Anyway, the job…I guess it’s cool. It helps kids, which, in a weird way, is what I was doing when I first started out with the whole lightning thing, and all (before I started ruining kids’ lives, instead of saving them, by helping to arrest their dads). Ruth got a job at this not-for-profit group. She heard about it off the Summer Employment board at school. She ended up going to Columbia, after being admitted to every single school she applied to.

A lot of people—like Ruth’s parents, and her twin brother, Skip, who went to Indiana University, and who is here in New York for the summer, working as an intern at a company down on Wall Street—think Ruth could get a better, more highly paid summer job, considering she goes to Columbia, which is an Ivy League school, and all.

But Ruth’s all, “I’m making a difference,” which is cool, because she is. What she does is, she organizes musicians and actors and stuff to go around to inner-city day-care centers and camps, and they help the kids put on plays or musicals or whatever, because the city doesn’t have enough money to hire actual, certified teachers for this.

At first I thought this was stupid—Ruth’s summer job, I mean. What can putting on a play during day camp do for some kid whose mom is a crackhead?

Then one day Ruth forgot her wallet at home and needed me to bring it to her. So I did, even though this put a major cramp in my practicing.

But it ended up being worth it. Because I saw right away that I was wrong. Putting on a play at camp can make a huge difference to a kid, even a kid with serious problems at home (not like having a dad in a U.S. detention center, but like having a junkie grandma, or whatever). It’s pretty cool to see a kid who’s never seen a play before suddenly ACTING in one. Or—which is the part where I come in—a kid who’s never played a musical instrument suddenly PLAYING one.

And it’s cool for me, too, since I get to do what I love doing best, which is play my flute. I mean, I suppose I could have gotten a summer job doing this in an orchestra.