I am in school and a girl is being especially cruel towards me.  Although I catch each and every insult, I feign innocence, oblivious to her bitterness.  After class, going to lunch, another girl tells me that nobody would pick on me so much if only I had any friends.  “You need more friends,” she tells me.  When I protest that I do have friends and that we hang out all of the time.  But the words ring false. Internally I am thinking about the very few friends I have and realize that we do not hang out very much, that I truly am more alone than I realized.  I pick up my books and, even though it is not the end of the school day, I leave the building and walk home. 

My house is empty but shortly after I arrive, my mother walks in the front door followed by someone who is carrying several bags, suitcases and shopping, on a handcart.  She announces that these are the last of our things to arrive and I look around, mutter something about how I thought everything was already here.  It occurs to her that I ought to be in school.  I tell her that I am dropping out, that I can just study for the GED and go to college next year, as scheduled.  She wants to protest but is too life weary to do so.

I go to the basement where there are some people—mostly neighbors, potentially friends, hanging out playing pool, watching television, and enjoying themselves.  I hear my mother squeal with delight and I rush upstairs.  “I love Larry so much,” she says as she points to the backyard.  I see some smaller children walking through what looks like a maze and say, “Is that a maze?”  I am excited at the idea that we have a maze in our own backyard but she says, “No, look at that.”  I look and it is a large sheet of cardboard, presumably a collapsed or unfolded refrigerator box.  On it is my name written in marker.  Another similar piece of cardboard says “GET YOUR TICKETS HERE” in large letters and another says something about a SHOW.  Apparently these pieces of cardboard are leftover from an earlier time when I was little and my friends and I were putting on a backyard show for the neighborhood.   I return to the basement where people are basically ignoring me and treating me disrespectfully, as if this were their space and not the basement of my own home.

When she says Larry she means Larry Block and I get the impression that in this dream we are living in the Bronx again or something but Larry is gone (dead) and the house is now ours. And she isn't still with him in the dream--the house is bequeathed to her and she is surprised to find that he kept these things from when I was a child playing in the back yard.