Ten Miles Past Normal

Chapter Thirteen


Future Shock





Riding the bus back to Farm World this afternoon, it occurs to me that I’m on the verge of having an almost normal life, one with friends and activities and everything. When I got on the bus after the last bell, not one single person yelled out, “Skunk girl!” I looked around for a few seconds waiting for it, and then Steve told me to find a seat before he found one for me. So I did.

Even before that, it had been an interesting day. For instance, in art, pale Meg finally spoke to me. Well, first she dropped a rock on the table in front of me, and then she spoke. “This might help,” she said before heading to her corner. “Stones are elemental and beautiful. They’re everyday objects and they’re art.”

I had to admit, for a rock, it was pretty darn cute. And frankly, I could use all the inspiration I could get. The collage thing was not happening for me. I was trying. I’d ruined three canvases gluing stuff to them, No. 2 pencils and gum wrappers and a used-up tube of lipstick I’d found in the bottom of my backpack. But the junk I stuck on the canvases just sat there, like it was wondering why it wasn’t in a trash can where it belonged. I couldn’t bring myself to take Sarah’s words out of the envelope in my backpack, or the picture of the Pritchards. I didn’t want to ruin them.

I put a fresh canvas on the table in front of me and put the rock in the middle of it. I was pretty sure the rock was quartz, if my seventh-grade earth science knowledge still served; it was white with pink streaks running through it. One side was perfectly smooth, as if the edges and points had been sheared off. I liked how it looked feminine and masculine at the same time.

I walked over to Meg’s corner. “Thanks for the rock,” I told her. “Unfortunately, I don’t know what to do with it.”

“If you like it, live with it a little while,” Meg suggested. “Look around for other things that remind you of it, or have some sort of intuitive connection for you.”

I glanced at the collage she was working on. She had glued jar lids and bottle caps over a large canvas—I noted a Gerber baby food jar lid and a Duke’s Mayonnaise jar lid and at least five Pepsi bottle caps—and had drawn orange and red concentric circles around each one so that her collage was practically pulsating.

“That’s really cool,” I told her. “I wish I could think of something like that.”

“You will,” said Meg. “You just need to relax a little.”

So I spent the rest of the class trying to relax, which was hard to do, as Chester and Lynnette were deeply involved in a thumb-wrestling tournament, but nothing came to me. The rock was pretty, but what could I do except maybe glue some more rocks next to it? Turn it into a science project? Drill holes and make a necklace?

And then, on my way to Great Girls and Women, I spotted a tiny paper parasol, the kind you get in fancy drinks, underneath the water fountain outside of the girls’ bathroom, the fountain that spits out warm water and is always clogged with gum, so nobody ever uses it. The parasol was pink and had tiny violet flowers painted on it. I took Meg’s rock out of my pocket and held it next to the parasol.

It was a match made in heaven. For the first time since Ms. Ashdown had introduced me to the insanity that was a Robert Rauschenberg collage, I thought maybe I could make this art thing work.

And this afternoon I had another glimpse of what having an almost normal life might be like, after the last bell, walking toward the bus line with Monster while he explained the contents of the CD he’d just handed me (“Lots of simple stuff—easy Strokes, some Rage Against the Machine, a couple of early Police tunes—just listen and try to play it by ear”). It seemed like every other person we passed had something to say—a “Yo, Monster-man” or a “Hey, dude,” and even one “Yo, Monster and the chick Monster’s walking with.” I felt warm and fuzzy with the sense of being included, even if I had no idea who these people were or how they got their parents’ permission for all the tattoos.

But I was also intensely aware that Sarah wasn’t walking with us. After our Jeremy Fitch moment (which was awkward, what with Sarah sticking to the same old script but clearly uncomfortable speaking her lines), she turned to me to begin the daily analysis, but before she could get started, Monster was standing behind us, wanting to know if I’d practiced any at home on the bass he’d lent me and holding out a CD he’d made for me to listen to. Before I knew it, Sarah had disappeared, and it was just me and Monster.

I kept looking at him sideways as we made our way down the hall, wondering why some people could totally be themselves and still be accepted by everyone, while other people—people who did everything in the world to fit in—were shunned like the runts of the litter. Walking next to Monster, I could only hope some of his mojo might rub off on me.

“So, okay, yeah, things are definitely better at school,” I tell Loretta Lynn as I freshen up the water in her pen after I’ve had a snack and changed into Farm World apparel. “I think people have completely forgotten about the goat poop incident.”

Loretta Lynn gives me a hurt look.

“No offense,” I tell her. “It really doesn’t stink at all. People are just—well, funny about poop, I guess.”

Believe me, I would know.

My sense that things are looking up seems especially true ten minutes later when I sit down at the kitchen table to check my Facebook page on Mom’s MacBook and see that I have a message from Emma, a definite first.

I hear you and Monster Monroe have a thing going on, the message begins, sans greeting. Who knew you were cool? So: Saturday. See if you can get us to see H.P. after lunch. I’ve got questions, I need answers.

Who said anything about me and Monster Monroe? Sarah? But she would know there’s nothing going on. So it must have been someone else.

I lean back in my chair, relishing the thought that there might be a rumor about me floating around school. An untrue rumor, granted, but a rumor nonetheless, and one that makes me seem kind of cool. I start to reach for the phone, which is resting on the pile of this morning’s papers, to call Sarah and see if together we can get to the bottom of this, but more to the point to have an opportunity to bask in this brief, tiny moment of Janie Gorman glory. A false rumor flying through the halls in my name!

Sweet.

So what stops me from picking up the phone? Sarah’s disappearing act this afternoon after Monster showed up? The thought she might pooh-pooh the very notion that tongues are wagging about me and Monster? Sort of kind of. But more than that . . .

I guess I’m afraid she’s a little mad at me, and I’m a little mad at her, only neither of us is mad for any real reason. I’ve seen it happen before with other girls—friendships that dissolved for no apparent cause or that just went bust because one friend decided to join band and the other friend joined Drama Club and their paths never crossed again.

That couldn’t happen to me and Sarah. Could it?

No, it can’t. If nothing else, we have a big project to do. A big project will bring us back together, no problem.

Not that we’ve broken apart. Not us.

So instead of dialing Sarah’s number, I dial the number for Pine Manor Assisted Living Estates and ask for Mr. Harlan Pritchard.

“You want to come talk to me about Mrs. Pritchard?” Mr. Pritchard asks in his raspy voice when I tell him about the project. “About the Freedom School?”

“Freedom School?” I haven’t heard anything about a Freedom School, but a little buzz of excitement tingles along my spine at the sound of those two words put together. Whatever a Freedom School is, it’s got to be a lot better than the deal they’ve got going on at Manneville High.

“That’s what they called it,” Mr. Pritchard explains. “Well, officially it was called a citizenship school, but folks got to calling it Freedom School. Hazel and Septima started it back in 1961. Septima Brown, that’s who taught with Hazel. She still lives in Manneville, if you girls want to visit with her. In fact, how ’bout we all ride over next Saturday? It’s been a long time since I paid Septima a visit.”

Me, Sarah, Mr. Pritchard, and Emma all riding to town in Emma’s baby blue VW bug.

How could I say no?

“Now tell me what that daddy of yours is up to,” Mr. Pritchard says, and I can almost hear him relaxing in his chair, getting ready to shoot the breeze, which we shoot for the next forty-five minutes. When I finally get off the phone I feel oddly refreshed, like I’ve just returned from a hike in the woods on a cool autumn afternoon. For a full five minutes I sit at the kitchen table, completely satisfied with my life.

Then, with the ferocity and high-speed winds of a hurricane, my mom rushes into the kitchen and announces, “Put it on your calendar! We’re going to have a hootenanny!”

And even though I have no idea what a hootenanny is, I already know it’s going to ruin everything.