Sometimes when I’ve had it with everything, I like to get away. So I pinch my nose like I’m going to dive underwater, and take a deep breath, and start sucking. I take a deep, deep breath and suck in and in, and my eyes bug out, and my chest gets bigger and bigger, and when it seems like I’m going to pop, there’s this big sucking sound, and then I turn inside out to nothing. First my fingers suck up inside my hands, then my hands suck up inside my arms, and then all of me just, pop, turns right inside out. It’s a good trick for bad days at school, when the Dead Kids are stomping around in a big stampede, back and forth up and down the hallways. I just suck myself inside out to nothing and get right away. Then they can stomp around all they want, and it doesn’t matter to me, ’cause I’m not even there.

It’s even better, though, to do it outside on a windy day. On a windy day if you turn yourself inside out to nothing, a good stiff breeze can come along and blow you clear out of town. Heck, it’ll blow you clear out of the province on a windy enough day. You’re like the thinnest leaf, blowing up into the grey, grey sky, spinning out over the snowy prairie. And who knows where you’ll end up. If you’re lucky, you’ll blow all the way over the mountains, over British Columbia, and out over the ocean. You can spin and blow, up over the endless grey ocean, tossing around in the wind. The only problem is, you don’t get to pick where you’re going; it’s all up to the wind. But on inside-out-to-nothing days, anywhere at all is pretty good.