The Other Way Around by Sashi Kaufman

face is warm and my butt is starting to go numb from sitting on the van floor. I glance once around the van, but no one besides Emily seems that mad. Maybe I haven’t completely blown things after all. I’m surprised to realize that I care. I pull my copy of
Into the Wild
out of my backpack and pick up where I had left off last night. I’m not really reading, though. I just keep running my eyes over the same sentence again and again. It’s actually the second time I’ve read it, so I know what’s going to happen. I just love the buildup, his life on the road, and all the little details about the weird, unhappy people he meets. Periodically I glance up at Emily, who is ferociously clacking away on some wooden knitting needles. Whatever she’s making is large and gray and shapeless. The wool gives the whole back of the van the smell of dirty hay.
    At one point I catch Tim watching me as I watch Emily. I quickly look away. “So what’s going to happen when we get to Rochester?” I ask him.
    â€œThey’ll do their show, we’ll try and make some money for gas, and then we’ll keep going,” he says.
    â€œWhat’s the show all about?”
    â€œIt’s a little different every time. Usually Emily dances or does the hoops. Jesse juggles and usually tells a story, and then Lyle and G do their thing.”
    â€œWhich is what?”
    â€œHmm,” Tim says. “Really better seen than described.”
    The road hums along, and it’s quiet in the van for a while. Iturn to my backpack and rifle through the contents again. I take out my notebook and turn to the back, thinking maybe someone will want to play hangman or something. I’m surprised to find a shakier block-letter version of my handwriting is there on the back of the inside cover. My name and an address I haven’t lived at for almost seven years. I turn to the front and flip past a couple blank pages until I come to a title. It says
Divorce Diary
. Nine- or ten-year-old me has given it a subtitle too. “Stupid stuff I don’t want to write about Mom and Dad’s stupid divorce which has nothing to do with me.” It’s long and, I recognize now, plainly a falsehood, but I’m still impressed by the literary technique.
    It also triggers a memory. For a couple months at the beginning of fifth grade, Mom and Dad had me visit with a counselor to talk about my feelings around the divorce. The counselor suggested I write things down in a journal. And here it was. I flip forward, but there are only a few pages with writing on them, each one a short list. One of them simply says, “pedofile priest = nothing.”
    When I was in fifth grade, the teacher announced that our class was going to adopt an orphan for our class holiday project. The teacher held up one of those packets with the starving child on it. You know, the one with sad, soulful eyes and a distended belly. The other kids were really excited about it and a conversation immediately began about what we would name our orphan. “The kid probably already has a name,” I said to no one in particular. But I was ignored amidst an excited buzz of gift ideas for the new class pet. “My mom says these programs are all a big scam,” I announced, louder this time.
    The class quieted. The kids were looking at me with interest. Only slightly more exciting than picking out namesfor the class orphan was the possibility that an adult might be shown up in some way. Mrs. Pettengill gave me a tired stare. But it was quiet, and I had the floor. “I mean you might as well hand over your money directly to some pedophile priest.” Now it was very quiet. The kids didn’t know what I meant.
I
didn’t even know what I meant. It was just something my mom used to shout at the TV every time those ten-minute ads came on. That, and “There are plenty of starving kids right here in our own country.” In retrospect