If Only You People Could Follow Directions: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page A

magic so much as I feel it, like all the plants and animals and rocks and things are thinking through me. Like I was born to do all the feeling for everything else. I also look really hard for any strange goings-on. Is that leaf moving on its own, or is it just the wind? And how many times have I seen that butterfly today? Should I follow her? My favorite book this year is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe . If I don’t read it every night I can’t sleep. I spend long hours curled up inside my closet, waiting for the door to open and the blackness of the regularworld to fade away. If I sit very still I can feel the cold curl around my ankles and I hold my breath and wait.
    Charlene’s parents have a water bed, which makes me think they must be very rich.
    “Welcome to the nineties,” she tells me, as if that explains everything.
    Before they locked the door to the bedroom, we would pretend their bed was an ocean and we were lost at sea with only one bag of Doritos to feed us until the pirates showed up, hauling us back to their island and loading our necks with heavy jewels from their treasure trove.
    “We have to take our shirts off. Pirates don’t wear shirts, only necklaces,” Charlene would say, so we’d throw our T-shirts off the island and wave our chests around, the necklaces swishing back and forth and clinking like diamonds.
    Now we play in Charlene’s room, which is exactly where my room is next door, but her walls are pink and mine are white and she has see-through curtains like a princess. In my room I have plastic makeup and books and wool sweaters and penny loafers. I have stickers for being a good girl and a smart girl and a quiet girl. I have rewards for staying in my room and rewards for being sad when something bad happens, like when Dad comes home with a missing tooth or the coffee table crashes against the wall. I have rewards for having a dad who drinks too much and a mommy who works all the time. I like when people are pleased with me. I like rewards. I like being hugged and smiled at and cooed over. I crawl into laps. Sometimes, I want to be held so badly I shake like a hooked fish.
    “You’re the girl and I’m the boy,” Charlene says.
    I’m sick of being the girl because I know it means Charlene is going to boss me around, but I don’t say anything because she’s ten now. Also, she reads chapter books, which I guess is the trade-off when you lose the magic. For instance, she can’t see fairies anymore, which is pretty sad because she’s only ten. Ten is a dangerous age.
    “Can I be the bartender this time?” I try.
    “Girls aren’t bartenders,” she says, and even though my mom is a girl and a bartender, I keep quiet.
    Charlene locks her bedroom door and pulls the see-through curtains closed. Outside, our little brothers are in the front yard pretending to be Ninja Turtles, and every ten minutes or so my brother will start to cry and her brother, Little Benny, will have to let him use his plastic sword or Eric will never shut up.
    “Cowabunga!” I hear Eric scream, whacking the sword against the side of the house.
    It’s July, which means the ice cream man will drive down our street after dinner and we’ll beg our parents for money and sometimes we’ll get it and sometimes we won’t. When we ask Charlene’s dad, he calls us mooches and tells us to get a job, but then he usually forks it over. His jeans pockets are always jingly with change, which is another reason I’m pretty sure they’re rich. That and the Nintendo.
    “Whaddya having, honey?” Charlene asks as I stroll up to her nightstand.
    “Hmm,” I say. “Tequila Sunrise?”
    This is the most grown-up drink we can think of, the drink her mom has sometimes while our dads drink cans of Budweiser. She takes her time pouring imaginary liquids into the Mickey Mouse mug that we always use for this purpose. She stirs with the handle of her hairbrush and then takes a sip, closing her eyes and moving her mouth