Alone Alone Alone

I'm so sick of the stupid nickname. I can't even hide at school. I don't want to go to school; I don't want to go to the pow-wows. Everybody says my family never talks to anybody, and even they go to the pow-wows. I wish I knew who found out about "Snotboy," and thought it was a cool nickname.

Nobody has anything I need up here. Nobody thinks about what anything means. It's all money money money. I guess some of my people used to live like that, but nobody can do it any more. Or they say they can't.

I don't even want money. I just want to be left alone. I could live up here, all my myself, I could even hide. I could be like the deer and the young bears, moving on ahead of the clearcuts. I don't want to be like the old bears, that can't think how to move on, and eat goats, and get shot.

I'm writing this in my alone place - a burnt-out cedar stump, a big one. I've got everything I need here, because the burn didn't take out the center of the tree. I have a roof. I have tinder, all that dry cedar powder. I have a place to sleep, when nobody's missing me, which is all the time. I have a place to hide my notebook - the paper one, not the electrical ones, because I don't need even that. I wish I could be naked like the animals and live here without ever coming in.

I even wish I could die like the animals, and just dry away on the beach, so there's nothing left of me but scattered bones and feathers or fur.

I'm named after a spirit; why can't I just be invisible?