You are in your sixth-grade science class, and the frog in front of you is dead. It lies in a plastic tray, belly up, limbs splayed. Exposed.
Eric, your lab partner, prods the frog, though the teacher crossed her arms and said, Keep your hands off until I say so. Don’t touch anything until I say you can. He pinches the skin on its stomach, nails biting despite his plastic gloves. Something squelches. He laughs and jumps away. The corpse shifts, leaving a watery stain on the tray. You stare at the droplets as they quiver, the frog’s movement marked by the memory of its body.
Formaldehyde sears your nose. Sharpens in your skull like scalpels pressed to bone, sawing until they pierce your brain.
Over dinner, your mother asked if you were too young for dissections. If it was safe, if the teacher had taught you to cut without slicing your skin. She tapped her fork, wary of chemicals, blades, bodies that opened like a palm.
“Are you sure you want to go?”
You shrugged.
“Want to skip? I can write you a note.”
You poked your pasta, slicing the penne into pieces so small they disappeared into the pool of sauce. You thought about whispers, side-eyed looks. About being called “Frog Girl” for the next six years.
“No, I’ll go.”
Now, you roll “Frog Girl” over your tongue, vowels expanding in your mouth. There are worse names.
Eric secures the frog, forcing the pin through its knees like a stake between ribs, steel splintering sinew until it gives. He breaks its arms—too short to pin—with a rending twist. The crunch burrows in your skin, creeps along your nerves. You wince.
He glances up, eyes twitching across your face.
“You gonna help?”
You lift the scissors, cold metal digging into your fingers. They quiver. Eric sighs.
You press your fingers into the frog’s stomach and snip its skin. Liquid pools in pungent swamps beneath your hands. The frog slips, bloated and wet under cold-steeped gloves, preservatives flooding the air. The scissors stumble through tissue, the slide of metal dulled by flesh and fluid.
Sweat sours on your neck. Fingerprints from past students stain your goggles and sheath the room in grease. Your hand shakes.
Eric pushes you aside, slamming your hip into the desk.
“Whatever. I’ll do it.”
You blink.
“Just do the worksheet.”
He cuts too quickly, scissors tearing through the frog in jagged streaks. Its skin splits, bursting along ragged edges like overripe fruit. You imagine organs bursting under his hands, speared and pulped against a blade. You want to say slow down, but he’d sneer, ask why you can’t do it yourself if you’re so smart. So you say nothing. You write explanations of the dissection procedure, focusing on the pencil’s scratch against paper, on the gentle loops of letters that flow from your hands. You complete a diagram, labeling each cartoonish organ with care.
Eric extracts a tangle of fat bodies—long yellow strands beaded with glossy eggs. You write that the frog is a girl.
Across the room, Jackson and Paul have decapitated their frog, crushed her bones and unscrewed her skull. Jackson jabs his fingers in her mouth, prying it open and shut in a mockery of speech.
Bile burns your throat.
Paul speaks to the frog-puppet in a curdling falsetto, over-exaggeration stretching his features so wide you think they’ll split, eyes-nose-mouth shredded across the desk. Blood thrums your head and garbles his words, but the derisive lilt stings.
The teacher shouts for them to sit down and be quiet.
They do, but Jackson maneuvers the frog’s head beneath the desk, squeezing her face so her eyes bulge like clouded stones. Paul snorts.
Your headache strobes. Your stomach gathers in a knot that binds your organs and muscles, asphyxiates them, leaves them to rot. You barely hear the bell ring.
Even clean outside air on the walk home can’t quell the caustic burn from class. It festers like stagnant water, teeming with infection and insects that buzz between your ears in an endless drone.
You feel the familiar bristle of eyes and turn. Your neighbor Mr. Jones is mowing the lawn, sweat soaking his neck, gaze fixed on your chest. A grin twists across his face. He nods. His eyes glisten, small and dark behind finger-smudged glass.
You run a shower on the coldest setting and scrub until your skin rips raw. The shower door ices your back as you lean against it, plastic digging into your spine. You lather soap until it froths over your arms, your legs—obscures you in white. You spread your fingers, watch water pool in their webbing. The skin on your arms is bumpy. Slick. Amphibian.
–
Nova Wang is probably thinking about ghosts. Her writing appears in publications including Gigantic Sequins, Fractured Lit, and Up the Staircase Quarterly, and she tweets @novawangwrites.