Mathilda Savitch. Victor Lodato

       1

      I want to be awful. I want to do awful things and why not? Dull is dull is dull is my life. Like now, it’s night, not yet time for bed but too late to be outside, and the two of them reading reading reading with their eyes moving like the lights inside a copy machine. When I was helping put the dishes in the washer tonight, I broke a plate. I said sorry Ma it slipped. But it didn’t slip, that’s how I am sometimes, and I want to be worse.

      I’ve hurt things, the boys showed me this. Pulling legs off spiders and such. Kevin Ryder next door and his friends, they let me come into their fort. But that was years ago, I was a child, it didn’t matter if I was a boy or a girl. It would be against the law to go into their fort now I suppose. The law of my mother. Why don’t you stay home? she says. Be careful out there, every time I walk out the door. But is it just words I wonder, how much does she really care? Who is she really thinking about when she thinks about me? I have my suspicions. And anyway, do the boys even have a fort anymore? It was probably all destroyed a long time ago. It was a fort in the woods made from sticks and blankets and leaves. Things like that don’t last forever.

      And besides, now I know things about my body I didn’t know back then. It’s not the innocence of yesteryear, that’s for sure.

      Awful is easy if you make it your one and only. I pinch Luke sometimes. Luke is our dog. You can’t pinch all dogs, some will bite. But Luke is old and he’s a musher, he’s all about love love love and so he’d never bite you. I pet him for a few minutes all nice and cuddly and then all of a sudden I pinch him and he yelps and goes circling