Not the End of the World Read Online Free PDF

trying to make me look bad in front of Mother.”
    So that was how I knew. And maybe she was right, maybe it would be better for her if I did just disappear into some ocean. But I still wasn’t going to have Amelia Earhart as a hero.

W HAT a mess. Here I was, stuck in summer school with all the delinquents and dumbheads, having to write a paper about some dead emperor I didn’t even like.
    I looked out at the Lake, at all the sailboats skimming by with their spinnakers billowing out like gigantic balloons, and I wished I could swim across the Lake, just jump into the cool, clear blue and swim and swim until I could no longer see our beach, no longer see the shoreline, until I could look back and see only a memory of North Bay.
    I would be the first person to do it—the first person ever to swim across a Great Lake! Even though I knew it was impossible—I’d never even made it past second sandbar—I thought I’d like to try it. What a glory it would be! I could be my own hero and everyone would admire me; my parents would be proud of me and I’d be forgiven. Well, if not forgiven, at least redeemed. “Oh!” they’d say when they saw me on television, exhausted but jubilant. “She wasn’t crazy, she was just special.”
    “What makes you think you’re so special?” Grandmother endlessly asked. “Who put you on that high horse?” “Just who do you think you are?” Mother would want to know, putting on her Grandmother voice. “You’re heading for a fall.” Even Daddy would get in on the act: “Don’t start thinking you’re special,” he’d warn, reminding me that the party I was having was paid for out of his pocket.
    But why wasn’t I supposed to think I was special? I didn’t get it. We were supposed to excel, and to excel is to be special, but if we weren’t supposed to want to be special, how then were we supposed to excel? “Goodness is its own reward,” Mother said, but what did that have to do with wanting to be special? Nothing happened when you were good; you became invisible, mute, you did what you were told and melted into everybody else and I hated that. I hated it more than getting kicked out of class for being “unruly,” hated it more than the hours I spent sitting on the filthy floor in that dark old hall, counting doorknobs and getting my skirt all grimy. I hated it more than I hated being yelled at; more than I hated having to spend three hours a week with a social worker; more than I hated being banished to my room. Being good meant being placid and there was something in me that just refused to follow along like a zombie.
    “You just do things to be different,” Mother said, but what was so wrong with that? I thought we were supposed to be special, and I guessed that was OK as long as you were special in the way they wanted you to be: if you were a Champion Speller or Miss Teenage America or something. But if you weren’t, watch out! They’d call you a Communist or a homo; they’d run you out of town, like poor Mr. Hilliard, who lost his job as County Clerk just because he spoke Russian. “He might be a spy!” everybody said, as if the Russians cared about who got married in North Bay. I knew Mr. Hilliardand he was a very nice man; whenever he’d see Goober and me out walking on the beach he’d invite us in and tell us stories about North Bay history. He lived in the last house on Beach Street, just before the coastguard property, which probably didn’t help his case much. Like maybe he was keeping track of how many times the lighthouse light went around in an hour or something strategic like that.
    It was dangerous to be different, at least if you were different in a way that wasn’t approved by the world. I wanted to be part of the world, but I didn’t want to get lost in it. I didn’t want to be an indistinguishable ingredient in some cake batter, all swirled around and mixed in with the rest; I wanted to be a raisin or a walnut, always keeping my own identity