Some people say that I have a big flat head. I do have a flat head; that’s why standing on my head is so easy for me. Sometimes when people say to me, “Jeez, you have a big flat head,” and my girlfriend happens to be in the house, I say, “No way, if you want to see a big head, you just wait here, I have one in the other room,” and I’ll go and get her and pull her in and people go, “Hey, look at that.”

He worried his lack of imagination extended to them, that no flights of fancy graced their days, that the hardness of their lives, the daily turmoils that seemed so large to children, would crush them. So when a whiff of crisis was in the musk of the old house – by his nose, by the only nose that counted, the father’s nose — something just that much off to be fodder for crisis, Steven Pei would set off from his office at the Great American Insurance Company at lunch and start wandering as if into a pleasant recurring dream he wished to revisit and always in that firm four-block grid (he was certain of this much . . . he thought). And if that grid proved fruitless, he moved on to the next grid. Eventually he always found it, there on a side street he never thought of noting for future reference because it wouldn’t do him any good, behind a non-descript brick facade under a fading black and white painted sign. “Petreus” And in the window a red steady neon “Hobby Store” glowed.

“You guys are ruled by Saturn.” That’s what I yelled to the Two Capricorns one time, when I saw them carrying groceries up their back stoop. I also waved. “You share an earthy demeanor with Virgo and Taurus.” Linda waved back. Circular Saw did not.

At the dance, Slap was enthralled by the opening band: Sweet Lou and the Lousers, a derelict collection of hillbillies who lived in an abandoned flourmill. The Lousers played two stringy songs with dime store instruments. “Skiffle,” they called their music.

I knew I should have faked that I was mute when I enrolled, but somebody in my history class already is, and two mutes would look too suspicious. I didn’t even believe he was mute at first, so I stepped on his foot one day (stamped on it, actually) to see if he would scream or ask me why I did that or something.

But his whole face turned red and scrunched up, and a tear soon came out of his eye. Then he whacked me in the side of the head with his palm, and I cried out because it hurt a lot, and he walked away. So he could be a real mute, I still don’t know.

Anyway, the reason I’ve been so obsessed with death, I think, is because of Joann, that girl I told you about in my last letter.