That’s true. For example the mowed head kid along the road. I hid behind a sycamore and watched him catch the yellow bus and I knew the bus was going to school because the Mean Aunt told me. Were we alike or not alike? Was he real or was I real? We both had like a ton of freckles and winter-grass kind of hair I mean yellowish nothing color but mine kept falling into my eyes and someone had driven over his head with a tractor. The Mean Aunt saw me behind the sycamore and said, Don’t worry about that kid, Perley. Trust me, Perley, you are the lucky one. But what’s the point of being the lucky one if all those other unlucky kids along the road have each other and you have no one and are skinny and small and can’t even have a chiseled wizard? The mowed head way looked pretty good. The mowed head way was to eat Twinkies and black cherry soda pop and to ride on a dirt bike which Mama L said was too dangerous. The mowed head way was to eat at the DQ on the road into town if there was a four-piece special, and then sit outside in the back of his uncle’s truck. And if there was a wasps’ nest in the mowed head house his dad sprayed it with WD-40 and he had a dad. Also he didn’t use a bow drill but poured gasoline onto his campfire. That’s toxic, said Mama K when I suggested it. Do you want to be toxic? she asked me, even though the answer was obviously hell yes. His dad burned a tire which turned all kinds of colors and his uncle was there with fireworks and his family would, it’s hard to say, just mix more. Like with other people. They knew good songs with music you could move your body to. I thought I could be like that. I watched every day from the woods, skillfully like a Wolfrider with ultimate stealth, but the mowed head kid didn’t see me and the mowed head kid didn’t invite me over. If someone doesn’t invite you over how do you get to go over? You have to go live with them. Or you have to go to school.

So I said, I want to go to school.