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to be happy and do whatever they want; so how come so many of them have got such lousy jobs and such depressing lives? I mean, take a look at most of the adults around you every day. Would you want to grow up to be like them?
    Anyway, back to Attila the Hundle. The door to his office is slightly open, so I walk in and sit in the hot seat. He is standing at the window with his back to me, looking out at the schoolyard.
    Without turning, he’s like, “Go back out and knock.”
    I’m like, “Sorry, sir, but the door was open. I thought —”
    â€œGo back out and knock.”
    I get up, march outside and knock on the door. “Come.”
    I shuffle back in, put the textbook and envelopeon his desk blotter and stand waiting. He keeps me standing there for ages.
    I’m thinking he’s got a heart like a plum stone, small and dry and hard.
    Then, finally, “It is always polite to knock, boy!” Cold as ice.
    I admit he scares me but I’m not about to let him see it.
    â€œSit.”
    I sit. He doesn’t turn round, just stands looking out the window, arms folded. My legs are jerking, I’m so nervous.
    He finally turns from the window, strides over to his desk and sits down. Looks at me coldly through rimless glasses. He’s got those deep-set kind of eyes that make you think you’re looking at them through a dark tunnel.
    â€œWhat’s this?” Picks up the textbook.
    I shrug. It’s the same kind of shrug Lance Armstrong gives when he’s being interviewed after a day of racing in the Tour de France and the TV reporters ask him what he thinks his chances are of keeping his
maillot jaune
the next day.
    Attila the Hundle opens the envelope and readsthe note. Then he looks at the damaged pages in the textbook.
    â€œYou admit you mutilated this book?”
    I nod, though I think “mutilated” is exaggerating the damage a bit.
    â€œSpeak up, boy!”
    He waits with tight lips. “Yes, sir.”
    It’s like we just moved into another ice age it’s so cold in here.
    He pushes the open book toward me so I can see again my sinful ways. He says, “Tell me why you vandalized an expensive school textbook with these distasteful markings.”
    I look. I don’t see anything distasteful, except maybe the tomato splotch. There’s a couple of crudely drawn bicycles in the empty space between chapters, and around the margins of the two pages there’s about twenty screaming heads, like the one in the famous painting I like so much —
The Scream
. You know the one — the woman on the bridge screaming, her hands pressed to the sides of her head? Painted by a feller named Eddie Munch? I’ve got a poster of
The Scream
I brung with me from Dublin.I got it when Ma was sick the first time, about five years ago. It’s on the wall of my room next to my poster of Lance Armstrong.
    I’ve been drawing little screaming heads like the one in the painting ever since Da was laid off from the Dublin gasworks and he and Ma told us we were leaving Dublin and going off to join Aunt Maeve and Crazy Uncle Rufus out in Canada where we would all be better off.
    Personally, I think we were better off where we were, in Dublin. Maybe the worry of the move and Da trying to find a job helped to make Ma sick again.
    Attila the Hundle is glaring at me, waiting for an answer.
    There is no answer so I say nothing.
    He’s like, “Well?” Dripping cold.
    The temperature dips even more. Icicles start to form on the edge of Attila the Hundle’s desk. It’s deadly in here.
    I’m like, “Sir, look, I’m sorry —”
    â€œSorry is hardly good enough. You destroy a perfectly good textbook and all you can come up with is ‘I’m sorry.’”
    â€œI’ll pay for the book.”
    â€œAnd tell me why you were having detention with Mrs. Pickles.”
    â€œHomework.”
    â€œSpeak up,