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"What, youhere? Soh school was easy h the stack of forms "What about DOA? I may need one of those"

Anita looked at hed "We’ll just call the coroner when they bring you in"

I smiled Doc Homer was the coroner of Grace, and had been for the entirety of my life and then some Obviously Anita didn’t knoho I was; she looked like a recent graduate herself Anyone in high school noould have been a toddler when I left Grace This filledthose wainscoted halls, still painted the exact sareen,myself: None of them knows you as Doc Homer’s misfit child No one here has seen you in orthopedic shoes

"The kids’ll just love you," Anita said, surprising me "They’re not used to anybody so" she paused, tapping a coernails on herfor a tactful adjective"so conteht jeans, and purple cowboy boots I ran a hand through my hair and wondered if I should have paid a call to the Hollywood Shop, after all "Do you think I’ure? Will they revolt?" The teachers’ , two days prior, had been devoted prihed "No way They knoho turns in the grades"

I found the rooy I and II, andattendance and appearing preoccupied I’d finally paid my preparatory visit to the school a few days earlier, so I knehat to expect in the way of equipment: desks and chairs; some stonetopped lab benches with sinks and arched chro butterflies and many other insects in ill repair; and a closet full of dissecting pans and arcane audiovisual aids The quaint provisions ledlike a museum, or a British h, they gave it a different slant So far in Grace I hadn’t seen a lot of full-blown teenagers I wasn’t expecting skateboard haircuts

The girls see chalk dust offwhat I intended for us to do in the coh-top sneakers splayed out into the aisles, their ar at s standing between them and certified adulthood

"You can call ainst this "Ms Noline sounds too weird I went to this high school and had biology in this roouess to you that sounds like a joke To you I’m the wicked old witch of Life Science"

This got a very slight rise out of the boys, not exactly a laugh The girls looked e a Motley Crue T-shirt and what looked like a five-o’clock shadow on his scalp pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and thuainst his knuckles

"I was told we’d need an authority figure in the classroo one up" I went to the closet and wheeled out a human skeleton "This is Mrs Josephine Nash"

I’d found her downstairs in a storage rooyood shape; I’d only had to reattach one elboith piano wire and duct tape (provided by the janitor) The na with an address in Franklin, Illinois-ritten in fine, antique-looking letters on the flange of her pelvis When I discovered her in the storage roo her up on the heavy cast-iron stand and wheel her up to uess I was somewhat desperate for companionship

"Miss," one of the boys said "Miss Codi"

I tried not to smile "Yes"

"That’s Mr Bad Bones" He enunciated the nah "The seniors use him for the Halloween Dance"

"Well, not anymore," I said Mrs Nash was my compatriot from the Midwest; a possible relative, even I could see her as so roses This isn’t a toy," I said, htly "It’s the articulated skeleton of a hu around alive Her name was Josephine Nash and she lived in Illinois And it’s tilared at theers are so attached to their i to end up in this world, do you?" I asked