Ten Miles Past Normal

Chapter Fourteen


In Which My Mother Totally Loses It Once and for All





By 9 p.m., my mom has updated her blog to let the whole world know that in three weeks we will be hosting a humongous outdoor party on our mini-farm, and all her readers are invited.

By 10 p.m., her old editor at the Manneville Gazette, Maura Gibbs, having read my mom’s blog, has IM’d her with a request for a feature-length article to run the week before the party.

By 10:15 p.m., my mom has informed me that I should invite all my friends, promising we will have a rip-roaring good time.

By 10:16 p.m., I have informed my mom that I plan to be in New Zealand on the day of the hootenanny, or at least spending the night at Sarah’s.

By 10:18 p.m., my mom is complaining to my dad that she doesn’t know what’s happened to the old Janie, who was so enthusiastic about everything.

By 10:18:32 p.m., I have stomped upstairs, muttering how I don’t understand why my mother is so insistent on ruining my life.

I mean, imagine it. Your mother is inviting the whole community to your backyard to eat hot dogs and sing folk songs. Bring your beat-up guitars, your whining fiddles, your world-weary mandolins, your honkin’ harmonicas! Bring your overalls, your bandanna-wearing dogs, your hayseeds, your green-life Porta-Potties! Bring your homemade bread and lentil stew and wheat germ brownies! We’re gonna have us a good ol’ time down on the farm.

It’s over the top, you’ve got to admit.

After I stew a little while, sitting on my bed and plucking the strings of the bass Monster’s given me to practice on, I realize it’s not the gathering of the Whole Foods tribes I mind so much, it’s the publicity. It’s being identified with the Farm Freak Family that bugs me. I know a lot of kids who wouldn’t mind at all: crunchy granola types who hang out on the school steps every morning kicking around a Hacky Sack, the eco kids who wear sandals made from tires and gossip about global warming under a birch tree near the flagpole every morning, any vegan worth his or her salt. No offense, free country and everything, but I have spent the last two and a half months trying to distance myself as far from my Farm Girl identity as possible.

I remind myself that no one I know reads the paper, not even online. I mean, not even the adults, other than my parents. The circulation can’t be more than five thousand. I also remind myself that no one actually knows my name outside a circle of twenty people. I’m making too big a deal out of this.

I just wish I had fifteen minutes to get my life together before my mom comes up with yet another scheme to throw me off my game. First it’s the homemade wardrobe, now it’s the hippie-dippy back-to-basics sing-along. Next she’ll be investing in a printing press so we can hand out leaflets calling for mandatory composting toilets in every house in Manneville.

No one knows you’re related, I tell myself, taking in deep, calming breaths. No one has any idea.

“I read your mother’s blog this morning,” Mrs. Welsch tells me when I walk into the library Wednesday at lunchtime. “She’s such an interesting woman. I bought a chicken because of her. Sadly, a rat ate it, but I may buy another someday.”

“A rat ate it?”

“It was a rather small chicken. Of course, then a snake ate the rat, and I didn’t know whether to be happy or in fear for my life. Your mother never mentioned that chickens draw rats, and rats draw snakes.”

“You have to keep the feed inside the house,” I inform her. “Like you would dog food.”

Mrs. Welch’s eyes widen. “Ahhhh, very interesting. In any event, should I RSVP in a formal way to your mother, or just leave a comment on her blog?”

“You’re coming?” I catch myself from staggering back into the copier.

“I play a mean twelve-string guitar,” Mrs. Welsch says, and then she winks and gives me the thumbs-up sign. This is the longest conversation we’ve ever had, and suddenly Mrs. Welsch seems simultaneously more human to me and more baffling than ever.

To be honest, Mrs. Welsch is kind of freaking me out.

But I don’t tell her that. “Great,” is what I say instead. “Just leave a comment on the blog about the party, I think.”

“You’re having a party?” Verbena asks, coming up beside me. “When? Am I invited? What should I wear—costume? Ball gown? Tux?”

“My mom’s having a party,” I clarify as we head to our usual table. “And everybody in the world is invited, and it doesn’t matter what you wear, just as long as you sing along.”

It takes me almost the whole lunch period to explain to Verbena what a hootenanny is and why my mom is all fired up about having one.

“It’s like this old-fashioned thing,” I tell her, “like they used to have in the sixties.”

“The 1960s?” Verbena asks, clearly confused.

“No, the 1560s,” I reply, exasperated. “Come decked out in your best Christopher Columbus attire.”

Verbena leans over and draws a frowny face on my hand with a black Sharpie. “Don’t be sarcastic,” she admonishes me. “It’s just that I’ve never heard of a hootenjammy—”

“Hootenanny,” I correct her, sighing.

“Hootenanny,” she says. “And I’m trying to understand. People are going to come over to your house and sing songs? Together?”

“Like one big happy family. With guitars. And, if we’re lucky, ukuleles.”

Verbena shrugs. “I think it sounds like fun, and your mom sounds like a neat person. Original. My mom never invites anyone over. She gets home from work, throws herself down on the couch, and yells, ‘I’m famished, someone go order take-out.’ That’s why I’m so fat—Chinese take-out and pizza.”

“You’re not fat,” I say. “You’re really not. Besides, skinniness is overrated.”

“Tall, skinny people always say that,” Verbena complains. “You have no idea how hard it is to be five-four. I eat one piece of chocolate, I gain five pounds. By the way, what kind of food is your mom serving at the hoot—uh—hootah-whatever?”

Now we get to the only part of my mom’s scheme that doesn’t irritate me. “She’s having it catered. Allen and Sons’ barbecue, hush puppies, and slaw. The nectar of the gods.”

Verbena closes her eyes and gets a dreamy expression on her face. “Mmmm, I love hush puppies, especially when they’re just out of the fryer.”

“I have a friend who works at Allen and Sons. I bet he’d get you all the hush puppies you wanted.”

Allen and Sons is where Monster has a job as a pig smoker and chief hush puppy fryer. “Stop by, I’ll hook you up with some ’cue,” he told me when he dropped me off at home on Monday. Looking across the table at Verbena, I have a sudden vision of the two of them as a couple. He’s big and tall, she’s short and curvy, and she probably wouldn’t mind that he was big, and I know he wouldn’t mind that she was curvy, and they’re both—well, unique.

“You want to come with me to Jam Band Friday?” I ask her, thinking I can introduce them and see if any sparks fly. “I could use some friendly support.”

“I guess so,” Verbena says, popping a sugar-free coffee-flavored toffee into her mouth. “You don’t think they play really loud, do you? Really loud music gives me headaches.”

Hmmm, maybe Monster and Verbena aren’t a match made in heaven after all. Still, you never know.

Jam Band meets at 3:25, right after the last bell Friday afternoon, and I’ve promised Monster I’ll be there. I’m not sure becoming the Jam Band’s lone girl bass player is going to help me in my quest for the title of Most Normal High School Student Ever, but at the very least it will up my coolness quotient a good 150 percent.

Friday morning I drop off my bass in the band room. I have to say that one of the coolest moments of my life is walking into school carrying a bass case. One of the uncoolest moments was getting off the bus with it and trying desperately not to injure anyone, but the memory of my embarrassment was totally demolished as I walked by Stonerville, the outside area across from the bus drop-off where all the druggies and wannabe druggies hang out and wish they could smoke cigarettes like the high school stoners of yore.

“Hey, man, she’s got a Peavey,” a skinny, dreadlocked guy with half-lidded eyes called out, and I heard at least three “awesome’s” in reply. I wasn’t actually sure what a Peavey was until I looked down at my case and saw that’s what was written across the top.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” I ask Sarah in Great Girls and Women, even though I’m not sure I want her to come. Okay, quite frankly, I don’t want her to come. Remembering her bored expression while I played over at Monster’s, I can’t imagine it would be any fun to have Sarah watching me this afternoon. Add that to the fact that Verbena will be there, and who knows what Verbena might say. Something along the lines of Wow, Sarah, the way Janie describes you, you sound like a huge pain in the butt, probably.

“No, I’m going over to Whole Foods for a tasting,” Sarah says as she shoves her books in her backpack. “The manager says she’s got a new line of fair-trade chocolate I’m going to love. We’ll see. That last batch they got in from Chile was pretty lame.”

“That’s awesome,” I tell her, trying not to sound too relieved. “Too bad you’re going to miss Jeremy play, though.”

“Oh, I’m going to watch him play tomorrow night, didn’t I mention that?”

I drop my pen. Since when did Sarah make Saturday night plans that didn’t include me? “Uh, no. You didn’t mention that, as a matter of fact. Where’s he playing?”

“Sid’s,” Sarah says rather nonchalantly, zipping up her backpack. “You know, over at Carr-Mill Mall?”

“I know where Sid’s is,” I reply testily. “It’s my mom’s favorite place to eat, remember?”

“Used to be,” Sarah corrects me. “Before she turned against it.”

Sid’s is this great retro diner where we used to go all the time, back before life on the farm. It was the perfect restaurant for Avery, since Avery loves pancakes and Sid’s serves pancakes all day long, and back in the old days my mom couldn’t make a pancake to save her life. We used to go at least once a week.

“She’s against all restaurants now, not just Sid’s,” I inform Sarah. “They’re environmentally incorrect. Like, at Sid’s, they bring you water even if you don’t ask for it, and a lot of their produce isn’t locally grown.”

Sarah pretends to be shocked. “Horrors!”

“Yeah, well, you know my mom. So Jeremy’s playing at Sid’s?”

“At the Saturday night open mic in the back room,” Sarah says. She stands up at the sound of the bell. “Emma told me, actually. She’s convinced my parents to let her out of the house whenever I need a ride somewhere, and Emma decided I needed a ride to Sid’s on Saturday to hang out at the open mic. Some friend of Todd’s is playing fiddle in an old-time band.”

We walk out the door together, but instead of making a beeline for Jeremy’s locker, I turn left to head for the band room, and Sarah heads for the gym.

“See you tomorrow afternoon,” I call after her. “You know, to go talk to Mr. Pritchard?”

Sarah doesn’t even turn around. “See ya!” she calls out cheerfully, waving a backward hand.

I’m just about to get seriously depressed when Monster appears at my side. “You ready to jam, man? You been practicing?”

I nod. “An hour a day for four straight days,” I tell him. “I’m awesome.”

“I believe it,” Monster says with a grin. “I bet you’re a rock-and-roll machine.”

I search my brain for a witty reply, but the butterflies in my stomach are distracting me. In five minutes I’m going to be plucking away at a bass guitar in a roomful of strangers, not counting Monster and Verbena. Whose idea was this? Mine? How could it be my idea? I’m not a bass player. I’m not a rock-and-roll machine. I probably won’t know any of the songs. Why didn’t I ask Monster what songs they play?

My nerves must be showing, because Monster pats me on the back and says, “Don’t sweat it, dude. Just a bunch of misfits and malcontents in there. Besides, they’ll be too busy trying to show off for you to notice if you don’t hit every note.”

“Show off for me?”

“Yeah, man, you kidding?” Monster grins. “A cute chick with a bass is a pretty irresistible thing, you gotta admit.”

And there it is again, what I’ve come to think of as the Big Feeling. I don’t know what it means or where it comes from.

All I know is at this very minute, I’m feeling it.

I’m the cute chick with a bass.

Now that’s a reputation I can live with.