I get paid eight dollars an hour to pretend I am Vincent, Mrs. Ramon's dead son. I do this on Saturdays from noon to four. I walk next door to Mrs. Ramon's house and then I go down to Vincent's old room and change into the outfit lying on his old bed. I wet a comb and part my hair over to the right. When I walk upstairs, there is a bowl of orange sherbet waiting for me on the dining room table. I am supposed to take the spoon and eat the orange sherbet like it is my favorite thing.

Sometimes when I go to Mrs. Ramon's house, Vincent gets a bad report card and there is no bowl of sherbet on the table. When that happens I sit patiently and listen to Mrs. Ramon lecture me about how important education is for my future. I nod my head and try to look guilty. I make a solemn promise to her that from now on, I will take World Geography much more seriously.

Sometimes it is Vincent's birthday and there is a cake shaped like a racecar and a new ten-speed bike in the driveway and I have to pretend that a car-shaped cake and a new ten-speed are both very exciting, that these are the things that I want most in the entire world.

Mrs. Ramon is pretty and usually she smells good. It is not really her that I do not like. It is mostly that I am sick of Vincent's green tennis shoes that are two sizes too small, that I am sick of wearing the acid washed jean jacket with a huge butterfly embroidered on the back, that I am sick of acting like a dead kid when I, Steve Keppler, am very much alive.