Holly Black (40 page)

This is how we learn. Indirectly. We can’t observe them, so we observe what they left behind, and even though they left behind a lot, it’s never enough. Never. So we keep looking. We never stop. Because it matters. It’s
important
. They’re extinct, yes, but they still have so much to teach us, if only we’d listen and learn.

I looked around me at the swarm of kids in the hallway. I felt so small in that moment. I knew I was the only one thinking anything even remotely related to dinosaurs or history or science. I was alone.

And I felt like that lizard, the one being hounded by the young T. rexes. Just little lizard me, slithering along on my belly and along comes a bunch of big, bad dinosaurs and they’re going to take their time to eat me. They’re in no hurry. You know why? Because I’m just a little lizard. I’m nothing. Less than nothing.

And I don’t want that.

I had gym with Andi three days a week. I tried to be nice to her. I wanted her to like me. Maybe then I could learn how to be like her.

I thought about it this way: I knew the names of more than a hundred species of dinosaurs. I knew the order of the periods and epochs. I spent hours reading Gould and Barsbold and Bakker. I tried to understand both sides of the debate: warm-blooded or cold? Feathers or not? I taught myself how to
draw
, for God’s sake, endlessly tracing bone patterns out of books, sitting in the museum for hours on end, sketching the fossils on display there. I sat in the backyard for entire
weekends
, chipping away at different kinds of rocks with three different hammers, testing them for the proper weight and hardness of steel. (A paleontologist’s hammer is her most important tool—too heavy and you get tired using it too soon. Too light and it won’t do you any good. Too soft and it’ll fragment and poke your eye out. These things
matter
.)

I lived in eternal frustration. I didn’t get it. I knew all of these things! I figured them out, sometimes on my own.

So why couldn’t I figure out the qualities in Andi that attracted Jamie? Why couldn’t I mimic them, improve on them? I was smart. This was one more science problem, a biology test set in real life.

Maybe that’s crazy. But I couldn’t help myself. I was desperate. I clung to the fantasy that—somehow—I could break up Jamie and Andi and yet be friends with Andi and make everyone happy all at once. There was no direct evidence that such a thing would work, but you know what? There’s no conclusive evidence as to
exactly
what made the dinosaurs extinct, either. Maybe it was a comet hitting the earth. Maybe it was disease. There’s a recent theory that bugs killed the dinosaurs. Tiny, insignificant insects. They weakened the dinosaurs enough that environmental factors were able to wipe them out.

Was that it? Maybe. We don’t know. But we know it was
something
because they’re definitely dead.

So maybe there
was
some way to live out my fantasy. Maybe I just hadn’t figured it out yet.

But I had to. It was killing me.

I never knew that being in love was a physical thing. I never knew your body reacted. Like when I saw Jamie and my stomach felt like someone had tied lines to it and pulled it in ten directions at once. Or the way I became suddenly aware of myself, of my body, when I sat across the aisle from him in bio—the way I felt my hair and my eyelashes and my lips and my nose and every motion of my body as I breathed, hyper-conscious in every way.

But it didn’t matter. Because one day it all became impossible.

That day was the worst day of my life. My own personal extinction-level event, right in the halls of high school.

I was leaving gym, following close to Andi. I did that whenever I could. Watching her. Listening. Trying to learn. Doing my research, like a good scientist.

But then, suddenly, Andi turned around, as if she’d forgotten something. Maybe she had. I don’t know. All I know is this: The worst thing that could possibly happen, happened.

She bumped into me. Hard.

I dropped everything I was holding. Including my bio notebook.

Which fell, fluttering like a wounded bird, to the floor.

And landed spread open.

The reproductions of Jamie’s tattoo.

That tattoo. Over and over and over again. Meticulous. Precise. Because that’s the only way I knew how to draw.

I prayed that Andi wouldn’t notice it. But her eyes dipped down.

I prayed that she wouldn’t realize what it was.

Fat chance. Like I said—precise. It couldn’t be anything
but
Jamie’s tattoo.

Before she could say anything, I started babbling. I just couldn’t stop myself. I was terrified and embarrassed and strangely giddy all at once.

“Please don’t say anything. Andi. Please. Please. It’s nothing. It’s really nothing. It doesn’t mean…I would never try to take him away from you, really. Never.”

Her eyes got wide and then she laughed. She
laughed
.

“Are you
serious
? Do you think I’m afraid of
that
? He doesn’t give a shit about you. He needs you following him around like he needs a hole in his head.”

“Actually, um, that can be useful.” Oh my God! What on
earth
? Where was that coming from? “The theropods had holes in their skulls to make their heads more lightweight.”
Shut up, Katie!
I begged myself
. Shut up!

But I couldn’t stop myself. I was on autopilot. It was like my brain and my mouth became disconnected and my mouth just kept on going.

“It’s something of an evolutionary advantage for a large predator to have at least one hole in its head, as a way of reducing drag when?—”

“Hey!” she snapped. Her eyes scrunched and her brows came together and her mouth twisted into a scowl. Andi was suddenly the one thing I never thought she could be—ugly. It shocked me into silence. “Shut your little prissy, geeky mouth and listen to me, okay?

“Look, Dino Girl. There’s, like, a natural order to things, okay? It’s the way the world works. And girls like you do not get to go with guys like Jamie, okay? Especially when the guy is already with a girl like
me
. Do you get it? Did that get through your little lizard head?”

Dinosaurs aren’t lizards! I wanted to shout. Just like spiders aren’t insects or rabbits aren’t rodents, you stupid piece of coprolite!

But I said—I shouted—nothing. I just stood there, pinned, frozen by her anger.

“Do you
get
me, Dino Girl?”

I thought about that lizard in the picture book. And wouldn’t it just shock the living hell out of those T. rexes if it suddenly stood on up on its hind legs and roared and bit one of their heads off?

Impossible, of course. A physiological impossibility.

But I wasn’t a lizard. I was a human being.

And yet…

And yet I stood there. And I said and I did nothing.

“I asked you a question, lizard brain!”

“I understand.” My voice didn’t sound like my own. It sounded like a very small girl who has just learned how to speak and is being punished by her parents.

Andi turned away, stepping on my notebook. She left an imprint of her shoe there, destroying two of my sketches. A pathway for the modern dominant girlosaur. What would a future paleontologist make of it?

I was proud of myself: I managed to scoop up my stuff and make it to the girls’ bathroom before I burst into tears. I thought about the girl Sooz had told me about, the one Andi made cry in the bathroom for an hour. All she had done was make fun of her. Me? She had destroyed my soul. How long would I be in there?

Why did she have to be so mean? Why? All I wanted was a kiss. All I wanted was for a boy to like me. A special boy.

I locked the door to a stall in the corner and sat down, bringing my knees up to my chest. No one else was there, so I cried and cried and cried, but I don’t think it would have mattered. I don’t think I could have held it in even if the entire school had been sitting out there.

She was mean. Yes. But the worst part was that she was
honest
.

Like she said, he wouldn’t like me. He would never love me. I was just a geeky girl who knew too much about dinosaurs.

No threat to her. Just a little lizard. The most pathetic example of prey—not even worth the time for a predator to hunt, much less eat.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the bathroom. I just couldn’t make myself leave. And when I left at the end of the day, I felt like everyone knew. Like Andi had texted everyone in school and sent instant messages and e-mails and then put up a Web page, just to make sure: “DINO GIRL LOVES MY BOYFRIEND! ISN’T THAT
CUTE
PATHETIC?”

Mom and Dad could tell something was wrong when I got home. I told them I had really bad cramps. They didn’t believe me. I’ve always been a lousy liar.

But I stuck to my story anyway and went to bed early and lay there, replaying those horrible moments in my mind over and over.

I fell asleep praying for a sudden Ice Age that would just make all of us extinct.

The next day, I went to school prepared for the worst. I somehow anticipated posters of my face throughout the school, with the word “LOSER!” plastered over them in big fonts.

But no one said anything. No one did anything. No one even looked at me funny.

Andi hadn’t told anyone. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought. Sure, I’d blown any chance of being friends with Andi, but at least no one would be making fun…. And maybe I could get past it. Maybe someday it would be the kind of thing Andi and I would laugh about.
Remember the time you tried to steal my boyfriend and I was mean to you?

But then came biology. I panicked. Jamie. What if she told
Jamie
?

Somehow, that had been the furthest thing from my mind. I had been so concerned with Andi that I couldn’t even make the leap to her telling Jamie about my crush on him.

Jamie sauntered into bio just before the bell.

My breath went out of me, entirely gone. I couldn’t find any more. I was in a vacuum.

He sat down.

He was wearing a long-sleeve shirt, but he had the sleeves rolled up so that I could see the bottom of his tattoo.