By July, I stopped heeding the shrill tornado sirens and couldn’t be bothered to slap the fat mosquitoes drilling my neck behind my ears. There were pickles and mayonnaise on every sandwich, a dying wasp in every cup of Kool-Aid. I built a model rocket. It failed in flight. I sent away for a slingshot. It never came. On weekends, I went fishing with my father, hypnotized by the ripples around my bobber, and in the firefly evenings after supper I pitched rocks into the trees just to hear them go ripping through the leaves. I sat on a stump with a Playboy from a trash bin, rehearsing the party jokes, relishing the nipples. There was always the library, my mother said, and she brought me there at every excuse, but the books were in poor condition, missing pages, and the best ones, like A Wrinkle in Time and the Hardy Boys series, seemed to be permanently checked out. Instead I ran off to the woods to break an arm or sped away on my bike to gash a shin. In August there was always a week in bed, a stretch of seclusion, Tylenol and root beer.
What do You think about Lost In The Meritocracy (v5)?
