Everywhere that stupid backpack, at his feet during class, in his lap at the cafeteria, worn forward as he shuffles down the hallways alone. Faded orange, tattered, the black Sharpie drawing of a tiger head on the front pocket amateurish, “Eye of the Tiger” written in white cursive underneath. Everyone makes fun of it, of him, and for today’s fetal pig dissection, the most dreaded day of the year in ninth grade Biology, of course we end up paired together. I glare at Amy and Jenna who laugh when Ms. Patterson calls our names, scrunching up my nose at the situation and because the classroom smells of rubber and chemicals.
The pig’s flesh is yellow and hard, not the pink I’d imagined. It’s on its back, twine around each leg pulling it wide open. Breathing through my mouth, I push the blade down through the skin then muscle, switching to scissors to cut through the rib cage, exposing the organs, all pale and dead looking, but then there’s the heart, a warm pink with red arteries splayed across it like a river with tributaries. I’m wondering if that’s what ours look like too, when Oliver leans forward, his elbow brushing my arm as he points to the pig’s chest cavity. That’s where it lives, he whispers, the eye of the tiger. Wow, he’s obsessed, I think. He keeps going. It’s a power, he offers, in a way that sounds like a question, as though he’s pitching the concept to me. Not everyone’s got it, he says, but you do. I look up from the pig, scan Oliver’s face, the black hair above his lip long and soft. I swallow hard as Mrs. Patterson arrives with her clipboard, dismissing us for the day after we identify everything correctly.
I wait until Oliver’s grabbed his backpack and gone before heading out myself, waving to Amy and Jenna on my way out. Keeping a safe distance between us, I stick behind him as he makes his way down the hallway then out the blue metal door which slams behind us, quickening my pace to catch up before finally reaching out to graze the tiger’s whiskers, warm and electric beneath my fingertips. See you tomorrow, Oliver says without ever looking back, the orange bag rising and falling with his every step like a beacon.
