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"No, not a blackboard. I have a desk, of course," I said.

"Does your mother ring a bell between subjects?" Elliot teased.

"Very funny," I said.

He laughed and drove out of the driveway and away from our property. I looked back at the house. My heart skipped beats because I realized this was the first time in my life I had ever left home in a car without Mommy or Daddy. I couldn't help feeling like someone in outer space who had become detached from his rocket ship and was left weightless and helpless. The farther away we went, the more the butterflies in my stomach fluttered.

"Elliot says you don't have any friends our ace. No one comes to see you, and you don't visit anyone. Is that true?" Harmony asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Don't you have any relatives nearby, cousins. anyone?"

"No," I said. How could I tell them about my spiritual family?

"Doesn't it get boring and lonely for you?" Roberta questioned.

I shrugged.

"Sometimes it does," I admitted.

"I'd hate it," Harmony said. "You never get invited to parties or go to the movies with friends or anything?" she followed, her voice rising into a highpitched tone of skepticism.

"No," I said.

"He doesn't even watch television," Elliot added.

Both girls looked at me with amazement in their eyes. It was as if they had discovered an extraterrestrial creature or something.

"Is that right?" Roberta asked.

"Yes. We don't have a working television set anymore." "But what do you do at night?"

"I read a lot." I said.

"And he fishes and chops wood and feeds chickens," Elliot added. laughing.

"Do you at least listen to music?" Harmony asked me.

"Sometimes. My mother plays piano, and we have some records."

"Records?" she asked, and they both laughed.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

"You don't have tapes at least?" Roberta asked.

"No." I said. "Just records."

"Like what?" Harmony followed.

I shrugged. "Mozart, Beethoven. Debussy. We have some full operas. too. The Victrola needs a new needle, and my mother hasn't gotten one yet."

"Huh?" Roberta said. "Victrola?"

"Told you he was something," Elliot cried. "You could at least get with it and call it a

phonograph," he threw back at Inc, and they all laughed again.