The narrator is sitting in his room, talking to himself. He's just finished telling his friends that he's going to start school in thirty days. He doesn't know where to start, but he does know that Petrioles's office has been vacant for a year. He wonders how he'll ever feel free without her. He also wonders how to become "a backyard fairy" . The narrator's friends tease him about his brother's love for another girl. He says he didn't think he'd be dead so soon. They also tease him for hanging out with a girl who's too young to be his friend.