Didn’t Waste Any Time in High School

Laura Tansley
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Emma Curtis was so smart—thought the hole in the sheep heart was a cause of death, not a way for the butcher to rack a display. The rest of Biology, satisfied by her humiliation when the lab technician laughed at her blunder, put their fingers through ventricles ‘til they tore. Broken, they slid from trays into bin liners, piling on top of each other in lonely splatters.
Mr. Jackson let her stay behind to wipe down desks, clean the board, eat her lunch; the smell of her tuna paste sandwiches mingled with bleach and blood, Impulse and spray starch, Armani and marker pens, acne cured by Germolene and methane gas leaking from brittle Bunsen burner tubes; the fumes frizzed her hair, opened up her veins. So when she touched his arm and felt the hairs there, the hardness, like no Year Eight boy had, she knew she was different, smarter.

Laura Tansley’s critical and creative writing has appeared in a variety of places including Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, Gutter, Versal (with Amy Mackelden), Kenyon Review Online (with Micaela Maftei), and New Writing Scotland (forthcoming 2014). She lives and works in Glasgow.