My braid thumped my backpack and my backpack joggled against my back as I raced down the hill at the edge of town. I stayed off Route 20, where Dad might spot me on his way to work, or Mom, or Grandpa, coming home from breakfast at the Dutch Treat. The road was already giving off that tarry smell. School would be an oven. I'd never know. My friends thought I'd lost my mind. I didn't care. Even the goldenrod in the ditch, which I'd always hated because it meant the end of summer, suddenly looked beautiful to me. What was it Dimitri had called goldenrod at camp? Something magical-sounding.
         "We know, you loved it, you were inspired, you had a crush on the nature counselor, who loved your mind and called you Katya." I could still hear Lindsey popping her gum on the bus this morning. "It was camp. Everyone loves camp. You're not supposed to love school. You just do it." She wiped off the eyeliner she'd messed up when the bus took a corner and drew on a new line. "So can we move on, please?"
         "To Tyler, maybe?" Jessie said. "Remember, Tyler loves your mind."
        "Uh . . ." Lindsey raised her eyebrow. "Mind?"
        Alyssa touched my shoulder. "It's okay, Kaity. If you seriously don't want to be with him, you'll just walk over, give him the hat ─"
        "No, she won't!" Jessie looked horrified. "She spent all last year trying to get him! Oooh! Linds, don't look now! Josh is staring at you!"
        They'd been my friends since preschool: Jessie, with her black-jelly-bean eyes and brace-y grin, and hair that even my mom's strongest hair tamer couldn't tame; Alyssa, shaped all wrong to be cool, but still trying; and sometimes-really-nice Lindsey.
         "Ooh, hey, Kaity." Jessie tapped my arm as we passed the school secretary's house.  "Think Pinchbeck's retired yet?"
        "Or died?" Lindsey picked up on it. 
        "In Westenburg's arms!" Jessie puffed out her cheeks, tucked her chin, and began reciting my last year's claim to fame: "'The Toes Knows.  Or, The Secret Life of Harold Westenburg. I may look like your basic elderly, bald principal. But I have a dark secret. I was born with twelve toes. Six on each foot. And they're not small. Ever since I was a little tyke my mother has had to knit me special ─"
        "Stop!" I put my hands over my ears.
        "We're just trying to cheer you up," Alyssa said.
         "By reminding me what a jerk I was?"
        "It was funny!"
        "I know," I said. And Jessie did a great Westenburg. "But . . ."
         "'So what, you say?'" Jessie went on reciting. "'Unless you go barefoot, nobody will know. Well, I can no longer live a lie. I must marry Ms. Pinchbeck, who I've been having a passionate affair with for twenty years, finally take my socks off when we have marital relations.'" She switched to an old lady voice. "'Dearest Harold, I don't care if you have twelve toes on each foot! It just gives me more to suck. I have a little secret, too, darling. That hair you love to run your fingers through? I hang it in the closet every night. Yours till death do us part, Aida Pinchbeck.'"
        "Omigod, and when Danny read it over the P.A?" Lindsey said. "That was soooo hilarious! And your Roy drawing, Kaity? What do you think? Think Mr. Z had Roy removed?"
        "Oh no!" Jessie cried. "Then what'll happen to Roy's little hat?"
        Roy being our last year's English teacher's wart ─ a wart so big it stuck up through his hair. I was the one who'd named it. I'd also told everyone it could pick up signals from space and that we should knit it a hat. I couldn't believe I'd been so mean. I liked Mr. Zingarelli. He was the best teacher in the school. And one of the few who liked me.  I wished I was back home, under the covers.
        No, I didn't. I wanted to be in my tent, at camp, with Rosie, reading. Or doing a butterfly count with my counselor, Dimitri, listening to him call out "Great spangled fritillary! Silvery checkerspot!"  in his crazy Russian accent. At camp there was no need for me to start trouble. At camp I didn't worry if I was good enough or too good, not perfect enough or too perfect for anyone to like me. At camp even my name was different.
        "I didn't have a crush on Dimitri," I said. "And I never said he loved my mind."
        I had "an interesting mind," is what he'd said. And that he loved my discovery journal, and that I had to keep writing in it when I got home. Which, of course, I hadn't.
        But if I did.  . . I could already see myself sending it to him at grad school, and him sending it back with notes like, "Katya: this is brilliant."
        "Yo! Earth to Kaity. We're here! And there's Tyler." Lindsey handed me her lip gloss.
        "You don't have to say anything," Alyssa whispered as we got off the bus. "If you give him his hat, he'll get it. He'll know you're dumping him."
        I couldn't. And not because he looked so cute and hot slouched against the wall with his stoner friends that it was easy to forget that he was as interesting as a crash dummy. Or that I was thinking, who am I to dump the hottest guy in school? Which, in spite of everything, I was. It was more like when your mom brings out the naked baby pictures and your insides squirm, and you're like, No! Do not make me look at that! I was never like that! I did not sleep withTyler's hat under my pillow!  That could not have been me!
        Meanwhile my friends, having given up on me, were waving eagerly to Francesca Halloran, perkily preppy and popular and perfect as ever as she crossed the yard surrounded by her girls. The old me didn't just ache to be Francesca's friend. I wanted to be her. Even last year, when I was doing everything to be the anti-Francesca, I was still jealous of her.
        "Guess how much her jeans cost?" Alyssa said.
        "I know!" Jessie nodded. "A hundred seventy dollars!"
        "Not that much. A hundred and seven. And see that skirt Rachel has on?" Alyssa pointed to one of Francesca's entourage. "I almost bought it, but it made my legs look fat."
        "Well, check out her legs," I said. "And what did she do to her hair? She looks like a tangerine."
        And why was I being mean about Rachel? I liked Rachel.
        The bell clanged.
        "Kaity," Lindsey said. "You're blocking traffic. Everyone's looking at us. And not in a good way. Come on."
        That horribly familiar numbness was coming over me. If it's possible to be numb and lonely at the same time. I felt like I might gag, or faint.
        "Kaity, would you please stop looking like you're about to die," Alyssa said as everyone started swarming toward the doors. She took my arm and led me through. "You'll be fine. By the end of homeroom, you'll be used to it again."
        "I'm going home," I said.

 
        Compared to the pack at camp, this one felt light as a marshmallow. Which could have been because it was empty, except for the hat, my notebook, lunch, and the change of top I couldn't stop myself from throwing in, in case the one I'd picked out for The First Day of School turned out to be all wrong.  But there'd be no wrong, now or ever again.  I felt like I could run forever.
        As I cut into the woods behind the golf course, I composed my letter to the principal.  Dear Mr. Westenburg, I am hereby withdrawing from Martin Van Buren Middle School.  As you must know, I was not happy - Uh uh. Too bland ─ totally miserable - too whiny -I am finding school stupefying. Points for vocabulary there! Don't blame my mom and dad for not answering those letters you sent home. I wanted them to hear the truth from my own lips. That hadn't exactly happened yet, but now it could. You should also know, Mr. Westenburg, that I learned more in a month at Wilderness Discovery Camp than I learned in seven years at MVB.
        I was deep enough in the woods now to stop running, so I sat down on a fallen tree to catch my breath, and, since lunch period meant nothing to me anymore, eat lunch. Eew. Tuna with chipotle mayo. Mom must have gotten that off Food TV.
        Mom! My stomach clenched. I'd been trying so hard not to think about that part of this. How was I going to explain leaving school to her and Dad?
        It might work better if the news came from Westenburg. I pulled out my notebook.
        Dear Mr. and Mrs. Antonucci:   I have given Kaitlyn this letter to give to you.  Two "gives" in one sentence wasn't great, but then Westenburg wasn't known for his writing. I am sorry to report to you that Martin Van Buren Middle School does not seem to be the appropriate place for her. While Kaitlyn used to be an exemplary student, last year she frequently appeared stupefied.  I hesitate to recommend strongly disrecommend parochial school for a girl with her ORIGINAL AND CURIOUS MIND?? STRONG  INDEPENDENT . . . 
        No. I was done with faking and pretending and lying. I grabbed up a stick, and dug through the leaves until I reached dirt, then scraped at it till I'd made a hole. When the stick broke, I used a flat rock to make the hole bigger. But that felt too slow, so I dug with my hands. When it looked like it was big enough to hold everything, I put in the notebook, squashing my lunch bag down on top of it. Then I threw in Tyler's hat, put the soil back, and the leaves, wiped my hands on my jeans, and started running again ─off the path now, and into the thicket that came out at the stone wall at the beginning of my road.
        I'd spent half an hour at Staples, though, picking out that notebook. It was the perfect notebook. So I ran back again. I worried I wouldn't find the hole, but the log was easy to spot, and so were the disturbed leaves. In less than a minute, I'd dug up the notebook, torn out the letter, ripped it to pieces and stuffed it in Tyler's hat along with the tuna sandwich. Then I re-filled the hole and stamped it down. Then I dusted off the notebook, and wrote on the first page:
        This is the DISCOVERY JOURNAL of Katya Antonucci.
        I wished there wasn't that stupid "ucci" on the end. "Katya Anton" could be a poet, or a writer, or a special agent. "Katya Antonucci" looked ludicrous.
        So be it. 
        Sept 5, 9:02 a.m. I wrote. Katya Antonucci lives.
            Then I burst into tears.