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It’s not toohard to shine in the anatomy lab when put side by side with my lab partners. For the most part, they’re all disasters. Heather McKinley—a total airhead. It baffles me that she’s here when it took me years to finish my requirements to earn a spot in the class. Abe Kaufman seems intelligent enough but also appears more focused on Heather than he is on studying. Rachel Bingham talks big, but I can tell that she’s struggling to master the material. And then there’s Mason Howard.

I hate Mason instantly.

He’s way too good-looking, for starters. Guys who look like that annoy me because they think they’re God’s gift to the world. If I ever get married, I’m going to marry someone butt-ugly who knows what it’s like to be shit on by the world. Also, Mason is super charming. I can just see the girls in our class eating it up. It’s so annoying. Heather ogles him all through the lab.

He acts like he’s some sort of anatomy genius, but I know the truth: he studies his ass off. He doesn’t mess around—he takes med school very, very seriously. He’s the only person who stays at the library as late as I do.

But you know what pisses me off about Mason?

Even if I study night and day nonstop, even if every grade I get tops Mason’s, he’ll always have the edge over me. No matter what. Because Mason has one quality that I don’t possess: charisma.

A little charisma goes a long way. And Mason has a lot of charisma.

“He already looks like a surgeon,” Heather says to me as we stand on the far end of the cadaver table, Mason cutting as we flip through the lab manual. Heather is practically swooning.

“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” I say.

“Yes.” Heather blushes. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing,” I murmur.

Heather clears her throat and flips the page in the manual. “How about you? Are you seeing anyone?”

I dated a boy named Alex before med school started. It wasn’t very serious. He was the son of a woman my mother knew from work, and he was short. I’m short, so I always get set up with short guys, even though I’m not that attracted to them. Anyway, it wasn’t a big loss to break up with him when school started. I couldn’t have any distractions.

“Not really,” I say.

Heather’s eyes light up. “Really? Because you know, Abe is available...”

Seriously? Is Heather so dense that she doesn’t realize that Abe is head over heels in love with her? He’s about as interested in me as he would be in a candy wrapper on the street. Which seems to be the reaction most guys have to me.

“I’m not interested,” I say, trying to turn the conversation back to the celiac plexus.

“You know,” Heather says, “your hair will look so spectacular in a French twist. You have such a graceful neck. I learned how to do it last summer…”

I grit my teeth. “I’m not interested.”

This time, Heather seems to get it and backs down. Except then she starts humming a pop song, which is this annoying habit she has. Always singing. Sometimes I want to strangle her. I don’t even get why she’s here—she’s easily the dumbest person in the class. The other day, we were looking at another cadaver, and she said to me, “I think this person had a hysterectomy—I don’t see a uterus.” I had to inform her it was a male cadaver—Mason overheard the exchange, and he couldn’t stop laughing.

Anyway, my love life is none of her business. Someday I’ll date again. There’s just no room in my life for that right now.