“You’re cra-cra-cra-crazy,” Tom said, and I realized he was scared, since he stuttered more than usual. I was still holding the Luke Skywalker action figure above my head, ready to throw it upstream against the current. From the dense forest stretching on both sides of the river came a cry that sounded like a warning. It sounded like a crow’s caw. But nothing stopped me, neither Toms nor crows – I wanted to see if Luke Skywalker could swim. Who was now crossing the air. The spring sun had dipped down toward the treetops, where leaves had sprouted and occasionally the light sparkled on the plastic figure spinning slowly. Luke hit the water’s surface with a small splash – anyway, he couldn’t fly. We didn’t see Luke, only the meandering, changing surface of the river with its high level from the melted ice, which made me think of a thick clamp, an anaconda folding and unfolding over us.

I had moved in with my relatives in this little dump last fall right after my fourteenth birthday and had no idea what kids in places like Ballantine do to avoid dying of boredom. But when Tom told me that now in the sp-s-spring the river was scary and dangerous and that he had been strictly forbidden at home to go near it, I thought that at least this was a place to start. I didn’t have much trouble convincing Tom, since he was like me: friendless and a member of the outcast caste in class. Earlier today, during a break, Fatso explained the caste thing to me, but he said I was in the piranha caste and then I thought of those fish that look like they have saw blades for teeth and tear all the flesh off a bull in minutes, and it seemed like a very comfortable and carefree caste to me.