Deconstructing Dylan Read Free

drew blood from me with a needle and it hurt. He looked almost guilty for the pain it had caused but he didn’t apologize. I wanted to dislike him, but as soon as he was finished he had a piece of pizza waiting for me followed by vanilla ice cream. That’s all it took to get my forgiveness.
    I remember that there were fields of sheep on the Scottish hills and I remember how the people were both rude and friendly at the same time, a skill that I greatly admired at twelve and tried to emulate. There was something exciting about being in such a foreign place but also something familiar. There were researchers who knew my mother — or at least knew who she was. And they took us out to dinner — haggis and beyond. I remember that I did not want to come home. I wanted to move into an old stone house near Loch Ness or on the Isle of Skye.
    There are, in the insect world, long-legged bugs called pond skaters or water striders that walk across the surface of ponds and lakes. They literally walk on waterbecause their thin, hairy legs support a nearly weightless body. They make a tiny, dimpled depression on the surface of the water but they usually do not break through it and sink. The skin of the water’s surface is strong enough to support them.
    As a child, I would catch the striders and try to take them home in a jar of water but they nearly always drowned. Once the surface of the water was disturbed, the water strider could not support itself. I felt bad about drowning them and stopped doing it.
    Most of my life I have felt somewhat like a water strider — able to walk or run on the surface of things, knowing that if something were to disturb that surface, I would sink into whatever was beneath me and drown. I don’t mean to sound melodramatic. Part of me, though, often wanted to pierce that surface and drop beneath. I wanted to see what was down there. I wanted to be immersed although I did not want to drown.
    I felt heavy and sad after Caroline dumped me. I had not known how much I cared for her until she had moved on. My ego was bruised, my confidence shaken. Anyone could have seen that she and I would not have lasted the school year. In truth, I think it was not only my talk about insects but also my compulsion to read books about death and dying that put Caroline off. Mynew-found interest was a book on near-death experiences, which I read when I was bored in my classes. I would hide it behind the math textbook I was supposed to be looking at. I was preparing myself to die. I understood that much of life was a preparation for death and whatever came after, that living and dying were part of a natural process. I wondered if all my life I would be the water strider on the surface of things, and one day the surface would be disturbed and I would sink into whatever was beneath. I wondered, Would that be when I would understand who I really was and what it meant to be alive?
    Caroline thought I was morbid. Bugs and death drove her away. Who could fault her for that?
    I didn’t always mind skating along the surface of things like the water strider. There was a lightness to it — sometimes I was unaffected by everything around me. The good stuff and the bad. Other times, when I felt heavy, it was more like being the Loch Ness monster. I was in the deep murky water, alone. Some believed in my existence, some did not. I was the only one of my kind on the planet, or so I believed. I
was
a kind of monster, I suppose, although I didn’t think of myself as scary. I was waiting for a bold explorer to discover me. I wanted to find out if I was real.

C HAPTER F OUR
    â€œIt’s Robyn, with a
y
,” the new girl insisted. Mrs. Gillis hated it when students were surly and Robyn was being surly with a capital
S
.
    â€œOkay, Robyn with a
y
, do you want to tell us anything about yourself?” Mrs. Gillis was holding her glasses in her hand and giving Robyn a look, the special look she used to