Two classes later, I walk into Advanced Biology consumed with worry about what Mr. Crouse will say to my parents, but also thinking about Matt Cooper, who I’ve had a crush on all through high school and who sits across the lab table from me in Advanced Bio. I trudge through my first three classes so I can sit across the lab table from Matt Cooper and pretend that maybe he sees me for more than the neighborhood farm girl that I am.
Matt isn’t super tall, sort of 5’11”-ish, but he’s tan all year round, has vibrant green eyes that pretty much glow, and has biceps that bulge even when he’s writing his lab report. Besides being awesome to look at, his family owns the farm right behind ours, so we’ve farmed together, ridden the bus together, and played on the slip-and-slide together since we were old enough to walk. This might explain why he no longer wants to have anything to do with me and why he probably thinks that I’m a complete moron.
I get to eavesdrop on him all through Advanced Bio while he and Alan Beckius, quarterback not quite extraordinaire, talk football. It’s the highlight of my day. Besides, my best friend Alicia is in A.B. too.
So I walk into class thinking about getting in trouble with my parents while simultaneously entertaining the idea of being near Matt who is already there and in huddle mode with Alan, when I notice that Alicia is decked out in dissect gear. I had completely forgotten that today was dissection day, so I grab my apron, flip my protective eye-gear band over my ponytail, and pull on my gloves. As I’m doing this, in walks Juliet. She walks past Matt and Alan and with her freakishly long fingernails, trails her hand up Matt’s back. Matt shivers and gives her his baby-boy grin, which is rather infrequently revealed, and I about throw up. She tosses her auburn hair over her shoulder and it whisks right over Alan’s face. I’m pretty sure he gets a few strands lodged in his teeth, but all he does is smile at Juliet while she puts her fingernails, that can’t possibly be real, on his arm.
I’m pretty sure Juliet’s boobs aren’t real either, but that’s a little harder to prove.
“Just wait. When she puts on her gloves for the dissection, she’ll poke holes in the top of each plastic finger and then get frog guts all over her hands,” I say to Alicia.
Alicia grimaces but doesn’t say anything. I take a good look at her for the first time since coming to class. She’s trying really hard not to look me in the eye.
“What’s up with you?” I ask.
Alicia is giving me the “You’re about to blow” look, although I can’t think of a single reason why I should blow, when I see Matt looking at me out of the corners of his eyes. Something is definitely going on. I examine the situation and realize that both of them are crouched over small plastic sacks, which I had assumed were filled with frozen frog that we will soon be dissecting, and then it dawns on me. The bags are large for frogs. Alicia is trying to gnaw her way into the bag with a pair of children’s scissors, which are about as sharp as a couple of chopsticks, when I pull the bag away from her. She sighs, throws the scissors down on the lab table and leans back on her stool. I look at the bag.
And then I blow.
I storm to the back of the room where Mr. Peterson’s desk is and prepare to corner him. He, I’m afraid, has seen me coming and moves surprisingly fast for a short bald guy over forty. I chase him down.
“How could you,” I say as I follow him around the lab tables. He’s pushing his glasses up on his nose and is headed to the front of the room.
“The bell is about to ring, Samantha,” he says to me. “Time to take your seat.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”
“Samantha, you’re over-reacting. This is merely a more advanced dissection. You guys are ready for this.”
“But PIGS?” I’m in front of him now. Even though he’s pretty short, I’m still shorter than he is. I try to extend beyond 5’2” by standing on my tiptoes, and I glare at him. “You know how I feel about pigs, Mr. Peterson.”
“Yes, Samantha. I’m pretty sure we all know how you feel about pigs.”
I can hear murmurs of agreement from all corners of the room, but I refuse to get distracted.
“Then why would you do this to me? The fifteen pigs you have collected for our amateur dissection were, at one time, worth thousands of dollars. And if these pigs had been allowed to grow to maturation, they might have been worth thousands more if they’d born piglets. Farmers in this community go bankrupt every day and yet you wantonly throw away fifteen pigs for reasons so petty, that I’m unable to see any sustainable benefits.” I’m walking back and forth now, waving my hands, not even trying to control them, and Mr. Peterson is attempting to get a word in, but I’m not done.
“As Pork Queen of this county, it is my duty to stand up for the farmer.” I continue: “To support farming rights and to make sure we are using pigs in a manner that benefits our community. Dissecting them in Advanced Biology is not beneficial.”
“I beg to disagree…” Mr. Peterson says.
“You said that we would be dissecting frogs. I want my frog, and until I…” At this point in my filibuster, I feel someone’s arm hooked through mine. I am swung around and led back to my lab table, where a hand gestures towards my lab stool. Alicia has her forehead on the lab table and is muttering prayers and curse words under her breath. My mouth is still wide open as I glare at Matt Cooper, who is brushing off the sleeve of his sweatshirt as if linking my arm in his was as filthy as getting frog guts under fingernails.
“Well…” I say.
He shakes his head and puts a finger to his lips in the universal “sssh” sign.
I glance over at the next table where Juliet, Stephanie, and Paulette are frowning and whispering.
I hear Juliet say, “Pork Queen,” and roll her eyes.
I jump off my stool and head over to their table.
“You think that being Pork Queen is such a joke,” I say to them, standing beside Juliet who can look me in the eye, even when she’s sitting, and finish my rant. “The Pork Queen does more for this community than the Prom Queen ever could or would. You guys may look good and you may all be Prom Queen nominees, but who cares when you don’t do anything that benefits anyone.”
Juliet stands up and towers over me. Her black-lined eyes are narrow and squinty and she’s pointing her extra-sharp fingernails right at my chest, which certainly doesn’t compare to hers as far as boobs go, but is, at least, real.
“You think we don’t do anything that benefits anyone? Each person on the dance team dedicates 20 hours of time to community service each semester. We hold bake sales, do fundraisers, and sing at the old people’s home. We have to maintain a 3.0 GPA or we’re kicked off the dance team. How does that not benefit the community?”
I hear “yeah’s,” from Stephanie and Paulette. Mr. Peterson pounds on the front table with his fist and announces that the bell has rung. Would we please take our seats?
“Twenty hours a semester?” I sneer up into Juliet’s face. “I donate twenty hours a week putting together the state fair, raising pigs, helping my dad on the farm, organizing the pig auctions in town, cleaning up the community center…do you want me to go on?”
I hear a couple of noes pretty close at hand and am quite sure one of them comes from Matt.
I feel an arm linked through mine again. I am swung around and guided back to my lab stool.
“Stop doing that,” I say to him, although I can’t help but like the feeling of his arm hooked through mine.
“We get the point,” Matt whispers in my ear. If I hadn’t been so angry, I probably would have enjoyed the sensation of his lips against my ear, but I am still completely and utterly pissed off. Had I not, just this morning, been trying to save two little piglets? Had I not sacrificed my sleeping time and only been able to save one of the two?
And then I look at Alicia. She has her hands over her ears and is pretending that she is somewhere else, someplace where her best friend isn’t ranting and raving – and where Samantha Joy Terrance, Pork Queen elect, is able to control herself and doesn’t go into one of her fits. I can feel my ears turning red and I glance around the room. Most of the other students have half-smiles on their faces. They’ve witnessed my rants before and most are now continuing with their lab duties, which is to dissect the baby pigs and chart their innards. Mr. Peterson is passing out dissection instructions and I’m pretty sure I see him pat Matt on the back and thank him.
Once again, I have spoken without thinking and not listened to Mr. Peterson, who probably had a very good reason for collecting pigs for this dissection. The only person who ever calls me on it or cares when I humiliate myself is Alicia, because the way people view me directly impacts the way they view her. It is here, at school, that I constantly embarrass myself – at home, I fit right in.
I pull the frozen pig out of the bag and wish my ears would stop burning. I know that for the next 24 hours I will feel completely guilty and will be super nice to everyone. I will try not to say more than three words in any conversation. Then, after those 24 hours, I will be back to my same old self, someone with an uncontrollable temper and a really big mouth. Why can’t I be more like Alicia? She always thinks before she speaks. In fact, she thinks about what she says so much that she usually only speaks about ten words during the day.
I concentrate on slicing through the belly of the baby pig, while trying not to think of the live piglet that I held in my arms earlier today, and Alicia pulls her hands away from her ears.
“Sorry, Alicia,” I mutter.
She grunts.
I get to work, pretending that I didn’t say anything and that Alicia isn’t leaning away from me as if I have the chicken pox and she might catch it. As I’m pulling aside the organs of the pig, trying to find the kidney and liver, I glance up now and then to watch Matt. Alan won’t touch the pig. He just sits back, yawning, and lets his lab partner do all the work. Matt, with his big hands and huge biceps, delicately pulls aside the organs and systematically locates all the body parts.
At the lab table beside ours, Juliet, Paulette and Stephanie are playing rock, paper, scissors to decide who will dissect the pig. They should have split up and chosen lab partners who actually care about animals. Why are they in Advanced Bio anyway? Maybe it’s a dance team requirement.
Alicia and I are done seven minutes before anyone else. When I turn in my lab paper, Mr. Peterson asks me to sit down by his desk. I’ve known Mr. Peterson for a really long time. I’ve had him all four years of high school from Earth Science to Biology and from Chemistry to Advanced Biology. He knows me pretty well by now and I know him pretty well too. He’s a good guy. He’s patient, tells terrible puns that only he thinks are funny, and has been a supporter of the pork community all of his life.
“Samantha Joy,” he says, looking at me over the tops of his glasses.
“I know,” I say, staring down at my flipflops. “I didn’t mean to go off on you.”
“I understand,” he says, “but one of these days, your temper is going to get you in trouble.”
Like that’s news? I think about the time Hannah Verbrugge, school bully, gave me a black eye because I told her to pick on someone her own size when she’d cornered Alicia on the playground and was taunting her about being home-schooled. Of course Alicia is at least four inches taller than Hannah, so when Hannah gave me the black eye, she was picking on someone her own size. I hadn’t thought that one through properly.
Or the time that Matt Cooper threw me into the duck pond behind his house when I yelled at him that he should be proud to be a pig farmer. That farmers are the backbone of this country and to be embarrassed to be a farmer was equivalent to being un-American. I sloshed in my tennis shoes the half a mile it took me to get home. He never even apologized. Of course, neither did I.
My temper has gotten me in trouble so many times, I could go on for days. And through it all, Alicia has been and still is my best friend. Brigita, or Brigie, is still my other best friend, and Timmy Raines still has a crush on me.
But Matt Cooper is a farmer’s kid. And the reason Matt Cooper hangs out with Alan Beckius and the rest of the football team is because he can’t stand the sight of me and doesn’t want to have anything to do with farming.
“I’d like you to talk to your father about the pig dissections we performed today.” Mr. Peterson is still looking at me over the tops of his glasses like perhaps I’m not listening. Just then the bell rings, so I shrug and run off to find Alicia. I’m her ride home.
This piece is an excerpt from Chris’ latest book The Pork Queen, available here.
Learn more about Chris on our Contributors’ Page.
(Photo: Kentucky Country Day/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
- THE PARLOR: Dissection Day by Chris Struyk-Bonn - May 6, 2023