“I can’t believe I have to miss Pig Day,” my twin brother Jeremy complained. He picked at the white medical tape on the back of his hand. The machine next to his bed whirred as it dispensed another drop of clear medicine into the tube attached to his arm. I shrugged. “It’s just a dead pig,” I said, downplaying my own excitement about the dissection planned for class that day. Pig Day was a rite of passage for all the fourth graders in our school, the first time that many of us would ever touch—or even see—a real live dead…

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