Mailbox: A Scattershot Novel of Racing, Dares and Danger, Occasional Nakedness, and Faith. Chapter 1.

Mailbox: Chapter 1, Knothole in the Treehouse

"Only connect..." -E.M. Forster

In fact, here's what that comes from:

"Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no more." -E.M. Forster, Howard's End

That's not a typo for Foster. It's Edward Morgan Forster with an "r."

MAILBOX: A Scattershot Novel of Racing, Dares and Danger, Occasional Nakedness, and Faith by Nancy Freund, Gobreau Press, 2015, Chapter One: Knothole in the Treehouse

I'd never have been in the dark-dungeon tree house behind the church if the public school teachers hadn't gone on strike. Not that I'm blaming those teachers or those kids in there or the kids who left or anyone else. No one else was to blame. When you get right down to it, people make their own choices about whether to go into a terrible place or not, and that includes me.

I was in second grade. A kid can't just not go to school, so my parents changed my brother Chris and me to a private one. We had to take a test with the principal to be sure we were smart enough, and luckily we both were. I had never had an out-loud test before that. I got every vocabulary word right except "agown" which turned out not to be the word she meant. She told my mom she was surprised I didn't know "agown," even as she was telling her I was very bright. I would still say I don't know the word "agown," but of course that would be obnoxious. With every other word, she only said the word - not "a" or "the" - so how was I supposed to know she meant just gown, as in a lady's fancy dress? Obviously I know the word gown. I should have gotten 100%! But no matter how smart a person is, there can always be silly unfair things that make you miss your hundred. My mom says there are also always little things you get right when you didn't really know them, but you took an educated guess. It all balances out in the end, that's how life works. She also says, "Get over it, Sandy. Life isn't fair."

At recess when I first switched schools, some kids crammed into a kind of circle around me in the dark-dungeon tree house, all crowded and jostling, and they were asking, "What are you?"

"Nothing."

They stared at me in the dim light. I didn't know all their names yet.

"She's lying." Mark Martinez has a gruff voice, like a grown man with a sore throat, and he wears Toughskins jeans. "No one's nothing."

"Yes, they are. I'm nothing," I said.

When a certain kid asks you a question, you can tell sometimes no matter how you answer it, they want to hit you. It didn't take me long to figure out Mark Martinez always wants to hit everybody, but in the dark-dungeon tree house, they all seemed like they wanted to hit me. All except Camille. It's a good idea to have at least one good friend with you if you decide to go into a terrible place.

The teachers can't see in the dark part, underneath the tower jungle gym unless they come over and hunch down, which they never do. It smells like moss in there and pee. I don't know why I even went in. Recess was easier at my old school. It was on a big fenced-in slab of asphalt with cracks and weeds and old hopscotch markings, and one time a dead possum that was really dead and not just playing dead. You didn't have scary little places to make decisions about going inside.

"You can't be nothing. What are you? What are your parents?"

"Nothing."

"Maybe she's Catholic."