even though I was part of the cake. Mother laughed when I told her that—she thought it was the silliest thing she’d ever heard. But at the same time she looked kind of sad and lost, as if she knew exactly what I meant and just didn’t want to admit that being the baking soda wasn’t a whole lot of fun.
I wondered what would happen if I tried to swim the Lake. It seemed as if I could do it, if I really tried, if I just kept going instead of turning back when I got tired. “Don’t go past second sandbar alone,” Mother always warned. “A boy from Riverside got run over by an outboard between sandbars.” But I wasn’t afraid. I knew my limits; I knew when to turn back, when I had just enough energy left to get back to safety. Each time I tried, I got closer and closer to third sandbar—I could feel the water growing colder as the Lake floor dipped deeply, then growing warmer again as I neared third. I’m close, I’d think and take a deep breath and drop myself straight down, like an anchor, to see if my upraised hands would feel air while my toes wriggled on the slick rocks. But it was always over my hands, too deep to continue, so I’d turn back.
“I wonder if Julius Caesar had a miserable childhood,” I asked Goob, and she climbed into my lap. I suppose he did, what with his epileptic fits and all. His parents must have been beside themselves every time he flopped down on the floor and started writhing around like a hooked fish. “I just don’t know what we’re going to do about Julie,” his mother must have moaned, pulling out her hair and rending her toga. “I can’t control him!” “I don’t know what gets into you, young man,” his father probably said. “If you don’t shape up we’ll have to send you to Gladiator School.”
I had copied all the information from the encyclopedia but I didn’t know what to do with it. There were certain things that weren’t very heroic about Julius; for instance, he was big on pillage and plunder and in Gaul he captured a village and then cut off everybody’s hands so they couldn’t raise arms against him. I thought that was kind of drastic, even for barbarians.
I looked down at my notebook, not knowing what to say. It didn’t really matter; I was a delinquent, not a dumbhead, and my grade didn’t even count. But everything I did had to be perfect or Margaret would have a fit. She went crazy if I so much as got an A—. She’d run out in the hall and start scratching my arms until she drew blood, to punish me for not getting it right. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she’d say, scratching like mad, and Mr. Blake called my parents and told them there was something wrong with me. “Nonsense,” Daddy said, “she’s just competitive. It’s a good quality to have in this world. And look at it this way, at least she doesn’t scratch anyone else.”
My problem was I couldn’t concentrate. All I had to do was take the facts from the encyclopedia and tell about Julius Caesar and why I thought he was admirable, and that was that, a cinch. But every time I tried to think about JuliusCaesar, my mind would drift off—I’d start thinking about swimming across to Canada or being the first woman governor of Michigan or catching the Pervert or marrying Rocky Colavito or something. Something that would redeem me, so I could come back to North Bay and not be hated. I liked to think of the future because it was the only hope I had.
“This is the happiest time of your life,” Mother always said, and I’d want to climb up on the roof and jump off. If this was as good as it was getting, I might as well get it over with.
“Suicide is selfish,” she said when I threatened to hang myself from the ceiling fan in the sunroom. “What about all the people left behind?”
“What about them?” I asked. “Maybe if they cared in the first place, the person wouldn’t want to kill himself.”
Mother said I was mean, wanting to make people suffer their whole