Beauty of the Broken by Tawni Waters

Author:Tawni Waters [Waters, Tawni]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, Social Issues, Homosexuality, Physical & Emotional Abuse, Love & Romance
ISBN: 9781481407090
Google: 6-j-ngEACAAJ
Amazon: 1481407090
Barnesnoble: 1481407090
Goodreads: 20759532
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2014-09-29T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

AFTER HENRY TELLS ME THAT Xylia loves me, I’m too excited to eat anything for about a week. He’s a psychic, after all. If he says Xylia loves me, she loves me. I imagine all the different ways we might say “I love you.” Maybe we’ll write it in letters. Maybe we’ll say it over pizza, watching some movie from the sixties about giant, people-eating ants. Maybe we’ll be . . . Oh, who knows? The point is, any minute now she may tell me she loves me, and that keeps me too occupied to eat anything.

Of course there may be other reasons for my lack of appetite. Science class, for one. Mr. Farley titled this month’s science section “The Timeless Beauty of Dissection.” He gets a thrill out of cutting up dead things with his sharp silver knife. Frogs. Birds. Sheep. As far as he’s concerned, slicing and dicing are the ultimate peek holes into the mind of God. And Mr. Farley is a man of science. Anyone can see that by looking at his glasses thick as ice on a February pond.

“I wish we could afford for everyone to have their own crawdad,” he apologized on Monday. “But I’m afraid our school just doesn’t have that kind of budget.” Then he dissected a crawdad in front of the class and had us all stand in line to take a look inside.

“I almost threw up,” I told Xylia as we were walking home from school that day. I didn’t have detention. I could’ve taken the bus, but Xylia and me decided we’d rather walk.

“Maybe you’re less scientifically inclined than the average person,” she told me, grabbing my hand. “Artists often are. Next time, try thinking of something pretty.”

So on Tuesday, when Mr. Farley cut up a frog in front of the class, I looked out the window and thought about the pretty blue wildflowers growing down by the river. On Thursday, when he cut up a cat, I thought about the little tadpoles about to lose their tails. And the next Monday, when he cut up a sheep, I almost felt like I was there by the water, wiggling my toes in the gooshy, sweet-smelling mud. Still, the smell of formaldehyde in the classroom was so strong, I could never escape completely.

Today though, as I enter the classroom, I don’t smell formaldehyde. A little puff of relief escapes my lips until Mr. Farley says, “Take your seats. We’re going to have a slide show.”

I slump into my desk. Mr. Farley has a gift for digging up the most disgusting slide shows known to man. Last month we saw a slide show about diseases of the foot. I had no idea how many funguses and molds could grow underneath a person’s toenails. But today it’s even worse. Mr. Farley turns on the projector, and there’s a picture of a naked dead guy sprawled on a metal table. He’s so white, it looks like he’s made out of porcelain. My throat tightens.

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