Formaldehyde prickles the inside of my nose as we snip and slice silently, identifying the organs and drawing them on our lab diagrams. I’ve never thought of Adriana as particularly smart—maybe because of her obsession with makeup and clothes, or the way she always trotted around at Raleigh’s heels—but I realize now there’s no reason to assume she’s stupid. In fact, maybe the surgical precision she once used to dismantle my ego should’ve prepared me for her skill at cutting up dead animals. “Wow, look how big the liver is,” she says. “Yeah.” I’ve been thinking the same thing. At first, I thought the liver was the stomach, but the stomach is much smaller than I’d expected. We exchange a few more remarks about frog anatomy. At one point I study her face, wondering what’s going on behind the frosting of blush and mascara and lip gloss. I wish I knew why she used to get such joy from helping Raleigh tear me apart, how she could’ve liked the taste of that poison in her mouth.
