"No," I said, flushing. "I'll go ahead."
I was showing off, just a little, I think. I'd already done this lab, and I knew what I was looking for. It should be easy. I snapped the first slide into place under the microscope and adjusted it quickly to the 40X objective. I studied the slide briefly, spending the time alone fantasizing about how smart Fredward would think I was, and how right he would be.
My assessment was confident. "Prophase," I breathed.
"Do you mind if I look?" he purred as I began to remove the slide. Do I mind? Fredward, if you only knew. His hand caught mine, to stop me, as he asked. His fingers were ice-cold, like he'd been holding them in a snowdrift before class. But that wasn't why I jerked my hand away so quickly. When he touched me, it stung my hand as if an electric current had passed through us, a static shock. What was he wearing under all that buckskin of his, fleece? Did he spend lunch shuffling his feet all over the rug? Was he a shuffler?
"I'm sorry," he mumbled, pulling his hand back immediately. However, he continued his impetuous reach for the microscope. I watched him, still staggered by the thought that he might actually be weird under all that beauty, breathing as he examined the slide for an even shorter time than I had.
"Prophase," he agreed, writing it neatly in the first space on our worksheet. He swiftly switched out the first slide for the second, and then glanced at it cursorily.
"Anaphase," he murmured, writing it down as he spoke.
Anaphase? Who was that, an ex of his? I kept my voice indifferent. "May I?"
He smirked and pushed the microscope to me.
I looked through the eyepiece eagerly, only to be disappointed by my mistake. Anaphase, the a small script on the slide read, is the stage of mitosis when chromosomes separate in a eukaryotic cell. I felt like an idiot. Dang it, he was right.
"Slide three?" I held out my hand without looking at him.
He handed it to me; it seemed like he was being careful not to touch my skin again.

46

Chapter 2

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