Page 13 of Life and Death

“Of course, Mrs. Banner.”

Edythe turned and gave me awell, go ahead thenlook.

I bent down to look through the eyepiece. I could sense she was watching—only fair, considering how I’d been ogling her—but it made me feel awkward, like just inclining my head was a clumsy move.

At least the slide wasn’t difficult.

“Metaphase,” I said.

“Do you mind if I look?” she asked as I started to remove the slide. Her hand caught mine, to stop me, as she was speaking. Her fingers were ice cold, like she’d been holding them in a snowdrift before class. But that wasn’t why I jerked my hand away so quickly. When she touched me, it stung my hand like a low-voltage electric shock.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, quickly pulling her hand back, though she continued to reach for the microscope. I watched her, a little dazed, as she examined the slide for another tiny fraction of a second.

“Metaphase,” she agreed, then slid the microscope back to me.

I tried to exchange slides, but they were too small or my fingers were too big, and I ended up dropping both. One fell on the table and the other over the edge, but Edythe caught it before it could hit the ground.

“Ugh,” I exhaled, mortified. “Sorry.”

“Well, the last is no mystery, regardless,” she said. Her tone was right on the edge of laughter. Butt of the joke again.

Edythe calligraphied the wordsMetaphaseandTelophaseonto the last two lines of the worksheet.

We were finished before anyone else was close. I could see McKayla and her partner comparing two slides again and again, and another pair had their book open under the table.

Which left me with nothing to do but try not to look at her . . . unsuccessfully.I glanced down, and she was staring at me, that same strange look of frustration in her eyes. Suddenly I identified that elusive difference in her face.

“Did you get contacts?” I blurted out.

She seemed puzzled by my apropos-of-nothing question. “No.”

“Oh,” I mumbled. “I thought there was something different about your eyes.”

She shrugged, and looked away.

In fact, Iknewthere was something different. I had not forgotten one detail of that first time she’d glared at me like she wanted me dead. I could still see the flat black color of her eyes—so jarring against the background of her pale skin. Today, her eyes were a completely different color: a strange gold, darker than butterscotch, but with the same warm tone. I didn’t understand how that was possible, unless she was lying for some reason about the contacts. Or maybe Forks was making me crazy in the literal sense of the word.

I looked down. Her hands were clenched into fists again.

Mrs. Banner came to our table then, looking over our shoulders to glance at the completed lab, and then stared more intently to check the answers.

“So, Edythe . . . ,” Mrs. Banner began.

“Beau identified half of the slides,” Edythe said before Mrs. Banner could finish.

Mrs. Banner looked at me now; her expression was skeptical.

“Have you done this lab before?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Not with onion root.”

“Whitefish blastula?”

“Yeah.”

Mrs. Banner nodded. “Were you in an advanced placement program in Phoenix?”

“Yes.”