"I walked out into the woods and thought about this for a long time, but I couldn’t see any advantage in that kind of life for me—all the advantage would be for Miss Watson. I decided not to worry about praying and being good anymore." – Twain, Huck Finn

Dad says that I'm a little like the kids of old. Sometimes he just stops there, and doesn't say much more and other times he explains what he means by that. He said that his own dad grew up on a farm and got into all kinds of good trouble, living with four brothers. They did chores all day, especially in the summer, just when other kids were mostly working on their baseball game, but he and his brothers were bailing hay. I have to say that doesn't sound that great either. I've mowed before enough times to see that that kind of work probably isn't my thing. But I like to be outside all the time and can't really stand sitting around the basement playing games and watch giant screens with oddballs running around all the time. I think that's what dad means when I'm like kids of old. He knows about the treehouse across the street and down the park. It hadn't been used in twenty years Mr. Renner said. Kids had come and gone already. It had just been sitting there, and I noticed that. I also noticed that there was a boy my age who started coming along to the backyard and I have to say I just walked up to him one day and asked if he had ever thought of making that tree house a fort. "It's overlooking the lake. We could probably fish from the front window," I said. I have to say he looked at me very funny. Dad says kids don't really talk to each other anymore just at each other. I believe him. When I looked into Seiler's eyes (I call him by his last name) he didn't want much to do with me. I probably seemed a bit of an odd one myself, a girl, thirteen, on my own walking along the shore of the lake and looking for adventures. Seiler was from Chicago and he had the scared look on him. Scared of just about everything. I understood that too, I really did. I hadn't seen my mom in months. It was funny I thought – she moved down to Chicago herself, and I wondered if ever Seiler might have seen her sometime by total accident then I realized that probably wasn't real realistic. "What do you do in a fort?" he finally said. He wore bright clothes, a bit baggy on him because he was as thin as it gets, a short short hair cut, and had ear buds up around his neck, that kind of thing.