Writer’s Note
They tell the 6th-graders they are supposed to write to Dear Diary in the summer. No one gets to read your diary. But on the first day of 7th grade, they are supposed to turn them in and their new teachers are going to read them. One boy will give them what he wants them to see; the real diary he keeps is for the reader of this story.
Judas Judas Michael
The season of the stranger and of falling for him hard.
Then what if you are a boy who isn't supposed to do that and the only one you can tell is Dear Diary... Which you are supposed to turn in for 7th-grade Language Arts come September.
They are gonna get a watered-down version of the truth. "Dear Diary, I don't know who you are."
Michael is the rebel that you always knew you could trust.
A boy is worried about two other boys, the one his best friend and the other a brand-new kid in the neighborhood.
The beginning of the story…
Dear Diary,
I don't know who you are. Teacher kept explaining it but I didn't get it. All I know is we are supposed to write to you over the summer.
No matter who we get for Language Arts in 7th grade, they want us to turn in our Dear Diary thing. But it isn't them we are really writing to.
One kid wanted to know if it was cows in California. I was waiting on the answer because I thought it was a good question. The teacher thought it was funny and said if the cows are in New York City that would also be okay.
Then the teacher said in the olden days they wrote diaries in a notebook, with a pen or a pencil. We don't have to do that, she said.
I still don't know what to say or who I am saying it to. But teacher said it's not that big of a deal and we can write what we like. If we turn something in come September, then we did the assignment right.
It's more or less about our summer and the stuff we did. It just started, summer, so I haven't really done anything yet. We just log it in day by day but they aren't going to check, like if you didn't do a certain day you aren't going to get docked for it.
I was glad the teacher made it sound pretty easy. Just write stuff during your summer. I can do that.
I bought gum at the little store, then I went over to Michael's house. His mother didn't know where he was. He could be anywhere because Michael doesn't follow rules. I follow rules.
The kind of kid he is, he would try and raise alligators in the upstairs bathroom and hope his parents didn't find out. Not that he has done it but he told me he was going to. I like to hear him talk because before you know it you aren't talking about alligators, you are suddenly talking about the first man on the moon.
Michael says they filmed it in Arizona.
I am like, "No, they didn't."
He's like, "I can't believe how absurd you are."
Michael is a lot of fun. I don't care what he says.
When he wasn't there, I went exploring in the neighborhood. I didn't really find anything and I wasn't looking for anything in particular, including Michael.
And then I met this kid that I didn't know but we ended up roughhousing until it all went bad. It is something for me to write about. So here goes.
He sort of came down on top of me when I was on my back. I got a knee up in the air, which knocked the wind out of him.
I felt so bad because I didn't want to do that. They took him indoors to look after him. Since they were visiting from out of town, he wasn't going to be here for long.
I think he said four days.