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pirates, or Zane Grey Westerns; worst of all were the highly unlikely science-fiction novels, or the equally implausible futuristic tales.
    Couldn’t my mom and Nana Victoria see for themselves that I was both mystified and frightened by life on Earth? I had no need of stimulation from distant galaxies and unknown planets. And the present gripped me with sufficient incomprehension, not to mention the daily terror of being misunderstood; even to contemplate the future was nightmarishly unwelcome.
    “But why doesn’t Bill choose what books he likes for himself?” Richard Abbott asked my mother. “Bill, you’re thirteen, right? What are you interested in?”
    Except for Grandpa Harry and my ever-friendly uncle Bob (the accused drinker), no one had asked me this question before. All I liked to read were the plays that were in rehearsal at the First Sister Players; I imagined that I could learn these scripts as word-for-word as my mother always learned them. One day, if my mom were sick, or in an automobile accident—there were car crashes galore in Vermont—I imagined I might be able to replace her as the prompter.
    “Billy!” my mother said, laughing in that seemingly innocent way she had. “Tell Richard what you’re interested in.”
    “I’m interested in me,” I said. “What books are there about someone like me?” I asked Richard Abbott.
    “Oh, you would be surprised, Bill,” Richard told me. “The subject of childhood giving way to early adolescence—well, there are many marvelous novels that have explored this pivotal coming-of-age territory! Come on—let’s go have a look.”
    “At this hour? Have a look
where
?” my grandmother said with alarm. This was after an early school-night supper—it was not quite dark outside, but it soon would be. We were still sitting at the dining-room table.
    “Surely Richard can take Bill to our town’s little library, Vicky,” Grandpa Harry said. Nana looked as if she’d been slapped; she was so very much a
Victoria
(if only in her own mind) that no one but my grandpa ever called her “Vicky,” and when he did, she reacted with resentment every time. “I’m bettin’ that Miss Frost keeps the library open till nine most nights,” Harry added.
    “
Miss
Frost!” my grandmother declared, with evident distaste.
    “Now, now—tolerance, Vicky, tolerance,” my grandfather said.
    “Come on,” Richard Abbott said again to me. “Let’s go get you your own library card—that’s a start. The books will come later; if I had to guess, the books will soon
flow
.”
    “
Flow
!” my mom cried happily, but with no small measure of disbelief. “You don’t know Billy, Richard—he’s just not much of a reader.”
    “We’ll see, Jewel,” Richard said to her, but he winked at me. I had a growingly incurable crush on him; if my mother was already falling in love with Richard Abbott, she wasn’t alone.
    I remember that captivating night—even such a commonplace thing as walking on the River Street sidewalk with the enthralling Richard Abbott seemed romantic. It was muggy, like a summer night, with a far-off thunderstorm brewing. All the neighborhood children and dogs were at play in the River Street backyards, and the bell in the clock tower of Favorite River Academy tolled the hour. (It was only seven on a September school night, and my childhood, as Richard had said, was giving way to early adolescence.)
    “Exactly what about you are you interested in, Bill?” Richard Abbott asked me.
    “I wonder why I have sudden, unexplainable …
crushes
,” I said to him.
    “Oh,
crushes
—you’ll soon have many more of them,” Richard said encouragingly. “Crushes are common, and to be expected—to be
enjoyed
!” he added.
    “Sometimes, the crushes are on the wrong people,” I tried to tell him.
    “But there are no ‘wrong’ people to have crushes on, Bill,” Richard assured me. “You cannot will yourself to have, or not to have, a crush on