Imagine all of them staring at me with their mouths open wide.

For years after that, my classmates would whisper softly to me, "Gus, Gus, Gus," and look at me sweetly but not sweet at all.

That's not funny either, by the way.

If Gus weren't my best friend and also sort of lacking in friends himself, he would probably have stopped being my friend because he caught so much crap too.

That wasn't the only time Jerri suggested I re-engage. There are probably ten more incidents I could report through the years. But it's late (1:23 a.m.).

And after I'd re-engage and freak out because of re-engaging, Jerri always ended up having to keep me home from school for weeks at a time and had to hug me a lot and cook me grilled cheese sandwiches and say sorry over and over.

All that stopped.

I made myself stop freaking out so much starting a couple of years ago. I got tired of being the center of attention. I don't like attentiona"did not anywaya"and I got tired of being hugged, and I got tired of Jerri saying sorry to me. It's not like Jerri murdered Dad. Dad murdered Dad, right?

But I suppose my post-Regional dry-heaving put Jerri back in the mood.

Re-engage. Re-engage, donkey. I sure didn't like Jerri saying the word re-engage.

Two days after Tayraysa's call, I ate those bagels and regained some of my strength and sanity. I went back to school in time to turn in my English research report about what I want to be when I grow up (titled "Standup Comedy: Take My WifeaPlease") and to take my stupid finals and to bid fare thee well to the senior class full of honkies and poop-stinkers and, of course, to Gus, who was leaving.

"I'm sorry, Felton," Gus said as we exited Bluffton High on the last day of school, the sun beating down on our heads, our eyes squinty.

"You should be," I said as we walked toward the bike rack.

"I don't have any friends in Caracas, man," he grimaced, unlocking his bike.

"I don't have any friends in Suckville," I said as we pedaled away.

"What about Peter Yang?" he asked, now a block from the school.

"Something's gone amiss," I told him, a look of resignation on my face.

"At least Peter Yang has a driver's license," he said, nearing his turnoff.

"That's true," I agreed as he turned.

"We can Skype, dude," he shouted, biking away.

"Chapter over," I mumbled, heading toward home.

Bleak. Bleak. Bleak.

Summer. Summer. Summer.

CHAPTER 5: I MEAN, MAN! I USED TO LOVE SUMMER!.

I have very fond memories actually.

Every summer before this summer, we'd go camping at least once. For example, the summer after freshman year, Jerri took me and Andrew camping at Wyalusing State Park, right where the Wisconsin River cuts the state and hits the Mississippi. Where there are really high bluffs and huge trees and watery sand bars and little streams that look like mountain streams on TV flowing down the bluffs and ravines that cut through the forest and hiking trails right through it all. We spent two full days exploring.

Even though I hadn't hit my growth spurt and hadn't become stupid fast, I was already a jumper. I'd leap across ravines and Jerri would shout "Felton's a bobcat!" and Andrew, who apparently didn't think athletic prowess was bad for a young man at that time, would ask me to do it again because I looked so cool in flight.

At night, Jerri made campfires, and we roasted marshmallows, and we sat around and sang while she played guitar. She sang me "You Are My Sunshine" like twenty times, which I really liked, and all three of us sang "Rocky Mountain High" and "Country Road."

Jerri is a great singer. She sounds professional. "Love me some John Denver," she'd say. She's a good mom too. She's really been a good mom. Really. She took us camping every summer before this summer. And I've loved summer.

CHAPTER 6: BUT THIS SUMMER?.

It surely didn't start out so well.

So, I was down at the nursing home the other day, minding my own business, whenaThat might be a good way to begin a comedy routine, but it's total crap if it's an actual description of what you do every morning. Oh, yeah. I know a thing or two about nursing homes.

For example, you know what isn't pretty? Old ladies in their underwear. You know what I got to see lots of? Old ladies in their underwear.

In fact, this summer, I saw no fewer than ten thousand old ladies in their underwear. That's because one of my big stops on Gus's ridiculous paper route was a nursing home. Ridiculous. Lots of times when I ran through there, delivering the State Journal, the old ladies would shout "Get me out of here!" Oftentimes, the old ladies were wearing old lady robes or morning dresses or whatever, and the clothing wasn't tied right or it had slid down wrong, and I got to see their Old Lady Underwear with an Old Lady in it, which made me very sad.

What also made me sad was the very fact that nursing homes even exist because they're hot, stinky prisons for innocent old ladies who have lived too long (like that's a crime).

Not that all of them were old. One lady was actually sort of young. Whenever she saw me, her eyeballs popped out of her head, and she screamed and waved her arms and freaked out, apparently for good reason (more on that later if I can stay awake).

Through email, Gus told me to never look the inmates in the eyes, which was easy for him because of his hair wad. Not for me. My hair is curly and can't cover my eyes no matter how much I grow it and comb it down. (Boinga"the sound of my hair springing upward.) I biked so damn fast when I got out of that place. I would just want to run away and never go back but totally knew I'd be back the next day. Paper route! Jesus. Looked like a banner summer.

Poor Gus was unhappy too. He wrote that hanging with his grandma was like hanging at the nursing home all day, all summer long. Then he said it smelled like tacos in Caracas, but he hadn't yet found any tacos to eat. I answered back that I was bored and hot and tired, and I couldn't stop eating, and Jerri was being weird, and Andrew hadn't taken a shower since school got out.

We're losers was his reply. He also said, Tell Andrew he must clean himself.

CHAPTER 7: THEN SOMEONE MOVED INTO GUS'S HOUSE.

Like ten days after Gus left for Venezuela, the lights went back on, and someone in there ordered the newspaper, which meant I had to deliver a paper to Gus's house every day.

Aleah. But I didn't know that yet.

So I wasn't happy at all with this development. See, there's nothing fun about visiting your friend's house when he's not home because he's in Venezuela with his dying grandma and he sends emails about taco smells and says we're losers and his house just reminds you of how great it would be to go down to the rec room and sit down on one of the giant bean bag chairs they have down there and watch some movies and eat chips and shoot the bull and exchange some serious laughs instead of having to visit that house at the butt crack of dawn just to dump a newspaper in the screen door and then bike away to another fifteen houses that don't contain your friend, including a big house full of crazy old ladies who are really prison inmates.

Peter Yang's house is on the route too, but it was clear things weren't going well between us (although we hadn't talkeda"I mean, that's really it, we hadn't talked). Plus, his house smells like fish, so I don't like going in anyway.

The people who moved into Gus's house for the summer redecorated it immediately, which I felt was a gesture meant to rub my nose in the fact of Gus's absence.

The second morning I delivered the paper there, the curtains on the picture window were open, and I could see that all the photos that are usually above the couch had been replaced by a bunch of scary wood masks. Boo! I mean scary. Booo! So I stood out there gawking and terrified, thinking about all the pictures of the Venezuelan mountains that used to be there and what Gus must be seeing, which I wouldn't know because he couldn't get Skype to work on the computer he had in Caracas, and I already mentioned that his emails were so short at that time (they got longer by the time I didn't want to read them)a"when all of a sudden, the front door swung open and this black girl about my age was standing there in her white nightie or whatever, staring at me.

My jaw dropped. My eyeballs popped out of my head in total cartoon style. (Boing-oing-oinga"that's the sound of my eyeballs popping.) Okay, all over town, there are a lot of people who aren't exactly appropriately dressed when you're opening doors at the butt crack of dawn. "Oh, good morning, Mr. Schroeder. I can see your wang." Yeek. This girl, though, was much better to look at.

So when she opened the door? She and me, me and the black girl, we stared at each other, open-mouthed, silent: she at the door, me in the bushes in front of the picture window where I'd had my nose pressed to the glass; both of us poised to flee because I probably looked like a criminal and she was beautiful and not Gus. I couldn't breathe. Finally, she said, all out of breath, "What do you want?"

"Paperboy," I said.

"What?" she asked, standing straight, her fear receding.

"Paper," I said, tossing the newspaper I had in my hand onto the step in front of her. I nodded at her. She looked down at the paper, then back up at me. I couldn't breathe.

So I totally kicked it, quick twitch. I leapt to my bike and got the holy hell out of there. I looked over my shoulder as I pedaled away. She stood there staring at me, her mouth open.

God. Dork. And, oh, yes, I'd sprung like a hunted, retarded, highly athletic gazelle. Or donkey. Hee-haw! Idiot.

To show that I was not, even then, completely lacking an understanding of social appropriateness, I'll say this: Immediately (immediately), my escape caused in me a feeling of deep humiliation and remorse. The humiliation was so deep, I felt sicka"sick of myself. I kept repeating Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. in my head. "Why are you such an idiot?"

Have you ever noticed you can't get away from yourself? There is no way to get away from oneself. You're always there with you. And remember, I have a voice in my head that never shuts up. I delivered the papers to the rest of the houses hearing myself calling me an idiot in my head the whole way. Then I biked up to the nursing home hearing my own jerky voice say "Idiot. Idiot. Idiot." And by the time I got to the nursing home, I was so sick of being me that it was a relief to enter into it, into the prison, where I could hide from the shame of the real world. The inmates don't know or care. Maybe I could stay? Maybe I could get a room, watch TV, get fed Jell-O and oatmeal? Get sponge baths? Disappear?

Wrong. Not disappear because I would know where I am and be with me. And my voice would call me idiot, and I couldn't enjoy watching game shows and soap operas while lying in my robe because my voice would be talking to me. Plus, I am not an old lady in my underpants. I am me, and the rest of my terrible life would still be in front of me. I delivered papers still hearing the voice in my head talking. Why are you such an idiot?

There is no getting away from yourself, so it's highly important to get one's brain under control. That's a fact.

When I pulled up the drive to our house after the route, Jerri was out in the garden digging up weeds. I threw down my Schwinn Varsity, a bike I inherited from my dad (one of only a couple things Jerri let me keepa"this almost makes me cry, even now, because of what I did to it later), a bike he loved and I loved, tossed my paperboy bag aside, and then stomped over to her.

"Did you know some Africans moved into Gus's house?" I said.

"You shouldn't treat your bike like that, Felton."

"I said Africans!"

"Literally from Africa or do you mean African Americans?"

"I don't know. They have masks. I don't care. People, Jerri, people moved into Gus's house."

"Tayraysa said a poetry professor rented from them," Jerri told me, digging. "He's a summer appointment at the college."

"Oh, Jesus. They're gonna be there all summer?"

"During summer term surely."

"I don't feel good, Jerri."

Jerri continued to dig and work the soil like a peasant.

"Could you go and get me the compost pail, Felton?"

"Oh, man, I'm a fool."

I turned, walked, and entered the garage and then went into the house and into the basement, where I turned on the TV and went to sleep. Jerri woke me up some time later.

"Felton. Did you say you're a fool?"

"What? Go away."

"Gosh dang it. You are beginning to really frustrate me, you know that?"

"I'm sleeping here, Jerri."

"Stop it. Go do something. Get out into the world, Felton. You can't just lie around alla""

"I'm doing the ridiculous paper route, aren't I?"

"Ridiculous? Why can't you take a little pride in your work, Felton?"

"You take pride in being a crossing guard? Oh, that's dignified work, Jerri."

"I don't need to work. You know that, Felton. I don't work for money. I choose to work because you don't own your life unless you work for it," Jerri said, folding her arms across her chest.

"Well, I don't choose to work. But I do work. Isn't that slavery? Do slaves own their lives?"

Oops. Jerri didn't like that. She threw her arms out to the side and shook her head, mouth open, rolling her eyes around.

"I've heard this kind of crap before!" she shouted. "Look at you."

"What?" I'm telling you, incomprehensible!

"Look at you." Her eyes were all whacked out and red. "You are turning into such a little Gosh. Dang. Jerk!"

"No. I'm not."