9YOU MUSN’T GET the idea that school was a daily torment, even with Ferdinand on the loose. It wasn’t. Most of the time, what we really had to grapple with was the
steady humdrum of academic life. The yearly laboratory experiments and solving word problems and bake sales and the obligatory Saturday community service. Even Mr. Stevenson had to read The
Brothers Karamazov to us in different voices so we wouldn’t drop unconscious on our desks.
By the time I got to eleventh grade, I did have my own group of girl friends. I can’t remember when we started hanging out together, but when you spend years with the same group of people,
the days just melt into each other. You don’t really remember the first time you talked to each other or the first time you started eating lunch together. There w
