Ten Miles Past Normal

Chapter Eleven


A Night in the Suburbs





I sneak a glance at my mom’s expression as she steers the car onto Victoria Lane. Is there any sign of regret? A flicker of nostalgia for our days in suburbia, where mowing the lawn only takes twenty minutes? Does she miss her old neighbors, not just the Lymans, but the Bowermans and the Lees, the Pauls and the Grahams? Now her only neighbors are chickens and goats, and I can vouch for the fact that they never throw block parties.

But my mom seems lost in thought, which probably means she’s mentally composing her next blog post as opposed to mourning her suburban past. I bet it’ll start, “I was driving through my old neighborhood the other day . . .” and will contain all sorts of musings about how she’s found herself on the farm. Which, okay, she sort of has. Back when we lived on Victoria Lane, my mom was stressed out a lot. She had work, she had preschool board meetings, she had bad dinners to prepare, and two little kids to get to bed. She drank a lot of wine at dinner and ranted about property taxes and what an idiot her editor was. Now she hardly drinks at all, unless she’s had a particularly egregious crafting disaster, and she’s her own editor.

When we pull up to the curb in front of Sarah’s house, we both look across the street to our old house. As I’ve done on more than one occasion since starting high school, I imagine what my life would be like if every morning found me strolling leisurely down Victoria Lane to the bus stop on the corner instead of scampering through a minefield of animal droppings and other farmyard hazards. I’d get on the bus and not one person would feel the need to yell, “It’s Skunk Girl! Everybody plug your noses!”

I turn and stare out the windshield. It suddenly occurs to me how sad this is—that in only two months’ time I’ve gone from a girl who daydreamed about running for student council and joining the yearbook staff to someone who fantasizes about blending in so thoroughly that everyone forgets she exists.

I don’t bother knocking on the Lymans’ door; I just go right in. “I’m here!” I yell from the front hallway, and this feels so good to say, I say it again. “I’m here! What’s for dinner?”

“Pot roast!” Mrs. Lyman calls. “Tell your mom when you go home that I made it with locally grown beef.”

I poke my head into the kitchen. “Have you been reading her blog?”

“Religiously,” Mrs. Lyman reports. “I like reading it out loud to Henry. You should see the steam coming out of his ears when your mom writes about sustainable development!”

Sarah’s in her room, working on her laptop. “Did you know Mr. Pritchard is famous?” she asks me as I flop down on her bed. “Emma’s the one who told me, actually. She’s read all about him.”

“Have you asked her to help us with the project?”

Sarah shakes her head no. “But I’m getting her interested. She was actually impressed that you knew Mr. Pritchard. When I told her about Mrs. Pritchard helping people learn to read and write so they could vote, her eyes practically popped out of her head. She was totally into it.”

I can’t help but grin. Emma’s impressed that I know Mr. Pritchard. Suddenly I feel like a star. “I’ll tell her all about him at dinner. Maybe we could take her over to the nursing home so she could meet him.”

Sarah holds up a hand. “Let me be the one to drop that little morsel of incentive,” she tells me. “With Emma, it’s all about the timing.”

At dinner Mr. Lyman quizzes me about my grades, concerned that I’m not doing all that well in Algebra I. “This is the year it all starts to count, Janie,” he lectures. “You’ve always been a great student. Don’t let the high school social scene distract you.”

Sarah rolls her eyes, and I try not to giggle. I don’t know what strikes me as funnier, the phrase “high school social scene” or the idea that I might be a part of it.

“Learning to socialize is an important part of an education,” Emma points out to her father. “Grades aren’t everything.”

Mr. Lyman pointedly ignores her. A tension falls over the table, as though Emma opening her mouth has violated some rule of etiquette. This is the part I don’t like about eating with the Lymans—they are not a relaxed people. At my house, things are pretty laid-back at the dinner table. My dad jokes and tells stories, my mom gives the farm report, and Avery always has something adorable to say about life in the third grade. Even on those occasions where I can’t bring myself to contribute one word to the discussion and Avery’s adorability scrapes on my last nerve, I sort of enjoy hanging out. The food’s good, and nobody calls me Skunk Girl.

I feel totally awkward, sitting here in the Lyman family’s prickly silence. “So Emma,” I blurt out when I can’t take it any longer, “do you want to meet Mr. Pritchard?”

Sarah glares at me, but Emma looks interested. “How do you know him, anyway?”

So I explain about my dad’s latest oral history project and Mr. Pritchard’s yard art. “I’ve seen the cross a couple of times,” I say, sounding like a ten-year-old bragging about her latest trip to Disney World. “It’s really cool. In the summer, there are flowers blooming all over it.”

“It sounds obscene!” Mr. Lyman declares. “A burnt cross in your yard. It should have been taken down as soon as the flames were put out.”

“I think it sounds amazing,” Emma says quietly. “Totally amazing.”

The sudden sound of a motorcycle engine revving out on the driveway spurs everybody into action. “Time to head upstairs,” Emma says, pushing her chair away from the table with a loud scrape.

Mr. Lyman throws down his napkin. “No, you’re not, Emma! I told you I was going to call the police the next time he showed up.”

Mrs. Lyman stands and picks up her plate. “Another dinner ruined,” she says with a sigh. “Oh, well, I do think the local beef really is better.” She turns to me. “Tell your mom I said so.”

“Follow me!” Sarah grabs my arm and pulls me into the living room, where she presses her face against the window. “There’s Todd!” she says, signaling for me to look too. “He does this almost every night.”

“Is your dad going to call the police?” I ask, looking out the window at Emma’s boyfriend, who is standing in the shadow of the garage and looking up in the direction of Emma’s room. He laughs at something Emma calls down to him, then blows her a kiss.

“No, although he always says he’s going to. Trust me, there’s already been one big scene in our front yard. My dad doesn’t want another one.”

We head back into the kitchen, where we help Mrs. Lyman clear the table and volunteer to do the dishes. “So, when are you going to ask Emma if she wants to help us?” I ask Sarah as I scrub grease off the stovetop. “We probably should get to work pretty soon.”

“Well, I was thinking, maybe she could give you a ride home tonight,” Sarah says in a sort of dreamy voice. “And I could go too, and then we could—”

“Not going to happen,” Mrs. Lyman says from the other side of the kitchen counter, where she’s sorting through the day’s mail. “I’ll take Janie home. The way things are going, your father won’t let Emma out of the house until graduation.”

“Could Emma come along for the ride?” Sarah asked hopefully. “Or, you know, maybe she could be the one who drives us around for our project? We need someone to drive us, right? And you and Dad don’t have time, and it would help us get a good grade.”

Mrs. Lyman considers this. “Your dad might let Emma drive you for your project. Emphasis on the word ‘might.’ We should probably underplay the fact that the project is for a women’s studies class, however.”

“Good thinking, Mom,” Sarah says, smiling at Mrs. Lyman, who smiles back and says, “Well, that’s what they pay me for.”

I scrub harder at the spot on the stove, trying not to be jealous of how well Sarah and her mom get along. Oh, they have their disagreements and their bad days, and Sarah’s very vocal about her mother’s insufficiencies as a recycler, but in general they like each other. Maybe they have to, since Mr. Lyman and Emma so clearly don’t. Maybe you need at least one stable parent-child relationship in every family for the whole thing not to collapse.

Sarah comes over and squeezes my arm. “If my parents let Emma drive,” she whispers, “then she’s in the bag, believe you me.”

I smile at her and imagine driving around town in Emma’s VW. That’s one way not to blend in, I tell myself, and then I can’t decide if I find that idea exciting or absolutely terrifying.