Ten Miles Past Normal

Chapter Twenty


The Good Old Boy Blues





When I walk into the library on Monday afternoon, Verbena is sitting at our usual table, but she has company, a boy I recognize from Friday’s Jam Band session. Jason somebody. I notice that Verbena hasn’t unpacked her purse snacks, hasn’t pulled her journal from her backpack.

“Jason and I are headed for the cafeteria,” she says when I reach the table. “You want to come?”

“It’s sloppy joe day,” Jason informs me. “You don’t want to miss that.”

I drop my pack on the table and ponder. Lunch in the cafeteria? After all these months—well, all two and a half of them—of social seclusion? Lunch with at least two other people, presumably spent chatting away over our yellow trays, ducking the napkins and empty milk cartons being lobbed from one jock table to another? Maybe waving at a friend walking past, yelling out a joke to a passing acquaintance?

“I’ve already eaten at my locker,” I say finally. “I’d look stupid just sitting there.”

“I’m serious, man, the sloppy joes are exponentially good,” Jason insists. “If you don’t have any money, I’ll buy one for you. You can pay me back at your earliest convenience.”

Wow, talk about your offers impossible to refuse.

Even before we walk in the door, a feeling of post-traumatic-stress-syndrome panic hits me. I flash back to those early days of lunch in the cafeteria, me eating alone at one of the small, round loser tables, the only kids making eye contact clearly those who had witnessed some aspect of the amazing Farm Girl. A smirk meant they’d seen me on Hay Head Day; an exaggerated scratching of the calf meant they’d seen the worm castings rash in PE.

That’s all in the past, I tell myself as I follow Verbena and Jason through the sloppy joe line. How many dramas and embarrassments have taken the place of mine in the collective memory of Manneville High since then? Hundreds of broken zippers and visible bra straps, numerous incidents of public flatulence, teeth plagued by spinach, breath overwhelmed by nasty-smelling bacteria, stupid answers to easy questions, public declarations of love met with icy silences. I’d had a few unfortunate situations early in the semester. Who would even remember?

We carry our trays to a table in the middle of the cafeteria, neither prominently located nor tucked away from the fray. After I’m done eating my sloppy joe—which was, just as Jason promised, remarkably tasty—I lean back in my chair and look around. Now that I’m sitting in the cafeteria with friends, happily blended in, it doesn’t look like such an intimidating place. Okay, I wouldn’t set my tray down at the cheerleaders’ table without an engraved invitation, and the kids in the chains and leather won’t be getting an unsolicited hug from yours truly any time soon, but other than that, it’s not so scary.

I see Stoner Guy No. 1 from the bus walking in the direction of our table and I smile. Sure, he was part of one of the most humiliating moments of my high school career, but hey, he’s a stoner, he’ll never remember when—

“Yo, Skunk Girl, you smelling up the joint today or what?”

A few people at nearby tables turn to look at me. Skunk Girl, somebody repeats, and there are a few stupid twitters in response.

“I mean, dude, that was some nasty stuff on your shoe,” Stoner Guy No. 1 says, coming closer. “Goat, right? Price you pay for living on a farm, I guess.” He starts strumming an air guitar and sings, “‘They all asked about you, down on the farm, the cows asked, the pigs asked, the horses asked too.’”

He looks up at me and grins. “Little Feat, dude. Anyway, Skunk Girl, you don’t smell so bad today, but man, I’ll tell you, that morning—whew!”

Now even more people are looking at us, and some are calling out questions to Stoner Guy No. 1, asking if I’d been sprayed by a skunk or just smelled like a skunk naturally.

“Could we get out of here?” I plead with Verbena and Jason. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

“I’ve got a beer in my backpack,” Jason tells me sympathetically. “Wanna go drink it? ’Cause you look like you could use a beer right about now.”

I nod. The first day of school, if you’d told me I’d be the kind of girl who drank beer on school property, I would have laughed in your face. Not the future president of the student council, no way.

Now it seems like the only sensible thing to do.

But just as I’m about to get out of my seat, I think of Cletus Miller, the Freedom School student who didn’t learn to write his name until he was ninety-two. Imagine that, sitting down at a desk at the age of ninety-two and being taught the alphabet. Imagine sounding out the letters—C as in cat, L as in lemon—and painstakingly writing them down in your notebook.

I wonder what sort of names Cletus Miller got called when he went to register to vote. Probably something a lot worse than Skunk Girl. Whatever they called him, I bet Cletus Miller ignored them and just kept on writing his name.

I think it’s safe to say what I’ve had to put up with in ninth grade pales in comparison to Cletus Miller.

“Hey, Stoner Guy!” I yell out, and Stoner Guy No. 1 breaks off comparing the smell of goat manure to that of dog crap and looks at me. “Give peace a chance, why don’t you?” I say in my politest, most nonviolent voice.

His mouth drops open. “Huh?”

“Shut up,” I clarify.

“Dude,” he says. “That hurts.”

“Still want that beer?” Jason asks as we watch Stoner Guy No. 1 make his way to the exit.

“I’m good,” I tell him. “But I wouldn’t mind another sloppy joe.”

I’m about to carry my tray back to the food line when I see Mrs. Welsch standing at the cafeteria entrance, looking a little lost. Has the absence of her two most loyal lunchtime customers unnerved her? Sure enough, when she sees me she waves and looks relieved.

“Janie! Your dad just called, honey,” she says, coming toward me. “Well, he called the office, actually, and someone told the secretary you were probably in the library, so they came and told me, and I knew you were here. You need to call him back, okay?”

“What’s wrong?” I stammer, putting my tray down on an empty table.

Mrs. Welsch consults the piece of paper in her hand. “He says to tell you it’s not an emergency, but he did have something he wanted to tell you. And here’s his cell phone number, in case you don’t know it by heart.” She hands the paper to me. “You can use the phone in my office. No cells in school, dear.”

Mrs. Welsch’s office is at the back of the library. Stacks of books are everywhere and the floor is littered with copies of Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal bookmarked with yellow sticky notes. “I’ll just clear a path for you,” Mrs. Welsch tells me, scooping up magazines. “After last spring’s budget cuts, I don’t have an assistant anymore, and the student intern they gave me this semester is, well”—she looks at me with a pained expression—“not at all interested in books or keeping things in order around here.”

Then she pushes a pile of papers to the side of the desk and offers me a seat. “Just punch nine for an outside line,” she says. “Now I’ll give you some privacy.”

When my dad answers, the first thing he does is assure me that nothing has happened to my mom or Avery.

“Is it one of the goats?” I ask. “Nothing happened to Loretta Lynn, did it? I was worried about her this morning; it seemed like she was sort of sluggish, and she didn’t give much milk—”

My dad interrupts me. “It’s Mr. Pritchard, honey. He, well, he, uh—passed last night. Passed away. In his sleep. They called me from the nursing home around nine this morning to let me know, and the woman I talked to said he spent all day yesterday going on and on about what a wonderful time he’d had with you girls and visiting with Mrs. Brown. She said she hadn’t seen him so happy in a long time. Anyway, I just thought it was important to let you know.”

“Uh, okay,” I say, unable to think of anything more substantial to say.

My dad seems to understand. “I’m sure it’s a shock, since you just saw him Saturday. But, you know, he was a pretty old guy. Eighty-nine, and he’d known for a while he was close to the end. He had a great life, and with any luck, he’s running around in some other dimension with Hazel as we speak.”

When I get off the phone, I search around in my backpack for the picture I drew of Mr. Pritchard in his front yard, Mrs. Pritchard peeking around the corner of the house.

It cheers me up.

A little.

I need to tell Sarah and Emma, I realize. It will matter to them—a lot—that Mr. Pritchard died, even though they only knew him for one day. I stand up to leave, and all of a sudden I feel sort of shaky, like my knees aren’t working quite right. I guess the fact that Mr. Pritchard died matters a lot to me, too.

I walk down the hallway toward Sarah’s locker, feeling sadder by the step. Sad because Mr. Pritchard’s dead, and sad that I was born too late to help him and Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs. Brown with their school. Sad that I’m fourteen and I can’t figure out how to live large. Sad because I will never be as courageous and amazing as they were.

By the time I reach Sarah’s locker, I’m pretty convinced that my life has no meaning at all.

Sarah, on the other hand, is jumping up and down like life is not only meaningful, but also quite fabulous. “You’ll never believe it, but Monster has already gotten accordions for me and Emma! He brought them over last night, along with some books on how to play them, and we’ve already learned ‘How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?’!”

Then she pauses and looks at me. “Wow, you look seriously bummed. What’s wrong?”

So I tell her about Mr. Pritchard, and she slumps against her locker. “He was such a nice man,” she says, tearing up. “I’m not sure if we should tell Emma, though. In fact, that might be an awful idea.”

“We have to tell her,” I insist. “She’d find out anyway.”

Sarah sighs. “I know. But she was working up this scheme for Mr. Pritchard to come live with us, and she even had my mom halfway convinced that it was a good idea.”

“Really? Don’t you think Mr. Pritchard would have been sort of radical for your parents?”

“My parents are more fiscal conservatives than social conservatives,” Sarah says, grabbing her math book from her locker and slamming the door shut. “They’re actually pretty progressive on social issues. Well, except for premarital sex. And drug usage. And boy-girl sleepovers.”

We find Emma in the art room, twisting wire into a cage. Beside her on the table is a trio of shorn Barbies wearing prison uniforms. “I’m making a statement,” she tells us when she sees us in the doorway.

“What kind of statement?” I ask.

Emma shrugs. “I haven’t decided yet. All I know is if I want an A, I’d better make a statement.”

Sarah picks up a Barbie and examines it. “Is this one of my old Barbies?”

“It was in a box in the basement, with about a hundred other Barbies. If we have body image issues, I know why.”

I clear my throat. “We have something we have to tell you, Emma. It’s pretty bad n—”

“Mr. Pritchard died,” Sarah blurts out before I can finish. She says it so quickly it comes out more like “Mr. Pritcharddied.”

Emma doesn’t say anything at first. She walks over to the window and looks out and is quiet for a long time. When she turns around, she’s crying.

“That really sucks,” she says. “I mean, really, truly, in a seriously bad way.”

Sarah and I nod. Emma has summed things up pretty succinctly.

Emma goes to the table and picks up a Barbie, examining it, before dropping it to the floor. “Let’s go,” she says, grabbing her backpack from a chair. “We are so out of here.”

“Where are we going?” Sarah asks as we scramble to catch up with Emma, who’s already out the door.

“Just come on,” Emma says, not bothering to turn around. “I’m parked in the teachers’ lot.”

Sarah and I look at each other and smile. She’s parked in the teachers’ lot.

Now that’s the Emma we know and love.