#5 I WISH I WAS A MOTORCYCLE, I WOULD GO REAL FAST

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Why did you do it?


At last they published the list of textbooks for the year and Dad and I go to a couple of bookstores to do some shopping. Only the French book is missing, which is not so bad. We also buy new notebooks and pens and pencils and rulers and a backpack and a diary and Dad carries two bags with another inside and I carry one bag and it's going to break and I can't breathe.
At home he looks at the bill and I look at the new books and we smell them together. We both love the smell of new books.
I feel guilty because I chose one of the expensive notebooks, just because it was prettier, and because I didn't really need a backpack. Dad goes to the kitchen to smoke and I go to my room and put the old textbooks away to make space for the new ones. I look at the notes I took last year, at the essays I wrote and feel ashamed. They don't belong to me, but to the professors who forced me to write them, I hide them, but do not throw them away.
It's too hot. It's September and too hot. I haven't closed the door, so I kick my shoes and try to get undressed and dressed again in seconds. I hear a door opening and it can only be Dad because there's only Dad. I crawl inside my body, but he's going in the other direction, so I relax and put on a Mexican red dress that belonged to my aunt but then was too small for her.
I lie in bed and go through all the things I will know in a few months. I don't even want to write my name on the first page because then I will ruin the newness of the books, and yet I write my name and I draw pictures and I pick the English workbook and my new favourite blue pen and in the couple of hours before dinner I have completed it.
Dad calls me from the kitchen and I take the English workbook and I show him and I tell him.
And now what are you going to do for the rest of the year? Why did we have to buy it if you were going to do it all in one afternoon?
I leave it on my bed, take my dinner, sit on my chair, eat, look at the news, say nothing. When I grow up I plan on paying my debts.