Part 3 (1/2)

I track Brandon down.

He is under the bleachers in the park, smoking. I creep up quiet and stealthy like the Greats taught me.

”Brandon,” I say softly in his ear.

”Jesus f.u.c.king Christ!” Brandon screams, startling and dropping his cigarette. ”What'd you do that for?” he asks, stepping away from me and scrabbling for his cigarette. He picks it up and takes a long drag. ”Freak.”

”I'm not the one under bleachers smoking a cigarette that just fell in a pile of dog s.h.i.+t.” Brandon spits the cigarette out and looks down at where there isn't any dog s.h.i.+t. I laugh.

”b.i.t.c.h,” he says.

”Why'd you say that about me and him?” I ask, taking a step toward him. He backs away. ”It's not true,” I say, firm as I can.

He laughs this time. ”Sure it is. I saw you and Zach together.”

”There was nothing to see.”

”Right,” he says. ”So I hallucinated you running together in Central Park. Him picking you up and swinging you around and then”-Brandon pauses to lean toward me and lick his lips as loudly and grossly as he can-”definitely lots of tongue action.”

Now it's me backing away. ”Wasn't me,” I say, strong as before, but he knows I am lying and I know that he knows.

”Sure it was,” he says. ”There's no other girl on the planet that looks as much like a boy as you. Maybe Zach was secretly a f.a.g.”

”You're a d.i.c.k, Brandon.”

”Whatever.” He pulls a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket, lights one, and deliberately blows the smoke at my face. ”Need a new part-time boyfriend, do you? Now the old one's dead. I could volunteer. I don't mind slumming.”

”f.u.c.k you,” I say, stalking off, annoyed at how defeated I feel.

AFTER.

The only teacher who's okay is my biology teacher. Yayeko Shoji doesn't coat things in sugar. She explains what meat is and how it works. How we are all meat. How meat gets into the vegetables we eat. She doesn't modify her words for the vegetarians in the room.

Meat is cells.

Meat is flesh.

Meat is muscle.

Meat is 5 percent fat.

Meat is 20 percent protein.

Meat is 75 percent water.

Zach was meat. Meat decays.

”Yayeko,” I ask, ”how long before a body begins to rot?”

I can hear the sudden intake of air.

”Gross, Micah,” Brandon says.

”Do you have to answer that?” Sarah asks, her eyes filling with water again.

”Decay, decomposition, are natural processes,” Yayeko explains. ”The same basic things happen when anything dies: a flower, an ant, a dog, a human, anything.”

”But do we have to talk about it now?” Sarah asks, speaking more firmly than I've ever heard her before. Especially to a teacher.

Now is especially when I want to know. Now, with Zach in the morgue.

”I understand that you're all upset, but for some people understanding the processes involved can help with grief,” Yayeko says, and I find myself nodding. I am desperate to understand. ”We are all of us subject to the same laws of nature.”

”And of G.o.d,” Sarah says.

”The first thing that happens after death,” Yayeko says, ”is that blood and oxygen stop flowing through the body. Gravity causes the body's blood to drain from capillaries in the upper parts and to pool in the lower blood vessels. So that parts of the body seem pale-those upper surfaces-and parts seem dark.”

”What if you're already pale?” Tayshawn wants to know. The cla.s.s laughs but I'm not sure he meant to be funny.

”Pale is a relative term, Tayshawn,” Yayeko says. ”The lower parts of your body become darker than the upper parts.”

”What do you mean upper part, then?” he continues. ”Like your head?”

”It depends on how the body is positioned. If it's lying supine-on its back-then the blood pools there. In the heels and calves and b.u.t.tocks, the back, the back of the neck, the head. The face will be pale.”

Tayshawn nods to show he understands now. I wonder how they found Zach. Which parts of him were pale, which dark?

”Next, the cells cease aerobic respiration so they can't maintain normal muscle biochemistry. Which means what?”

Only two hands go up. Mine and Lucy O'Hara's.

”Lucy?”

”They stop making energy.”

”Out of what?”

”Glucose,” Lucy says. ”Oxygen.”

”Yes.” Yayeko continues, ”And when that stops, calcium ions leak into muscle cells, preventing muscle relaxation, which causes rigor mortis.”

”When the body goes all hard?” Tayshawn asks. There are more giggles, but he ignores them.

”Yes,” Yayeko says. ”The cells begin to die and can't fight off the bacteria, which causes the body to decompose and the muscles to become soft again. As soon as the body dies, flies are attracted to it. They start to lay eggs in open wounds and orifices. The eggs turn into maggots-”

”No,” Sarah says, holding her hand over her mouth and running from the room. Two girls get up and follow her. I'm also imagining maggots eating Zach. Maggots in his eyes, maggots between his toes, maggots all over him. Wriggling, feeding, tearing into his body. I have to concentrate to keep from joining the other girls in the bathroom.

On the way out of cla.s.s Brandon hisses at me. ”You're not normal,” he says.

Tell me something I don't know.