Boys With Sharp Edges by Taylor Hicklen

(Author's note: This is a companion piece to Sadness With Beginners. They work as stand-alones and as supplements, so feel free to mix and match.)

I have three pages of Civics notes, a scraped knee, and no curfew. Mom is burning something in the kitchen, but she doesn't even have to see me. She knows. She scrapes the charred mess into the trash can and disappears to the upstairs bathroom, where the Band-Aids are.

I'm kind of glad. I wasn't ready for the mirrored medicine cabinet just yet.

"Did you trip over the curb again?" Mom calls.

"Yes ma'am."

"The one by the Smiths' house?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"Mother. Please."

"I worry about you, Janice!" she protests.

"I know." Mom dabs a bit of antiseptic on the scrape before sticking the Band-Aid on. Something tense flits across her face.

"I should probably order pizza," she sighs.

Dad walks through the door with a half-cheese-half-supreme pizza thirty minutes later. He's humming Chumbawamba again.

"I had a premonition," he says, rummaging through the silverware drawer.

"I told you that I'd be cooking this morning," Mom says, glaring at him.

Dad rolls the pizza cutter down the center, and I'm blindsided- Jeremy slicing open a frog, Jeremy saying he's had practice.

"Put mine in the fridge," I say. "I'll come back for it later."

"Okay," Dad says. Business as usual.

I retreat up the stairs to my room. When it comes down to it, I can only be certain of two things:

1. Jeremy Smith locked himself in his walk-in closet with a razor blade yesterday.

2. Somehow, he trusted me to get him out.

Sleep is a long, hard battle.

 

I struggle to collect my thoughts as I cram notebooks into my backpack.

Q:  What are a Stegosaurus's dermal plates attached to? 

A: The skin, not the skeleton.

Q: Where is the gift shop?

A: Around the corner. Look for the waving Tyrannosaurus.

Frantic whispers dart around the hallway.  Ms. Brown has changed her Biology syllabus- a feat that hasn't been accomplished in the past five years.

Jeremy Smith stops by my locker as I try to locate a wayward pen. "It's natural selection now."

"Pardon?"

"Instead of slicing frogs, we're studying natural selection. Do you think it was-" He is absolutely frantic.

"No," I say firmly. "It wasn't you. Trisha Williams' parents wouldn't let her near a dead frog, even if it had a cash prize inside."

Jeremy snorts. "See you in class."

"Okay."

I frown. Are we technically friends? I'm not an easy person to be friends with. I have a part-time job, sarcastic tendencies, and mild introversion. I don't have time for boys with sharp edges. I make a better lab partner, even if I did stage an intervention yesterday.

I find the purple pen wedged under my locker door.

Trisha Williams does look oddly relieved in third-period Biology. It's a nice change from what I assumed was her permanent expression of disgust. Ms. Brown stands at the front of the room, looking lost without a scalpel or beaker to hold onto.

"I know some of you really wanted to further examine the digestive system," she begins, and I barely suppress a laugh.

Jeremy glares at me from across the lab table. He's utterly engrossed in the lesson. I'm puzzled- this is essentially the same ground we covered in elementary school, with a few more technical terms thrown in. He raises his hand.

"If natural selection makes sure that only the strongest species survive, how are we still here?"

Ms. Brown twitches. "We adapted."

"Wouldn't that technically be cheating natural selection?"

"I guess you could look at it that way, Jeremy." Ms. Brown squirms. She clearly wishes she were slicing frogs.

We halfheartedly copy a few definitions on the board before the bell rings.

"That's all for today!" Mrs. Brown calls. She's already vanished to the equipment room.

Jeremy plucks a brown paper bag from inside his satchel. "Janice?"

"Yeah?"

"Why don't you ever eat lunch?"

"I do, just not on school grounds," I mutter.

"What?"

"I'm in the work-study program!" I say a little too brightly.

"Oh," Jeremy says. "Where do you work?"

"The natural history museum," I say. Then, before I can stop my traitor tongue: "Want to come along?"

 

The museum is almost deserted. Tina files her nails behind the info desk, waiting for me to take over the shift.

"You brought someone with you today," she simpers. "Isn't that nice."

"Quite," I snap. The door whispers shut behind her.

"That was nice," Jeremy says, a perfect imitation of Tina's monotone.

I smirk. "Just hope my dad doesn't show up."

"That bad?"

"Not really. He just asks all the weird questions."

"Do you get a lot of those?" Jeremy asks. He can't stop staring at the fake dinosaur skeleton.

"Most of them just ask where the restroom-"

A staccato burst of snare drums erupts from behind the fossil display. "I get knocked down, but I get up again/ You're never gonna keep me down-"

"Dad, you're busted!" I yell. "Finish looking at the new specimens and come out with your hands up!"

Jeremy snorts.

"He's the only person on Earth who would have Tubthumping as his ringtone," I sigh. "Dad loves visiting me at work, since I'm allegedly supposed to have all the answers."

"I bet that gets annoying after a while," Jeremy says between bites of his sandwich.

"At first, I was terrified," I say. "I was convinced he was asking difficult questions just to humiliate me."

"I know the feeling," Jeremy says dryly, crumpling his brown paper bag.

"Then I noticed that questions from actual patrons didn't seem all that hard to answer. I guess, in a weird Dad way, he wanted to make sure I did well. That's why he keeps checking up on me."

Jeremy looks thoughtful. "Thanks for lunch," he says. "It's 12:30, so I'd better get to study hall."

"Sure. Let me know if you need anything."

"Okay," he says. He waves as he turns the corner.

"What was that all about?" Dad says.

"Before you ask, Triassic comes before Jurassic. I think I made a friend."

"Your first one!" Dad crows. "Congratulations!"

"Smartass." I punch him on the shoulder and get ready for work.

* * *

Thanks to Garrett Charles for today's photo!