Sometimes I have the feeling that I have secrets. They aren't really secrets, because I don't want to talk about them, and besides, they're things that can't be told to anyone. They're too strange. Céline is going out with a guy from our high school, a junior. He's waiting to meet her at four o'clock on the corner next to the post office. At least it's clear what her secret is. If I was her I wouldn't even hide it. But the person who I am has no shape. Just thinking about it makes me feel heavy, like a real fatso. I'd like to sleep until a time when I could understand myself better--maybe when I'm eighteen or twenty-one. There must come a day when everything is clear, when everything falls into place. From then on, there's nothing to do but walk the straight and narrow, married with two children and with a job that isn't too pitiful. There was a theme for a paper: "Talk about your dreams for the future." I got a good grade on it. The future. When I see all those years of reading books stretching out in front of me, I feel like I have a hole in my head. There are all these things that I don't know yet and that I will have to be able to write and say. When I was little I would slide down, on purpose, all the way to the bottom of the bed. I didn't want to get up, and it was dark and warm there. I feel the same way now. Last year I was only thinking about starting high school. Of course, the teachers were trying to scare us: "Your grades are just barely good enough . . ." They acted calm and dignified, but that didn't help us much when it came to getting onto the academic track in high school. "You just have to be more intelligent. It's not our fault if you don't make it." At home, my mother was always bitching: "You only got an 8 out of 20 in math! That's not good. If you just put in a little effort, you'd do better. Do you want to end up working in a factory?" I know she's right, and there's nothing I can say back. If I didn't go to high school--wham!--I would have to start working. Even so, when she was nagging me, around the time of the high school orientation last March, I didn't like it. It would have been better if she hadn't said anything. Now she's feeling reassured. There won't be any more fuss until the exam for the bac. I didn't tell her that at the end of the first year you could be kicked out of high school or switched to a technical track. She would've made a big deal about it all year long. My parents don't have their high school diplomas, and yet they're a thousand times more annoying about it than Céline's parents, who are engineers or something. It's true that her parents don't need to yell at her. They're the living example of success, whereas in the case of my parents, who are manual workers, I have to be what they tell me to be and not what they are. I don't know if I'll be able to become a schoolteacher, or even if I still want to be one now. My father irritates me. He's always watching me anxiously. "Doesn't it hurt your brain to have your face in a book all the time?" Reading's not his strong suit: he only reads the newspaper: Paris-Normandie, and once in a while France-Soir. Sometimes, when he isn't paying attention, his lips move while he reads. Maybe he's right: my classes are too hard. At the beginning of the school year, I believed that when I was in school I would only think about studying. The only people I knew in my grade were Céline and one inoffensive little fourteen-year-old boy. Excerpted from Do What They Say or Else by Annie Ernaux All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
