Edited by Her 8th
Grade English Teacher,
Mr. Bob Walton
Packet II: Her Homework Ate My Dog (1995–1996)
a novel by
Daniel Dyer
Copyright © 2013 by
Daniel Dyer
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For my grandsons,
Logan Thomas Dyer
(born 15 February
2005)
&
Carson William Daniel
Dyer
(born 4 April 2009)
Editor’s Foreword
“Victoria Frankenstein” is the pen
name (or real name?) of a young woman I knew as Vickie Stone nearly twenty
years ago in the fall of 1997, near the end of my teaching career, when she
joined my eighth grade English class. By spring she was gone from our northeastern
Ohio school … but not from my life. Oh no, she will never be gone from my life,
for I know I will never be able to erase from my brain the memories of Vickie
Stone, that quiet, intelligent, profoundly mysterious
student who forever changed … well, everything
for me.[i]
I know that most of you have
probably read the first volume of Vickie’s story—I Discover Who I Am. This was just one of quite a few stories Vickie
gave me over a period of some months. Each was handwritten, each tied together
with red yarn. As a group, I’ve called her writings The Papers of Victoria Frankenstein … well, to be accurate, that’s
what Vickie called them.
She did not want me to write on her
stories, and she wanted them back as soon as possible. I was just supposed to
provide comments—on separate sheets of paper, mind you. But I was so struck by what Vickie was
writing that—without getting her permission, or even telling her—I began making
photocopies of her stories and keeping them in folders.
Later, after she’d disappeared so mysteriously
from our school, I received a postcard from her (I’ve never learned where it
was from) that communicated to me very
clearly that she had known all along what I was doing, copying her work. She
was not angry with me, just slightly amused, I think, that a teacher would do
something so close to being, well, dishonest.
I still have my doubts—very serious
doubts—about much of what Vickie wrote. It’s maddening, really, because there
are little indications all through her work that she is telling the truth. But
when I checked out some of the most fundamental parts of her stories, I could
find no evidence that any of it was real.
Some examples:
• She claimed to have lived in a
little town on the Ohio River called Franconia. There is no such town—not in
all of Ohio.
• She claimed to have had teachers
whose identities I’ve not been able to establish. The names she’s given just
don’t match up with the names of real teachers in Ohio.
• She has the annoying habit of
using the names—sometimes accurate, sometimes slightly changed—of persons who
were involved in one way or another either with author Mary Shelley (1797–1851)
or with Mary’s novel Frankenstein
(1818). Vickie said her best friend, for example, was named Harriet Eastbrook. And Vickie wants us to
believe that just by coincidence, the
name of the first wife of Percy Shelley (who became Mary’s husband) was Harriet
Westbrook.
• She wrote about a fantastical
field trip to Middle Island (on the Ohio River), where she witnessed evidence
of grave-robbing and of the creation of living creatures from parts of the
dead—including a missing classmate named “Blue Boyle,” who had grown to, well,
unbelievable proportions.
• Even more disturbing—and even
harder to believe—are her descriptions of an encounter with a huge serpent-like
monster in Lake Erie, a creature that only she
managed to see aboard a crowded ferry to Put-in-Bay. And then another adventure in an abandoned
lighthouse on uninhabited Green Island in Lake Erie, a place where, again, she
encountered an even more monstrous version of Blue Boyle.
• Back home, she says she survived
a killer tornado that drew into its vortex a mysterious woman named Claire Wahl
(“Aunt Claire”) who had helped raise Vickie.
• Vickie also portrays herself as
some kind of scientific and artistic genius, able to read difficult books at a
very early age (she said she read Frankenstein
at 4!), able to create in her basement workshop devices that are far beyond
what talented professional carpenters, engineers, and scientists could produce.
• Most difficult of all to believe,
however, is Vickie’s account of her discovery that she is in fact a relative of
Victor Frankenstein, who created the famous monster more than two centuries
ago. Vickie would have us believe that Victor Frankenstein was real, not just a fictional character.
She would have us believe that Mary Shelley based her famous story on an actual family named Frankenstein.
(Okay, there was one—but it’s
doubtful that Mary Shelley had known much, if anything, about them—and those
Frankensteins certainly did not
create monsters![ii])
She also expects us to believe that
members of that Frankenstein family survived, and that one descendant,
embarrassed by the Frankenstein reputation, changed the family name to Stone,
emigrated to America, married, and had a daughter named … Victoria. The very
Victoria (Vickie) Stone whose stories I am now editing and publishing. Oh, and
Vickie’s mother died shortly after childbirth—just as Mary Shelley’s had in
1797. Another coincidence?
I will only say this much more: I
have not changed a single word that Vickie gave me. (But I have been very tempted to do so!) However, I have, from time to time, provided
notes at the end of her text, usually to provide additional information, but
sometimes to raise questions and doubts about what Vickie has written.
And so I give you Part II of The Papers of Victoria Frankenstein: Her
Homework Ate My Dog. These papers cover events that occurred during her year
in seventh grade—1995–1996.
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