conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Alternately, [and], School with the genre: Teen & Young Adult, Literature & Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first four paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff
  But, like I said, I was really shocked to find out that Gloria was married. I tried to imagine her married and I just couldn't. You know, you picture somebody in your mind and try to imagine them doing something different. It's hard. Like a guy who couldn't play any ball at all, all of a sudden becoming a professional ballplayer and signing up for a hundred thousand dollars or something. Not that Gloria wasn't okay or anything—it was just that when I thought of her I always thought of her just hanging out on the block and being fourteen. I said to myself, now how could she be married? Dig? Then I started thinking and I realized that Gloria was fourteen when I first knew her and that was a little over five years ago so she must be going on twenty now. And when I started thinking about Gloria I started thinking about the rest of the people—I'm going to call them kids—that I grew up with. I mean, they were a good bunch of people. Sometimes I think back on them and realize that I haven't come across a whole group of people like that since.
  I don't want you to get the impression that my life is a drag or anything. I'm eighteen and I think I'm doing okay. But things change when you get older, I guess. It's harder to make friends because you end up asking more from everybody. You know, when you go out with a girl and you get serious you don't want her to go out with anybody else. Or when you get a job you want everyone else on the job to do their share. But when you're a kid you don't have to worry about things like that. At least I didn't have to.
  About two days after we moved in I came downstairs to sit on the stoop and that's when I met some of the other kids. I had a feeling they were going to be all right from the start because they started kidding around with me right away. They were a little older than me, about a year or so, but that was really together because I liked hanging out with older people. Most of them were thirteen at least and some even fourteen.
  That day I went downstairs they were all wearing dungarees. They had patches on the knees, the kind you sew on, with funny little sayings or birth signs. One guy, a kind of dark-skinned dude with wide shoulders, had a Sagittarius patch on his right knee and a Leo patch on his left knee. One Spanishy-looking girl with long hair had butterflies all over her pants. It was a cool-looking group. All the guys wore sneakers and the girls had on sandals.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Everyone turned toward the man that was standing with Mrs. Jones. He was tall and wore glasses and looked a little bit like my father except that he was smoking and my father never smoked.
  I didn't think it was so bad but I decided not to say anything. I kind of knew that everyone there knew a little bit more than I did.
  The next day I saw Clyde and he asked me what the guy had said. The guy's name was William, by the way. I kind of told him what little I knew. Clyde said that his mother had run a lot of things down to him and he understood them some.
  But I didn't mind. I had found out that there was a lot of things that I didn't understand. And even though it was better if I knew what was going on all the time and understood everything, I found out that if I didn't know everything it was okay, too. I really felt close to Kitty, and I asked her, after a while, how she felt about it. I told her that I liked her, too. I wanted to tell her that I liked her a whole lot but I got ashamed. She told me that she was real mad at her mother for going out with that guy even though she didn't feel that her mother was doing wrong or anything like that. I asked her why and she didn't know. I kind of think it was because she felt her father might not be her father any more if her mother was going out with somebody else. Everybody seemed to feel one way but couldn't go along with the way they felt because it didn't seem right. Nobody felt that Clyde's mother should go out with another man, but they knew it was really okay.
  Anyway, I was falling in love with Kitty all over again. She told me that she liked me a lot, too. I was going to ask her to be my girl friend, but I was afraid she might say no and tell everybody so I didn't ask her.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He went on into the living room and turned on the television without saying anything else. Later my mother came into my room and said thanks. I asked her for what and she said for whatever it was I said to my father. She can be cool when she wants to, too.
  Another thing that happened that same summer was that they tore down some buildings in the next block and made new projects. This didn't seem like much but it was really an important thing. The neighborhood started to change. When all the new people moved in we ended up going to school about a half mile away. We had to take a bus to get there. And slowly the things that made the neighborhood changed and it wasn't the same. I think it had something to do with the new buildings and the fact that new people replaced Clyde and Sam and them in my life. Oh, I still see Clyde when he comes in from school. He dropped out a year and then went back because of money troubles. Sam I see in the summer and sometimes at track meets. He plays baseball in school and runs track. He thinks he's going to play with the major leagues someday. I haven't seen Gloria but, as I told you, I found out that she got married.
  The one thing I won't forget is how close we all were. How much we cared for each other. I just hope I'll always have people to care for like that and be close to. And I'd like to be able to teach somebody else that feeling.
  Do you know what I wonder? I wonder if sometimes any of the Good People sit around, wherever they are, and say, "Hey, remember old Stuff?" I bet they do.