapters that the teacher skipped!”

“Only because I think the Roaring Twenties are particularly interesting!”

It was Pandora’s turn to laugh at me. I pushed my glasses up my nose and hunched over my binder. We sat in silence until I finally looked up and glanced around at the unfamiliar scenery.

“Pandora, you missed the turn again!” I exclaimed in exasperation.

“Oh, sorry!” she apologized, looking like I had just snapped her out of a daze.

“Whatever. Just find somewhere to turn around,” I sighed, trying to stay calm. We were in a pretty shady part of town. All the houses had chipped paint and trash in their yards. We passed a grocery store with a fluorescent sign, a dirty white van parked in front, and a group of unfriendly-looking men who stared at our car as we drove past.

I bit my lip nervously. I would not yell at Pandora, I told myself. I knew she hated to pull u-turns, but I was afraid that the minute she pulled into a parking lot, we’d get robbed or worse.

All of a sudden, something ran into the street in front of the car. Pandora slammed her foot on the brake pedal, and we screeched to a stop just seconds away as it stared at us with wide eyes like a stunned deer. We stared right back, our mouths open, until it ran off into the bushes.

“Please tell me you saw that,” Pandora finally said.

“I wish I hadn’t,” I replied, still in shock. Against all my studies of evolution and biology, I had just seen a centaur run in front of our car.

“It was one of those mutants!” Pandora exclaimed. She pulled the car into the nearest parking lot, which happened to be in front of a small building with a sign that read “Kwikee Loans.”

Without warning, Pandora threw the car door open and raced across the street. I jumped out of the car, making sure my door was locked, and sprinted after her.

“Pandora, wait! Where are you going?” I shouted.

“I have to find it!” she called over her shoulder just before disappearing into a forest that I was certain was filled with sexual disease ridden rapists. I groaned and, ignoring my better judgment, followed her.