you don’t have to go to school to do that, just go say hello, I’m sure they’ll love you as much as I do. Mama K said, Who cares about other kids? There’s more important things. I care about other kids, I said. I want to mix more. Mix more? said Mama L. Come here and give a cuddle and a nose kiss, and I said, No, and hid behind the sofa with the black snake who looked at me with silver eyes and who sent me this message, Stay true, Perley, stay true. The Mean Aunt said, What’s going to happen is that he’s going to be fixated on school the more you won’t let him go there. You should probably just let him go to school and get it out of his system. And Mama L said, I think that if Perley really wants to go to school it should be his decision. Mama K said, Of course you do, Lily. You always think that Perley should get whatever he wants. But he’s not going to school.
* * *
Mama L went down to enroll me and she stopped at the gas station on the way home to buy me school supplies which were a notebook and a pack of pencils but not the chiseled wizard even though I begged. Maybe for your birthday, Mike said. Maybe, Mama L said.
Then it was the first day, and I opened my eyes and looked through the crack in the wall to the light out in the woods, and I felt the snake at my belly uncoil. I sat up and the snake slid down into the wall. During breakfast Mama L cried, My Velvet Piglet, and Mama K sharpened my pencils with her whittling knife and she said, Oh, now you’re crying, Lily? Well, just remember I didn’t think he should go in the first place, and I said, Mama K? and she said, What, Perley? What is it now? And I knelt down as Strongbow would and I said, Don’t worry, I am prepared. You have trained me well. I will honor your training. I will return this evening and I will be ready to give you my report. She said, Get up. Let’s just hope your report is that you don’t want to go back to that horrible place, and she gave me my pencils. The Mean Aunt looked at the clock and said, If he’s going, he’d better go, and Mama K said, I can’t believe any son of mine wants, actually wants, to go to school, and Mama L lay on the sofa and wiped her eyes and the Mean Aunt took me by the hand and led me down to the bus stop so I wouldn’t miss the bus.
In my lunch box there was a jar of pemmican packed in tallow and there was a jar of milk and there was a can of sardines with the tab I could pull and Mama L had put a square of chocolate in there, too, even though Mama K didn’t know. The Mean Aunt marched me down the hill and pulled out some yarrow as she passed it. She chewed it furiously and gave me a fistful. Chew on this it has superpower, she said. It will shoot juice into your brain that will make you so brave. It’s like she didn’t even notice that I was already brave. I was going to school which is where the other kids were. So I pulled my hand out of the Mean Aunt’s hand just as we got to the roadside where the mowed head kid stood waiting for the bus. His eyes were crusty and he was eating something from a piece of cellophane with a cool animal on it in sunglasses. He looked at me real quick but then he looked away again and the yellow bus pulled up so that the sun went dark and I didn’t wave goodbye to the Mean Aunt. I threw back my shoulders and I walked to the door of the bus and then I turned to the Mean Aunt, and I put my fist to my heart the way that a Wolfrider would, a noble salute of undying gratitude and respect.
On the bus everyone was laughing, and I loved laughing. It was one of my favorite things to do so I started laughing, too, except then I thought maybe we weren’t laughing at the same thing exactly because the bus was