Chapter 12
The Measure Of A Girl
First class of the day; biology. In lieu of the conventional classroom setting, this took place in a large laboratory filled with measuring equipment, test tubes, caged mice for running experiments, and various chemical substances spread throughout the room. Some relatively harmless, some unknown, and some that had no business being in a school with children present.
The biology teacher, Professor Jacob Eldridge, was on top of being a handsomely paid teacher, a renowned scientific researcher. He was an eccentric, schizophrenic man, and enjoyed conducting various tests on animals, such as feeding foreign chemicals to mice and then determining what he’d just fed them after the fact (though whether or not this was done because he was schizophrenic or regardless of it remains to be seen). Once he offered to one of his guinea mice a sip of some strange green liquid, which by the fact that it soon grew more than twice its size, turned out to be an experimental growth hormone. On another occasion, he’d fed some golden brown liquid to another mouse, and by judging its behavior, determined that it was beer. One time, he fed some dark purple substance that a fellow scientist once gave him. The creature’s I.Q skyrocketed to the point of being a scientific breakthrough. On the next day, when the professor was eager to experiment on it some more, the cage lock had been opened, and the mouse was missing.
Alex went to the furthest station in the lab room, where Amy hung her mouth disgustedly over metal trays of dead frogs. Ben, standing right next to her, seemed only too eager to participate in what the professor had in mind for class.
“Alex,” Amy said. “You are my lab partner. I’m not touching this thing with a stick.”
“Don’t be such a girl Amy. It’s going to be wicked.”
Ben rubbed his hands together, excitement flowing inside him. Alex furrowed her brows upon seeing the boy’s reaction. With Ben anxious to carve out a frog’s intestines, she had to wonder if humans born with souls were really that much different from those without them.
“Good morning class,” came Professor Jacob Eldridge, more commonly referred to by Alex and her classmates alike as professor. He wore a long white lab coat over a collar shirt, a tie with red and black checkered patterns, and wire framed glasses along his ears.
The professor began to take roll count when he saw some bratty students in the back playing with his bottles of chemicals. The young delinquents senselessly poured and mixed compounds into test tubes, holding their heads in awe when they saw smoke wafting steadily out.
“Boys,” the professor called.
They ignored.
With a fit, the professor snatched away the smoking tube. The boys faced him then, first with anger, then with guilt.
“Let me guess,” the professor studied the test tube, swirled it in his hands. “A mixture of hydrogen peroxide and potassium permanganate.”
“Actually,” one of the delinquent students cut in.
But the professor had him penned. Feeling proud of himself, he added, “You children are too easy.” He then proceeded to pour the liquid substance into the sink. The delinquent boy didn’t seem to think this was a good idea. As such, neither did the professor once the chemicals began cascading out.
The liquid substance burned through the sink and straight down the ensuing pipes. Bits of smoke came out, accompanied with the sizzling sound of something frying.
“Hmm,” observed the professor, curious and dreadfully embarrassed at the same time. He leaned his eyes towards the hole in the sink. He backed away.
“I believe it would be for the best if none of us mentioned this to the headmasters.”
The class agreed in silence.
“Excellent,” the professor said. “I see that most of us are here today. That is excellent. For our purposes today, we will be dissecting a frog, as you can see before you. The purpose here, is so that we will understand more about the anatomy of a frog, study its organs, and the motors that make it run. Hopefully, if we observe closely enough, we will find that we have more in common with these small, wild creatures than we might at first think. Now, ideally, I would have preferred that we dissect a human being. Unfortunately,” and with that he began to gnash his teeth so that what he would say next would sound less than complimentary. “Our Elsinore headmasters have it in their heads that such things are inappropriate. So,” he sighed. “We will instead be working on frogs. However, I still expect you to study as much as you can about the human organs as you will be tested on the subject next week. Wait a minute. I’ll be in Kilimanjaro next week. We’d better make the test tomorrow instead.”
A simultaneous groan erupted.
“Now now. We have no time for dilly-dallying. Get on with your assignment. Students pick up your scalpels. Raise them up so I know that every lab partner has one.”
Alex raised hers at the exact same moment as everybody else.
“Good. Now I want you to start cutting open the frog’s stomach nice and slow. Nice and slow.”