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sleep?”
    â€œI don’t know. When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”
    â€œYou got anything else in the works?” his father asked.
    â€œWell, I have two other science-fiction stories started, but lately I’ve been working on—”
    He broke off as he thought of his Guide to Romance. He was, he thought, like a child who had briefly waded in the ocean attempting a book about swimming the Pacific.
    â€œI’ve been working on something sort of personal.”
    â€œAnything you’d care to talk about?”
    â€œNot really. But Dad, you know how they’re always saying write about what you know?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWell, I was writing about what I thought I knew, only I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. Some of my answers seem, well, less than perfect.”
    â€œThat’s hard to believe.”
    â€œIt happens. Are you working on anything else, Dad?”
    His father smiled. “Not anything I’d care to comment on.”
    â€œBut you do have another idea?”
    His smile remained. “I might as well admit it. I do have another idea.”
    The literary discussion was interrupted by a wail from down the hall.
    â€œWell, I better go. That’s Jamie. I told Mom I’d listen out for him.”
    Bingo’s dad threw his long legs off the side of his bed.
    â€œI’ll get him. I’ve been sort of ignoring Jamie lately. You go on out and take the afternoon off.”

Bingo Brown’s Day Off
    B INGO LAY ON THE grass, listening to Billy Wentworth read The Red Badge of Courage aloud.
    Bingo’s eyes were closed.
    Wentworth was not a good reader. “ ‘Hear th’ news, boys? Corkright’s crushed th’ hull rebel right an’ captured two hull divisions.’ ”
    Wentworth stopped. “I wonder what a hull division is.”
    â€œHow is it spelled?” Bingo asked without opening his eyes.
    â€œ H-u-l-l. ”
    â€œI think he means whole —whole division,” Bingo explained.
    â€œ Hull is whole?”
    â€œThe character has an accent.”
    â€œI get it, but I don’t like it. You get a lot of accents in Gifted and Talented?” he asked curiously.
    â€œEnough.”
    â€œThen I’m glad I ain’t gifted and talented. Where was I? Oh, here. ‘I tell yeh’— yeh is you, right? I’m catching on to this. ‘I tell yeh I’ve been all over that there ken-try.’ Ken-try.” He kept trying the word. “Ken-try.”
    â€œCountry,” Bingo said.
    Bingo didn’t understand how he had come to be lying on the grass, allowing Billy Wentworth to read aloud to him.
    He had come into the backyard with The Red Badge of Courage under his arm. He had thought that a change of scene might help him concentrate. Certainly he was unable to concentrate on his Ninja Turtle sheets.
    There was a tree in the backyard where Bingo, in his carefree younger days, had sat and read. He remembered pleasantly the rustling of the leaves around him, the comfort of the sturdy old tree limbs that seemed to envelop him, Disney-movie-like, as he sat high above the neighborhood.
    That was the place to read.
    It had not taken Bingo long to climb up to the favorite limb of his youth. He could almost have stepped up onto it. For a moment he could not believe he was on the correct limb. His feet had actually touched the ground.
    How long ago had he sat here? Four years? Five? The tree could not have shrunk. He must have grown!
    He had sat for a moment, enjoying the awkwardness. It was like being in a booster chair when—
    â€œHey, Worm Brain!”
    Bingo had looked across the yard. It was Wentworth, of course.
    â€œWhat you doing—playing Tarzan?”
    â€œI’ve got to read this book.” Bingo had given a helpless shrug, gesturing with the closed book as he stepped down from the tree limb.
    â€œWhat’s it