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They can keep nothing to themselves, isn’t that the truth?
    Benny Mason is absent. The morning drags. I’m in my house-plant mode, my vegetable state.
    In social studies I stare out the classroom window, my mind wandering, thinking of riding my bike and my job in the mall and the new cycling shoes I’m saving for.
    And thinking of Ma.
    Mrs. Pickles — the kids call her Dill Pickles — asks me to stay behind after class.
    â€œI wish to discuss your attendance,” she says.
    It’s the lunch hour. Mrs. Pickles talks as she walks about the room.
    â€œThe school year has hardly begun and you have been absent from my class twice already. I’ve talked with Mr. Bennett, your homeroom teacher. He tells me he’s had no notes from your parents explaining these absences, even though he has asked for them and left messages on your voice mail. You were, what, sick on those days?”
    â€œWell...” I start, but she carries on talking.
    â€œThat’s not all. You have handed in no homework. None. Not one assignment out of...” — she glances at her mark book —”...the three assigned so far on the course. What do you have to say about that?”
    â€œWell...” I start, but again she talks over me.
    â€œAnd I’m not at all happy with your behavior in class, staring out the window when you should be listening or working. Next Socials period you will sit here...” — she walks over to a desk at the front of the class and slaps one hand loudly on its top — “...where I can keep a closer eye on you.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    â€œAnd after school on Monday you will report to me for a detention class, during which you will begin to catch up on the missing work.”
    â€œI can’t come after school. I pick up my sister every day. She’s only eight, you see. I could come in the lunch hour instead if that’s all right.”
    She asks a bunch more questions and we argue back and forth and in the end she agrees that I come for a lunch hour detention on Monday.
    Some of the other teachers have started flagging me as a problem, too.
    So why am I skipping school?
    I never used to be like this, honest. It’s just that, as I said, I can’t get interested in school this year. It’s terrible pointless and unimportant to me right now.
    I mean, why waste precious time doing things you don’t like — school, for instance — so you’re supposed to have a better future? How do you know you’ll even have a future? We’re all going to die — like what happened to Ma, dying so soon when most people live to twice her age.
    Is that what Shakespeare means in
The Tempest
when he says we’ve got a
little
life? Does little mean our lives are short?
    Thinking about this kind of stuff could drive a feller barking mad.
    It might be different if I had friends. It’d give me something to look forward to instead of all this dreadful business with Sammy and Rebar and Benny Mason. I don’t want to be here in school at all.
    On the days Da is away from home, it’s easy to skip out, because nobody knows what I’m up to, not even Annie. Nobody’s home, you see, at our house.
    I’ve always got my key on a cord around my neck, so once I’ve taken Annie to school I’m free to returnto our own house and ride my truly grand Rocky Mountain Hammer bike I bought second-hand through the
Buy & Sell
before Ma started getting sick. Or if it’s raining I can sit around at home listening to music, watching telly or reading back copies of the bicycling magazine I borrowed from the school library, or I can take a nap in my own badger’s den, Ma’s closet upstairs.
    I’ve got the house to myself. No one knows I’m there. The universe goes along without me.
    If the school office or my teachers phone home about me and leave voice-mail messages, I erase them before Annie or Da can get a