School is over. It has been since the 27th for me, but it is only yesterday, by all indications, that the parental units rcognized it.

Tomorrow is Monday, the first Monday in forever that I won’t have think about getting up early for. It’s a good feeling, to know that.

There’s just one more thing that I want to do. I’m gonna burn my notebooks. My parents aren’t home, my sister has disapeared to somewhere, so I can sit here on the dock and decide, do I want the biology papers on top or on bottom? Shall I take the papers out and crumple them so they’ll burn better or will that make them blow away? It’s windy right now and the midnight Alaskan sun is still high up — perhaps someone from Outside would say it looked 4 o’clock in the afternoon. It’s at least 8:30, maybe as late 10 pm. Shall I wait till later, when it get’s dark? Maybe the wind will have died down by then.

Perhaps I should even wait till a different night. No, I’ll never get another chance, now the weather’s clear and there’s no one around to object (Calvin and Hobbes quote: “Shouldn’t we ask your mom about this?” “Questions we already know the answers to, we don’t need to ask.”) I do kind of want someone to see though — what’s the use of doing strange, dramatic things if you haven’t got an audience?

Ah well, alone it is and no one to say I’m naughty, or exagerating as I tell the tale.

Biology, I think, can go on top. English and Russian first. And a nice geomotetry filling. All those tests on colored paper.

3 notebooks inventoried, stripped of blank papers, half written letters to friends and a couple of jots entries which hadn’t quite made it to the computer. They will now and I’m glad I didn’t just torch it all. On top of the pile, as it’s turns out, will go all the computer apps. assignments. Goodbye fake schedules, payrolls, and newsletters for alumni associations. I’ve already forgetten the difference between RAM and ROM. I have a bunch of my friend Ashley’s computer assignments too. They can burn as well, she won’t mind. She was going to burn math papers with Karli and Anna. I hope they got to. Even if they didn’t, this will be a burning for them and for any newly liberated student.

Even with the sun, which suddenly seems lower, it is still windy and goosebumps jumped up when I stripped to my swimsuit. Still, I have to do it i the lake, for fear of something on land starting a wildfire. It rained yesterday, I think, but my dad’s a firefighter and I’d definitely catch shit if I started a fire and it burnt any amount of things down. Just one reason why I’m not aking permission.

I’m think maybe I should put the board and it’s academic load in the dinghy and row over to the end of the lake that the wind’s coming from. Then there would be less chance of anything blowing to shore, or of the matches getting wet. I think I shall go back to house and check the time before I decide.

9:45, I found a life jacket (though they said they were taking them all with?) so, I could go on the boat. Sill parental units, can’t go on the boat without a pfd, but you could swim in your birthday suit if you were to be so bold. Technically, I suppose, you could go rowing in your birthday suit, but you might get some blisters in interesting places. It’s still breaking cardinal rules though, which I wil forcefully reminded of earlier this evening. No boating without an adult around. This means, then, that I shall have pop up and tell the neighbors I’m going rowing, a probably swimming as well. No one says I have to tell them why.

The dog wishes to come. She saw me get out the oars. Well, she shall have to watch from shore and I’ll hope she doesn’t take it into her furry little head to follow me.

(3 notebooks pages and I haven’t even lit a match. *sigh*)

The dog, of course, gave me puppy eyes and was allowed to come.

I rowed out to the north western corner and, after repositioning the boat a couple times I prepared to give my paper to the lake. When I lifted the board though, it felt too heavy, so I decided to take out the math papers. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to burn them later.

I put it gently on the water, still fearing that it might sink. That might have been okay, pale sheets sinking into the water that’s sometimes greenish and sometimes simply dark.

It rested on the water and went down, water seeped up and the soaked the whole English notebook. The biology papers, on top, stayed dry. I had opened the bio notebook and laid it flat, crumpled a few of the pages (though not ripped them out) and I lit one of these.

It only took one match, the wind took it and it burned. It floated away and the flames were shimmering, weaving, undulating yellow and orange — the indescribable way fire always is. From time to time the wind blew up another page and it slowly turned to ashes. They piled on one side of the board, a ruffled gray mass.

The ashes were in the water, though I didn’t see them fall off the board. They swirled gently underwater as I rowed through.

Two mostly burned pages fell off and began to float away. Feeling suddenly guilty — this was littering, wasn’t it? — I rowed over to get the papers. The smaller one I got easily, but the other one was elusive and I had to chase it for a good ten minutes and avoid the burning papers too. Miserable little paper anyway, when I finally got it, it was genetics. DNA and meiosis. Possible combinations for the offspring of TT and Tt.

Eventually the board drifted over toward shore, and I had to go get it. It would not be diverted from it’s course toward the shrubs growing on the shore, though I made it nice, encouraging currents in the other directions with the oars. I was getting rather worried, as it was a part of the lake I didn’t know. It was shallow and I didn’t know where snags were. I spotted one as I closed in on the boartd, got around it hurriedly and reached to get the still smoldering notebooks.

The wind helpfully helpfully wafted the smoke into my face. I got a smelly, lung-searing breath of it as I lifted the board into the bow seat. It sat there, somewhat sullenly, and scattered ashes over the bow and half the boat as I rowed back to the dock.

The dog was reluctant to get out when I reached shore, perhpas she wanted to keep rowing. I picked her up and tossed her to shore (luckily she’s a spaniel mix). Then the boat had drifted away from shore. I’d already shipped the oars, so I stepped out — its only up to my knees in that area of the lake — and pulled the boat partly out of the water.

I moved the board and the notebooks — mostly soggy but still smoldering — the the dock and looked at the ashes on the boat. Dad would definitely notice them. I gott a bucket and the scrub brush, which resides, for unknown reasons, in the sauna. For good measure I scrubbed the dirt on the deck of the stern as well as the bow and rinsed the whole thing. The white was white again and I would turn the boat over when I put it away so the water would drain out.

I called the dog and we rowed the boat back to its usual spot on the shore in front of the house. Being without another person, the boat floated away from the shore again when I shipped the oars. (I should look for the anchor that was in the bow last year.) This wasn’t the first time this had happened in this part of the lake, and believe me, it’s better to step into waist deep water with your swimsuit on than with jeans on.

As I was pulling the boat up my sister showed up. “Whatcha doin?” she wanted to know. “Putting the boat away,” I replied, then went back to the dock to contemplate the soggy papers and ashes, the remains of my school year. I decided to put them inside the sauna to dry out for a while.

My sister came down to the dock. “Are you going swimming?”

I dived in, even though it’s cold, even though it was late, even though I wasn’t going to stay in. Just because I could.