One of the constant threats to our family was perceived to be school. In other words, our folks were afraid that if the authorities found out we weren't in public school, we might be forced into it or wind up in foster care. They prepped us for hours on how to withstand interrogation by social workers, how not to give out any information at all to anyone that could possibly incriminate us, even very innocent things such as our names, ages, where we lived, whether we had pets, etc. We were told that everyone outside of our household was our enemy, period.

Also because of this danger, we weren't supposed to show our faces outside during school hours. Obviously this conflicted with my walks, but did mesh well with my nocturnal habits. If I went walking during school hours (and I wasn't supposed to), I shunned human contact even at a distance. I'd dive behind a log if I saw or heard a car approaching...they might report me to CPS.

Mom wanted us to keep journals of our "school activites". She said we had an "integrated curriculum". This meant that baking cookies or bread was as good as doing math from a book, because it used measurements and fractions, and chemistry and home ec, too. However, we weren't to log the activity as "baking cookies", we had to write it down as "fractions" or "science", or "home ec". We were supposed to find enough activities like this to account for several hours per day. My natural habits already afforded ample entries for science and reading/english, but I frequently forgot to write it down, because it felt false and contrived to me. I took samples of plants and pressed them, collected mosses and lichens, insects and stones, but I had no idea what species most of them were. We were to present our notebooks to Mom on a regular basis.

One day, we didn't have enough recent entries, or maybe we'd been playing outside, or maybe we weren't doing enough work around the place. Denis called us all together and announced that we were going to school in the morning. He told us how horrible it would be and how we'd have to sit on the bus for over an hour each way, but it was our own fault, because we hadn't done our part. We all crept upstairs to our rooms feeling as though we were about to be thrown to the lions. Only Lisa seemed a little happy. She confided that she missed school and thought she might even like it, even though she was scared, too. The next morning, I searched through my clothes desperately, trying to find something nice enough to wear. We hadn't gone anywhere at all for clothes since leaving California. Sometimes other people would give us their hand me downs, but that was rare. Most of my jeans were shot, with ripped out knees. I had no idea what was "cool" in Idaho. Finally I got dressed and we all assembled downstairs, trembling. Denis dismissed us. We weren't going to school. He'd changed his mind. It was a test. He didn't tell us whether we'd passed or failed.