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with me.”
    I don’t know why she casts those blue flecks of doubt at me but she does.
    â€œSerious, Miss W. I have an alibi. Check with the AP.”
    I slide down in my seat. The metal bottom is cold so I shimmy it warm and pull out my colored pens and my Biology notebook. I take the scenic route through pages of diagrams in my fully color-coordinated notebook. Apple green, baby blue, maroon, hot pink, naranja for thediagrams, Bic black for the info. Soft brown for the first diagram, the monkey-to-man page. (Can’t show that to Mami—it upsets her.) Apple greens, deep greens for the plant world. Maroons, hot pinks, and dark blue for the molecules. Get back, Picassa ! I air-kiss a perfect water molecule, wet smack.
    Me? Settle down? Am I disturbing things?
    â€œSorry, Miss Womack.” The pages flapping, the chair legs rocking, all mess with her teaching flow. She gets really bothered when she’s interrupted so I quickly find the right spot in my notebook. A blank page, ready for more Cell World.
    I write, Subject: Polypeptides and Proteins , then Today’s Aim: Forming Bonds . Dang! Miss Womack has the full diagram up already. Five minutes with AP Shelton cost me a choice of greens, blues, naranja (which sounds better, orange or naranja ? Naranja , right? Prettier). No color coordinating. Just go for it. Catch up. Dang, Miss Womack talks fast.
    I lean toward Eduardo’s paper to see what’s been said so far. I’m his leafy plant, leaning to his open notebook like it’s the warm, gold sun. Eduardo leans away, digging the plant biology. He inches his notebook to the right, coaxing, Trina, lean closer, my way. Closer. We both think, Anything for a peek . Only, I want the cell words, he wantsmore Trina. I smile but Eduardo fakes being undercover.
    Doesn’t matter how old they are—fifty-five or fifteen. They can be so shy. I completely make his day.
    Word for word, I copy everything on Eduardo’s page. What they are, what they mean, and what they do. Whatever I don’t know I’ll look up later. For now, I’m done with Eduardo and flip my lovely locks as I face front. Eduardo can live on what I just gave him until the end of semester.
    I still want to make my page pretty. I want to get the diagram as good as I can. So what if I can’t coordinate like I want to. I can fix it up later.
    With the maroon, I draw the big bean, the nucleus. Blue spaghetti strands wrapped with naranja , looping like a jump rope in full swing, the wrapping and twining. Bic black for transcription, translation—what?—no matter. I’ll catch it later.
    I giggle when I get to the ribosome. What? You can’t see what she has on the board? I think I’m giggling to myself but—
    â€œ Trina .”
    Again. “Sorry, miss.”
    Okay, Trina. Chill.
    I mean to listen and write but I can’t keep still. I peek over at Eduardo’s diagram. Then over to Nilda, on myleft, but Nilda is giving me back a glare, so whatever. I don’t dare turn to Krystal, behind me. Miss Womack is bothered enough as it is. Between Eduardo and Al’liah, I’m not the only one to see Miss Womack has drawn a lopsided, goose-bumped boy sac under the bean. The DNA ribbon runs between the big one and the small one but that doesn’t disguise a thing. I draw my boy sacs like Miss Womack’s, the upper one bigger than the lower. I laugh to myself. Ding, dong, dang, boy. How’s it hanging?
    â€œProblem, Trina?”
    I can’t believe everyone holds their faces together. Don’t they want to bust out?
    â€œNothing, miss. I’m just drawing.” I give her innocence. Nothing but innocence. What?
    Miss Womack revs up. She talks really fast, yo! Her words race together but you hear each one crisp and clear. So fast, so crisp and clear, I want to dance to the quickness. It’s like a jam. The peptide jam. Then a polypeptide jam. With the polypeptide bond.