At my side Vee Sky said, "This is exactly why the school outlaws camera phones. Pictures of this in the eZine would be all the evidence I'd need to get the board of education to ax biology. And then we'd have this hour to do something productive-like receive one-on-one tutoring from cute upper-class guys."

"Why, Vee," I said, "I could've sworn you've been looking forward to this unit all semester."

Vee lowered her lashes and smiled wickedly. "This class isn't going to teach me anything I don't already know."

"Vee? As in virgin?"

"Not so loud." She winked just as the bell rang, sending us both to our seats, which were side by side 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 varsity basketball coach, and we all knew it.

"It may not have occurred to you kids that sex is more than a fifteen-minute trip to the backseat of a car. It's science. And what is science?"

'Boring," some kid in the back of the room called out.

"The only class I'm failing," said another.

Coach's eyes tracked down the front row, stopping at me. "Nora?"

"The study of something," I said.

He walked over and jabbed his index finger on the table in front of me. "What else?"

"Knowledge gained through experimentation and observation." Lovely. I sounded like I was auditioning for the audiobook of our text.

"In your own words."

I touched the tip of my tongue to my upper lip and tried for a synonym. "Science is an investigation." It sounded like a question.

"Science is an investigation," Coach said, sanding his hands together. "Science requires us to transform into spies."

Put that way, science almost sounded fun. But I'd been in Coach's class long enough not to get my hopes up.