Jessica Thorne is just a regular tenth grader in the city of Coldwater. She was leading a perfectly normal life. That is, until she meets a certain blue-eyed, black-haired boy in her class that just seems to turn her entire life upside down. Ever si...
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I walked into bio class and my jaw fell open. To the left of the chalkboard on the teachers desk was a Barbie doll, with Ken at her side. They'd been forced to link arms and were naked except for artificial leaves placed in a few choice locations. Scribbled above their heads in thick pink chalk was the words:
WELCOME TO HUMAN REPRODUCTION (SEX)
At my side, my best friend, Lana sky said, "This is exactly why the school doesn't allow camera phones. Pictures of this in the school newspaper would be all the evidence I'd need to get the board of education to disapprove biology. And then we'd have this hour to do something useful—like receive one-on-one tutoring from cute upperclass guys."
"Why, Lana," I said, "I could've sworn you've been looking forward to this unit all semester."
Lana lowered her lashes and smiled wickedly. "This class isn't going to teach me anything I don't already know."
"Lana, just because you slept with Jason doesn't m-"
"Not so loud." She winked just as the bell rang, sending us both to our seats, which were next to each other at our shared table.
Coach McConaughy grabbed the whistle swinging from a chain around his neck and blew it. "Seats, team!" Coach considered teaching tenth grade biology a side assignment to his job as a basketball coach, and we all knew it.
"It may not have occurred to you kids that sex is more than a thirty minute trip to the backseat of a car.
It's science. And what is science?"
"Boring," a girl named Samantha Waters in the back of the room called out.
"The only class I'm failing," said a boy by the name of Brad Thompson said.
Coach's eyes tracked down the front row, stopping at me. "Jessica?"
"The study of something," I said.
He walked over and slammed his palm down on the table in front of me. "What else is it?"
"Knowledge gained through experimentation and observation." It sounded like I was auditioning for the woman that voiced the CD at the back of our text books.
"In your own words."
I touched the tip of my tongue to my upper lip and tried for a synonym. "Science is an investigation." The way I said it made it sound like a question.
"Science is an investigation," Coach said, clasping his hands together. "Science requires us to turn into spies."
Put that way, science almost sounded fun. But I'd been in Coach's class long enough to learn to never get your hopes in his class.
"Good sneaking takes practice," he continued.
"So does sex," came another back-of-the-room comment from Samantha. We all tried not to laugh while Coach pointed a warning finger at her.
