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    Ten Miles Past Normal
    Ten Miles Past Normal
    Ten Miles Past Normal
    Ebook183 pages2 hours

    Ten Miles Past Normal

    By Frances O'Roark Dowell

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    From bestselling author Frances O’Roark Dowell, a “funny and winning” (Kirkus Reviews) tale of one teen’s quest for normalcy—and the much more exciting detours she takes along the way.

    Janie Gorman is smart and creative and a little bit funky…but what she really wants to be is normal. Because living on an isolated farm with her modern-hippy parents is decidedly not normal, no matter how delicious the goat cheese. High school gives Janie the chance to prove to her suburban peers that she’s just like them, but before long she realizes normal is completely overrated, and pretty dull.
         If she’s going to learn how to live large (and forget the haters), Janie will have to give up the quest and make room in her life for things from the fringe—like jam band, righteous chocolate, small acts of great bravery, and a boy named Monster.
         Ten Miles Past Normal is a quirky road map for life—and also a reminder that detours are not about missing out, but about finding a new way home.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtheneum Books for Young Readers
    Release dateMar 22, 2011
    ISBN9781416995876
    Author

    Frances O'Roark Dowell

    Frances O’Roark Dowell is the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Dovey Coe, which won the Edgar Award and the William Allen White Award; Where I’d Like to Be; The Secret Language of Girls and its sequels The Kind of Friends We Used to Be and The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away; Chicken Boy; Shooting the Moon, which was awarded the Christopher Award; the Phineas L. MacGuire series; Falling In; The Second Life of Abigail Walker, which received three starred reviews; Anybody Shining; Ten Miles Past Normal; Trouble the Water; the Sam the Man series; The Class; How to Build a Story; and most recently, Hazard. She lives with her family in Durham, North Carolina. Connect with Frances online at FrancesDowell.com.

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    Reviews for Ten Miles Past Normal

    4/5

    92 ratings23 reviews

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    • 3/5
      As a child, Janie miraculously convinced her parents to buy a small farm and move out into the countryside. She loved it then, but now that she's a freshman in a massive high school, she's rather embarrassed to be the "farm girl." She doesn't have but one friend, and isn't sure what her place in life is... she just wants to be normal.So of course, during the course of the book, she finds friends, finds some meaning in life, and comes to terms with the farm.I liked the characters (especially Monster and Verbena, the two new friends Janie makes) but found the farm side of the story rather superfluous. The farm life didn't seem to be relevant to anything else about the book. There were also a few elements that didn't really seem credible, and in a book based in the real world, they should have been. That Janie would be laughing stock at school because she had a strand of hay in her hair, or got a rash once, seemed a stretch. That she could learn to passably play a bass in one lesson, and that other friends later learned to passably play accordions in a short time, was unbelievable.I enjoyed Dowell's other books that I have read more than this one. It was decent, but not inspired.
    • 4/5
      In this suspenseful book called "Ten Miles Past Normal" the main character has a very good life in her young life. She is always coming up with great ideas on were to move. But however, every time she has an idea, her parents disagree on it. Then one day, i brilliant idea comes rushing full steam at her on where to move to. As she runs right to her parents to tell them, this time they think this idea is a very good one also. She was 13 when she thought on where to move to, and where her parents finally don't disagree on it. Her idea was to move to a small farm on the country side. After her family are about to move she says good bye to her best friend. When they arrive to their new house on a farm with animals from the old farmer, she is so sicked! She cant wait to make brand new friends and have the time of her life, but she doesn't realize that there are bully's at her school, waiting for a new target, and then it soon will start up. As she wakes up to the sound of sizzling bacon and the smell of god, its the first day of school, and she is so happy and in the best mood. As she milks the goat, she is wondering what to say to her new peers. But she never thought that poop could stick on her shoe and smell bad....real bad. Then when she smells like manure from the goat, no one wants to talk to her or even sit with her, and then she realizes, this is not going to be good. And soon the farm that she loved to death, she soon, starts to hate it, and the only thing keeping her mind off of the name calling like manure face, she realizes that music takes her mind of things. I think that this book was super interesting. I loved how it was full of suspense and always kept you on the edge of your seat not wanting to put the book down. I recommend you reading this to whoever loves reading drama books. I am not a big fan of these types of books, but this book "Ten Miles Pat Normal" is one of the best drama books i know. Read this book to find out what happens to Her, and her next move!
    • 3/5
      I’ve read other books by Dowell and really loved them, so I was disappointed when this one started out so slow. It seemed like nothing much was at stake, and the characters weren’t too interesting to me initially. A lot of them weren’t very well-developed, and therefore didn’t seem to play major roles in the story, even in the case of Janie’s blogger-mom and quirky little sister. Things picked up a bit past the halfway point, and by the end, I was completely invested. Worth sticking with if you’ve started it, but I recommend other books by her, like The Secret Language of Girls, The Kind of Friends We Used To Be, and Shooting the Moon.
    • 5/5
      Great book!
    • 3/5
      Fun coming of age novel but the narrator's voice sounded just a little too mature and insightful for a 9th grader.
    • 4/5
      I wasn't expecting much from this book. I ended up liking it a lot. Janie convinces her family to move to a farm because it would be so fun. By the time she gets to high school she is rethinking it. After a disastrous experience with goat poop she has to find a way to climb the popularity ladder and make some friends. So she learns the bass and joins jam band. All the while she is learning about the local civil rights movement and what it means to "live large"
    • 3/5
      Utterly predictable but entirely sweet. The characters are lovable and quirky. The bad guys aren't really bad, they're just 14. The good guys aren't really good, they're just.. you know.

      The parents are painted with a nice, realistic gloss- one can see why Janie is totally humiliated by her mom, but one can also see that her mom's pretty cool.

      Nothing much happens, a little growing up, a little self-awareness, a little flirting. It's again, a sweet story. It would make a fun beach read for a young teen, I think. I liked it but I didn't love it. 2.5
    • 4/5
      What a surprising book. A quick read but it packs a lot in. I love Janie and how honest she's portrayed. No major drama just the small everyday dramas of starting high school and fitting into new social structures while still forming an identity. It's hard to get the right but Dowell does to great success. The B characters are well formed and interesting and I always appreciate when there's a social justice message hidden in there.
    • 5/5
      What do you do when you live just slightly off from what everyone else is used to? This book is a wonderful story of how one girl deals with that issue in her life.Ten Miles Past Normal is a quick read, but that isn't at all a reflection on the quality of the book. I finished it quickly simply because I could not put it down. The writing is witty and interesting and the story has a deeper meaning than one would expect of a typical teen-finding-her-place book. There were references inside these pages that I actually found myself researching and have since added to my catalog of reading materials and expanded my knowledge of the history of the area I live in. Any story that can do that for a younger reader is most definitely worth having! Of course, it didn't hurt my bond with the story to find that many of the locations are actually in my own home town, but it made the read that much more enjoyable. However, I can promise that this review is not weighted by location itself, watching the younger generation go to the older generation with questions about their past and seeing the two groups work together to rediscover the history of their home town is something that can bring wonder to anyone, anywhere. You never know what you can learn about where you live until you ask someone who remembers what was. And you just might discover that fitting in isn't what you expected it should be.
    • 3/5
      Janie Gorman thought living on a "farmette" 5 miles out of town would be fun when she was nine, but now that she is a freshman in a huge high school ishe is feeling lost. Janie looks for friends and inspiration for "the courage to live large."
    • 4/5
      Ten Miles Past NormalFrances O'Rourk Dowell143656 EN FIC DOWELB.L: 5.8Points 7.0I thoroughly enjoyed this book from beginning to end. I would give it at least a 4 out 5 stars and recommend it to any of my 7th and 8th grade students. They place it in the chick/lit category, but there are so many male characters I think the book is appropriate for both sexes.In the category of "be careful what you wish for," fourteen year-old Janie tells her Mom and Dad she wants to go live on a farm. Her parents, Mom in particular, have just enough "hippie" in them to think this is a fantastic idea. Janie doesn't realize the difference between her fantasy of farm life contrasted with the realities of what that really means for a 14 year-old. When she gets ridiculed on the school bus and at school because she has goat poop on her shoes, the reality of farm life starts to hit home.The story is cleverly written, following Janie's school, home/farm, and social life through all of the various ups and downs of being a teenager. Janie's best friend Verbena is a strong friend who tries to up their social profile and status at school by encouraging Janie to join an after-school Jam Band with her. There they meet a wonderful cast of characters including Monster, who ends up being a very inspirational character in Janie's life.In the end the story is all about relationships and many very positive messages for young adults, both middle school and high school alike.At 200 pages this is a fairly easy read.
    • 4/5
      I'm really liking the contemporaries that are coming out of the young adult sector these days. They're smart and funny with great characters and interesting plot lines. TEN MILES PAST NORMAL is just such a book.Janie's parents have fallen in love with the country life, gone all-in on running a farm (albeit a little one), and, though Janie was the one who suggested it in the first place, she's now just trying to get through high school without having to wear handmade clothes or goat poop on her shoes (oops, too late for that). This year's been especially difficult because Janie's so isolated. Part of this is her fault and part is circumstance but she doesn't deal with it very well, choosing to isolate herself in the library rather than deal with the lunchtime crowd.There are so many great characters in this story, not just Janie but her best friend Sarah, a boy named Monster, Janie's family (love her parents!), Verbena, Mrs. Brown and Mr. Pritchard, and even the goats. Plus, there's a guy named Jeremy Fitch who reminds me so much of some of the boys in high school. You know the ones. They knew they were hot, and they'd make you feel like you were the center of the universe when they looked at you but they'd forget your name as soon as they walked away. *sigh* Bad Jeremy.I also liked the fact that there's a historical element to this story but it's integral to the story, not shoved down your throat. When Janie and Sarah have to write a paper on a historical figure, they first think of Sarah's older sister, who has a bit of a reputation around town. But it evolves into a Civil Rights-based project as they discover stand-out women who fought for equality in their own way.TEN MILES PAST NORMAL is an excellent addition to the young adult contemporary scene.
    • 5/5
      Ten Miles Past Normal by Frances O'Roark DowellFrom the inside flap:"Oh, the elusive dream of the normal high school experience.Well, dream on, Janie Gorman. The rooster crows at sunrise. You see, Janie is an unwilling player in her parents' modern-hippy-let's-live-on-a-goat-farm experiment ( regretfully instigated by a younger, much more enthusiastic Janie). Between milking the goats and enduring her mother's psuedo celebrity in the crunchy-mom blogosphere, Janie's finding it hard to have a normal highs school experience. She's smart. She's a little offbeat. She already has a funky vibe going: throw in a whiff of fresh goat poop, and she may just be eating lunch alone in the library forever.Without a U-turn in sight, Janie's looking for a shortcut back to normal - but she's missed that mark by about ten miles. If she's going to learn how to live large (and forget the haters), Janie will have to give up the quest for normal and make room in her life for things from the fringe - like a jam band and righteous chocolate, small acts of great bravery and a boy named Monster (yes, that is his real name).Ten Miles Past Normal is a quirky road map for life that's full of offbeat heroes and delicious goat cheese. Maybe life's little detours are not about missing out, but about finding a new way home."What I liked about this book: It's a light, easy, entertaining read. There has been a lot of discussion lately about how many young adult/teen books deal with such dark and gruesome topics. I have no problem with those books. I enjoy reading them, especially if they are well written. They are a wonderful way for teens to realize that they are not alone with the issues they face. Having said that, there are times when I think that we forget that sometimes the issues a teen faces are not always of a dark and troubling nature. Often teens are just struggling to find their way, to mature, and decide who they will be. That's what I like so much about Ten Miles Past Normal. Everyone's "normal" is different. But there are some basic teen issues that most readers can identify with - fitting in, being embarrassed by your parents - particularly your mother, starting high school, dating, and friendship issues. Ten Miles Past Normal touches upon all of these things in a light, often humorous manner. It is a great realistic fictional read for summer (or any time of year.)What I didn't like about this book: Can't think of thing that I didn't like. It's an all around good read.
    • 4/5
      I kept going back and forth debating with myself if I should read this book. The story didn’t seem that interesting to me, but I kept hearing some really good things about it. I finally decided to just read it!. It’s only 210 pages, so if I hated it, I wouldn’t waste that much time on it. Well, I loved it! I had it finished in a few hours. I thought it was such a great, cute, coming if age story, and I’m really glad I decided to read it!Ten Miles Past Normal is about Janie, who, when she was younger convinced her parents to move to the countryside and start a goat farm. Now she’s a freshman is high school, and living on a farm, with the possibility of going to school with goat poop on your shoe (Yes, that has happened to her!) just isn’t cool. All Janie wants in life is to be a normal teenage girl. It’s hard to be normal when you’re the only one is your school who lives on farm and your mom is mini-celebrity because she blogs about farm and family life. My favorite character would have to be Monster. He was sweet, fun, and just so real! I loved the scenes that Monster was in. I would have liked to learn more about him though.There was also a historical component to the book which I loved. Janie and her best friend Sarah had to do a class project and choose The Civil Right Movement. The girls learn that there town played a large part in the movement and taught local men and women how to read and write. Some of the locals were even arrested and attacked by the Klan because of it. Through this assignment, the girls learned a lot about themselves. I liked watching Janie grow as a character. She realizes that being normal is overrated (It totally is!) which is something that, I think, is very hard for teenagers to grasp.Ten Miles Past Normal is a short, entertaining read and I would highly recommend it!
    • 3/5
      Ten Miles Past Normal was a quick and fun read, but I found that it was boring at times. There was very little dialogue, though when there was any, it was mostly funny. The writing was great and clear and I found myself giggling and heartbroken along the way.Janie just wants to blend in at school. She convinces herself that she doesn’t need any new friends. After a few humiliating events, she just wants people NOT to notice her at all. I felt so sorry for her, because high school, as her mom said multiple times, is supposed to be a good time in someone’s life. She felt alone and couldn’t help but to think it was her fault, after all, she requested that they move to a mini-farm in the first place!Then Janie and her best friend Sarah finally get the chance to talk to Jeremy, the cute Jam Band kid. Without any musical talent, Janie and Sarah decide to join Jam Band and along the way meet Monster (yeah, that’s his real name ;) ) and very talented musician who makes Janie feel special.Janie and Sarah, while working on a school project, find out that a local named Harlan Pritchard played a big role in a historical event. Then they go off on a sort of adventure, along with Sarah’s older sister Emma (who is the wild child), to uncover the real stories and bring light to these heroes!I really loved the characters is this story. Everyone added a different aspect to it and they were all fun to learn about. My favorite was Monster. He was mature, but fun and made Janie feel like she didn’t just blend into the wall and go unoticed.I loved the little adventures and self-discoveries Janie has throughout the book, but I just couldn’t get past the dragging on of the first person point-of-view. I would have enjoyed more dialogue and feel that it could’ve added much more to the novel and broken up the monotonous vibe! Bottom line is that I feel it is a good, quick read, but nothing out of the ordinary.
    • 5/5
      I heartily enjoyed reading this book! I don't really know what to expect from Frances Dowell since this is her very first book I've read. But I'm telling you, Ten Miles Past Normal is way beyond disappointment! This is my kind of book or story when it comes to Contemporary or Realistic Fiction genres. Not too much complicated yet very captivating and highly entertaining.Frances Dowell's writing was brilliant and so vivid. The plot was really great and Frances did an amazing job on characterization as well, thus, the characters are all so lovely that it's just impossible not to like them. They are all so believable and vibrant and dynamic!Janie is this quirky, fun and typical fourteen-year-old girl but not really. She lives in farm (which is originally the idea of her 9 year-old self that she later regrets) with her father, little sister and her mother who runs a blog about their life on the farm and making her "almost" celebrity in their town because of it. She's got a bestfriend Sarah, who is likely going to be the next president in the near future and Emma, Sarah's sister, who is wild in a different way. And then there's Monster, the red-headed and six-foot tall guy who is actually sweet and totally unique in his own way.Beside the characters, I also love the humor on this one, there are ALWAYS laugh-out-loud moments on every chapter so it never gets boring. Ten Miles Past Normal is a sweet, fun and completely heartwarming story that teenagers can easily relate to. I'm giving this a solid 4.5 out of 5 stars and I highly recommend this to those who wants a fluffy yet utterly touching read.*I received this advance galley via Simon & Schuster's Galley Grab in exchange for an honest review.
    • 4/5
      I've been lucky that we got a whole new crop of books at work. So when I saw this one, I really couldn't pass it up! There's something about this cover that's so liberating. The pastoral view, the hair in the face and the bass just really add to the organic feel of this novel.This is the story of how Janie Gorman ruined her own life, found herself and realizes being normal is overrated. After a fourth-grade field trip to a farm, nine-year-old Janie proposes her family move to one. But once she enters high school, living on a farm is no longer cool especially when she feels shunned by her peers for her farm girl ways.All Janie wants to be is normal and that’s immensely hard especially because she isn't normal. Forget, about free goat cheese, all she wants is to have someone to talk to at the lunch table. Enter Verbena with the angelic face, Monster with the red hair and the Jam Band with it's motley crew. Verbena freely talks to her, Monster encourages her to play bass and the Jam Band gives her the outlet she needs to feel accepted. Along the way, Janie learns about local heroes and celebrates the lives they lived. She herself comes to terms with what makes her Janie and embraces her life ten miles past normal.This book is fun and sweet. I sincerely wish for a sequel following Janie and Monster (that's totally his real name...) It's good, clean fun and the characters in it remind me of my high school experience (as my best friend played the bass, and there was a guy like Monster.)
    • 5/5
      I loved the character Janie in this book. Maybe because I could identify with her. I grew up on a farm in Indiana. I loved it. In high school it was cool to be a farmer in a farming town if you were a guy. Most of the girls I knew who grew up on farms wanted to live in town. I'd give anything to live in the country again. Janie and I faced a lot of the same problems. She raised goats and chickens and my family raised pigs and chickens. I had chores to do just like Janie. My best friend lived in town. It was cool to spend the night with her. There was so much I could do there that I was unable to do at home. I was the shy type unlike Janie. Janie's best friend was the total opposite from her. Sarah tended to be a bit domineering. This story takes us for a ride through Janie's life as she finds new friends and learns it's okay to branch out from the old friends. The story is full of humor. Janie and her best friend Sarah along with Sarah's older rebel sister are arrested while working on a school project. The fact that Sarah, the rebel in the making is the one that gets them arrested is all the funnier. Janie makes friends with a girl she at first considers creepy named Verbena, only to learn they both are in the library for the same reason. She follows Sarah to watch the Jam Band because of a cute boy. She learns that she really enjoys jamming with the band even though Sarah doesn't. She learns a lot about herself and friendship and its many nuances from Jam Band member Monster.This is definitely a book I will put on my shelves for my students. They will be able to identify with the many characters as they themselves go through the rite of passage called growing up.
    • 3/5
      I wanted TEN MILES PAST NORMAL to be a delightfully quirky contemporary read along the lines of Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s D.J. Schwenk series. Sadly, it fell short of my expectations, but then again, I know that my expectations had been set pretty high, for there are still some elements of the book that charmed me.Janie is a protagonist you’ll like to like. She’s definitely unusual in her breadth of interests and thoughts, teetering right at that age where we’ve all struggled with fitting in versus letting our natural differences shine. At the same time, her character didn’t feel nearly complete enough to me. It was like she said she felt different and wanted to fit in, but in reading about her it seemed like she was more ordinary than the book wants to lead us to believe. I wanted MORE QUIRKINESS! MORE COOL-CRAZY MOMENTS! I didn’t get as much as I’d liked. Janie never entirely struck me as a truly unique girl enmeshed in the struggles of farm life and high school.The elements of a winningly quirky contemporary read were there, but it didn’t come together for me. A less picky reader, however, might find the many details that I felt didn’t piece together well enough, to be great just as they are.
    • 4/5
      Ten Miles Past Normal is one of those books where I got really sad when the last page came and had to leave all these interesting characters behind! This is definitely a book for anyone who went through high school feeling out of place but - hopefully, eventually, unexpectedly, happily - found a niche to call their own.Janie was such an excellent character! She was funny, easy to relate with, creative, level-headed, endearing, and when she finally found her groove in high school, Janie definitely became a rockstar - or she definitely had the makings of one (I say that because the ending really leaves it up in the air). Her family were interesting, her new friends were interesting, her best friend was interesting - seriously, Frances O'Roark Dowell has brought to life such fascinating characters that I wish they had gone to MY high school.What's unusual is that there really isn't any major romance arc. I say "unusual" because I like to have a little romance to further whet my curiosity. While I kept my eye out for one and thought there could have been one, Ten Miles Past Normal didn't need one. Janie didn't really need a guy. I didn't really need the romance to drive a story. The characters, like I said, really took off with the story and I gladly followed their lead! It was refreshing, truth be told, to see how Janie carved her own place in the world, without the support of a love interest and the distracting desire to have one.A really great contemporary, Ten Miles Past Normal delighted me with its larger-than-life characters and brought back fond memories of me not being normal during high school.
    • 5/5
      Janie is coping with the horrors of starting high school. She really wants to be normal but she really isn't. She lives on a hobby farm and her mom blogs about living the simple life. She is in a new high school and all of her friends have different classes and a different lunch. She feels lost and alone. But gradually she begins making new friends including a boy named Monster and a girl named Verbena. Most of the adventures are the daily sort of thing but she does go with her dad, who teaches folklore at the university, to visit a man who was influential in the early days of the civil rights movement. Janie wants to live large like he did. Sweet story!
    • 3/5
      All Janie wants is to be a normal teenager. It is a couple of days into freshman year and she is already known as the girl that walked around with hay in her hair. Why did her 10 year old self ever think that living on a farm was a good idea?Ten Miles part normal is a book about growing up and fitting in. While other books I have read to live in a fantasy, this book was like returning to my past, minus the farm. I was an insecure freshman once, too.Janie loves the farm, but lets other's opinion dictate how she feels. Whats funny is she wants to be normal, but her role model is one of those rebellious against the grain types. I don't think Janie realizes she doesn't want to be normal, she wants to be noticed.A cute story about growing up and learning to be yourself, Janie takes my back to my high school years. This isn't my usual type of book... a little too young and way to country for a twenty-something city girl like me... but I think people will appreciate this book and enjoy reading Janie's journey.
    • 4/5
      Okay, so it might have been Janie's suggestion that her family move to a farm, but there is a lot of differences between what a 9 year old thinks is cool and what a 14 year old freshman in high school thinks. She's tired of being called "Skunk Girl" just because of some goat poop on her shoe one morning on the bus. She's tired of hiding out in the library because the lunch room is just too embarrassing--she doesn't have the same lunch period as any of her old friends, and barely any classes with them. And she's REALLY tired of her mom's blog, where she talks about all sorts of stuff about the farm and the family that Janie would rather not have shared with anyone, ever. But then she meets Verbena, the Tattooed Girl (okay, they are only Sharpie tattoos, but she has a LOT of them), and Monster (his real name, proving to her that perhaps her parents are not the MOST terrible people on the planet) and learns to play the bass, and she comes to see that being "ten miles past normal" is not such a bad thing to be. This book is lots of fun and fits nicely among Dowell's acclaimed and award winning other titles.

    Book preview

    Ten Miles Past Normal - Frances O'Roark Dowell

    Chapter One

    More Tales of the Amazing Farm Girl

    No one can figure out where the terrible smell is coming from, but everyone on the bus this morning can smell it and has an opinion.

    Dude, I bet we just ran over a skunk! yells out Stoner Guy No. 1 from the back of the bus. That happened to us when I was a kid. We had to get rid of our car, ’cause the smell was, like, permanent.

    No way, dude, comes the reply from his compadre, Stoner Guy No. 2. That’s not skunk. That is definitely fecund matter we’re smelling.

    "Fecal, dude, fecal," Stoner Guy No. 1 corrects him.

    That’s what I’m saying, dude.

    As it turns out, what we’re smelling is my shoe. Or, more to the point, the fecund matter that has attached itself to my shoe.

    Goat poop.

    The general din that erupts around me when the source of the terrible smell is traced to my left foot mostly consists of hooting, jeering, and a collective plea for me to throw the offending ballet flat out the window.

    No throwing anything from the windows, Steve, our bus driver, yells out from the front. I don’t care how bad it stinks.

    All the kids sitting near me move to the back of the bus, cramming in three and even four to a seat, so I’m sitting alone in a sea of empty rows. Not just my face, but my whole body, has turned hot lava red.

    Farm Girl strikes again.

    I mentally retrace my smelly steps to the bus stop, back down the driveway to the house, in through the front door, out through the back door, and all the way to the goat pen. Milking the goats every morning is the first chore of my day, and on school days, when I’m running late, I sometimes risk wearing my civilian clothes, careful not to squirt or spill any goat milk on my jeans, and very, very careful to avoid the fragrant goat poop pellets.

    This morning I was running later than usual and milked the girls at warp speed. I recall being proud not to have gotten any milk on myself or even on the ground. Clearly I should have focused less on the goats’ milk and more on their other bodily excretions.

    As soon as the bus pulls up to school, I make my escape and sprint to the girls’ bathroom on the second floor by the art room, hoping it won’t be as populated as the more conveniently located first-floor bathroom. I find two girls huddled by the radiator grille, one crying, the other comforting her. They appear to be the only people in here. The comforter glares at me for invading their space, and I smile back lamely, holding up my shoe.

    Unfortunate incident, I explain, sounding possibly even dumber than I feel. Just ignore me.

    The sobbing girl sniffs the air and gasps, What’s that smell?

    I grab a wad of paper towels from the dispenser. My shoe. Sorry. I stepped in some goat poop this morning. It must have been really fresh, too, because usually goat manure doesn’t stink that much. The pellets are generally pretty dry.

    Sobbing Girl’s eyes widen in recognition. Aren’t you in my PE class? Didn’t you, like, one time have this horrible rash on your legs? From hay or something?

    It was actually this organic fertilizer my dad was trying, I explain, trying to pretend we’re having a perfectly normal teenage girl conversation. Turns out I’m allergic to worm castings. But I’m not actually allergic to worms. Go figure.

    The girls stare at each other a second and crack up. Wow! Sobbing Girl says. That’s the most insane thing anyone has ever said to me! You are totally weird.

    Gosh, I’m glad I could cheer her up.

    The girls leave, still giggling, and I scrub my shoe until there is only the faintest whiff of goat matter left. I slip the shoe on my foot, grab my backpack, and hurry out the bathroom toward my locker, eyes downward. With any luck, nobody from my bus will be around, and if they are, they won’t notice me.

    Nice shoes! someone yells out from a group of jocks huddled around a locker. You oughta bottle that smell. Eau de Crap!

    I breathe in deeply through my nose, an exercise I read about in my best friend Sarah’s yoga magazine. Breathe in, focus deeply on an image you find pleasing and relaxing, breathe out.

    My rebel brain immediately envisions the farm on a summer morning, the air already hazy, butterflies floating across the wildflowers. I see the house with its wraparound porch, fresh white paint, cerulean blue shutters. I hear the slam of a screen door, the peaceful clucking of chickens.

    Ah, yes, our farm. How relaxing to meditate on the place that has made me the laughingstock of the ninth grade and probably the biggest loser in the entire school.

    And to think it was my idea to live there in the first place.

    Chapter Two

    A Brief History of How I Ruined My Own Life

    Like all fourteen-year-olds, I used to be a nine-year-old. In retrospect, I was an annoyingly perky and enthusiastic nine-year-old. In fact, I’ve been enthusiastic my entire life, up until this fall, when high school sucked every last ounce of enthusiasm right out of me.

    For the big fourth-grade field trip that year, we rode in a rattling yellow school bus out to the country to visit an organic farm. The farmers were a young couple with a baby, a flock of chickens, and four goats. They talked a lot about growing vegetables in an environmentally friendly way and evil factory farms where the cows were very, very unhappy. What I liked about the field trip was the goat cheese and the homemade bread the farmers served after we finished touring their farm. I remember having some sort of profound thought like, Boy, farmers sure do eat good, and suddenly my mind was made up: I wanted to live on a farm for the rest of my life.

    Like I said, I was an enthusiastic kid. I was always coming up with new ideas—Let’s keep a horse in the backyard! Let’s adopt a homeless person!—and my parents were always rejecting them. So when I suggested we’d all be happier on a farm raising goats and baking bread, well, I meant it, but I didn’t expect to be taken seriously.

    We were sitting at the dinner table, eating a Stouffer’s frozen lasagna that hadn’t quite gotten heated all the way through (Think of it as lasagna sorbet, my mother suggested, and I was so young and enthusiastic at the time that I actually tried to think of it that way), when I told my parents we should move to a farm and raise goats. I listed the many benefits of this plan (free goat cheese being number one on the list; I forget now what number two was) and sat back, waiting to be rejected yet again.

    But instead of shaking her head and saying, I’m sorry, Janie, but I just don’t think that’s going to work for us as a family right now (which is what she said about the horse and the homeless person), my mother got very quiet. She looked at my father, her eyes sort of glimmering, a dreamy expression on her face.

    Daddy and I used to talk about living on a farm all the time, she said after a moment. Didn’t we, honey?

    Before we had kids, my dad agreed. Back before life got so crazy.

    Life wouldn’t be crazy on a farm, I insisted. It’s very peaceful on a farm.

    I had no idea what I was talking about. My farm experience consisted of one field trip and approximately two hundred picture books about Old MacDonald and Chicken Little and cows that typed. But clearly my suggestion struck a chord with my parents, who started talking about how great it would be to get out of the suburbs, to grow our own food, to raise chickens and have fresh eggs every day.

    You guys could quit your jobs, I told them. You could be outside in the fresh air. It would be good for your health!

    Well, I don’t think we could quit our jobs, cowgirl, my dad said. In fact, I don’t want to quit my job. But it might be nice to live farther out in the country.

    I sat back in my seat, dazed. My parents were actually taking one of my ideas seriously! It made me feel important, almost grown-up.

    It’s a wonderful idea, Janie, my mom declared.

    My dad grinned at me. A humdinger of an idea.

    Now, it did occur to me that if we lived on a farm, my best friend, Sarah, would no longer live across the street. Megan Grant, who had spent the last four months trying to steal Sarah away from me, would have full access to her while I’d be out collecting eggs in the countryside. Alone. By myself.

    On the other hand, maybe my parents would finally get me a horse.

    Bonus.

    Well, if you guys think so, I said modestly. I do think farms are nice. Especially farms with stables.

    Eight months later, we were farmers. I remember the day we moved out to the farm, the excitement I felt as I ran like a maniac up and down the stairs of the farm house, built circa 1892, with its windows that rattled with every breeze and broad oak floors that groaned in the middle of cold winter nights. I was Laura Ingalls Wilder, Anne of Green Gables; I was a girl who lived on a farm. Outside, the honeysuckle was just beginning to bloom and the whole world smelled sweet.

    And the kids at school? They thought it was cool we’d moved to a farm. We had the fifth-grade end-of-the-year party out by our pond, and the sixth-grade fall festival took place in the barn. Being Farm Girl meant social bonus points.

    High school changed all of that. For one thing, no one I met in high school had fond memories of hanging out in our barnyard and feeding corn to the chickens. For another, no one thought it was cute that half the time I smelled like the barn I spent the first thirty minutes of my morning in.

    They thought it was weird. They thought I was weird.

    And suddenly I realized that living on a farm was weird. Milking goats and pushing a chickenmobile around the yard every morning, dumping eggshells and coffee grounds into the composter every night after the dishes were done. Knowing way too much about manure and fertilizers and the organic way to grow bok choy. What kind of normal teenage girl lived this way?

    The people at school were right—I was weird.

    And I only had myself to blame.

    Chapter Three

    Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch . . .

    Saturday morning I’m awakened at an absurdly early hour by Ty Cobb, our rooster, who doesn’t know from weekends. Every day is a day to get up with the sun, in Ty Cobb’s opinion.

    I think Ty Cobb would taste good for lunch, don’t you? I ask my dad when we meet in the hallway, both of us yawning. You can eat roosters, you know. Some people have rooster for Thanksgiving instead of turkey.

    My father heads downstairs. We need Ty Cobb. Without him, we don’t get baby chicks. You like chicks, remember?

    I clomp down the staircase after him. No, that’s Avery who likes baby chicks. Or at least she likes flushing them down the toilet.

    I learned very early in my farming career not to get too attached to the smaller animals. There are always predators like Avery around who will break your heart by flushing away the livestock.

    That was years ago, my dad points out. I can’t even think of the last time Avery put a chick in the toilet.

    Dad, we’ve only lived here five years. It’s not ancient history.

    We arrive in the kitchen, where my mom and my eight-year-old sister, Avery, are digging into their scrambled eggs. Farm-fresh scrambled eggs, my mom would be the first person to point out.

    I would be the first person to point out that we don’t actually live on a farm. It’s more like a farm-ette. A mini-farm. No, make that a wannabe farm.

    I am the only person in my family who has these sorts of thoughts.

    Avery and I are going to the flea market after chores this morning, my mom informs me at breakfast. Do you want to come?

    I’m going to go to Sarah’s, I say, pouring myself some juice, my tone making it clear that even if I had no plans, my answer would be Not a chance. We’ve got work to do on our project.

    I need your help this afternoon, don’t forget. My father is standing in the doorway, coffee mug in hand, about to head out back. It’s Mr. Pritchard today.

    I sigh but make an honest effort not to roll my eyes. Okay. But can we not stay out there all afternoon?

    I thought you liked Mr. Pritchard. My dad sounds vaguely hurt, like he can’t understand why I’m not doing cartwheels at the thought of spending yet another weekend afternoon helping him gather data for his latest academic adventure.

    I do, but the last time we went to see him, we were there for, like, five hours.

    He’s a fascinating old guy. My dad grabs his pink Al’s Garage cap from its peg and shoves it on his head. And he won’t be around forever.

    I have to admit this is true. We’ve gone to visit Mr. Pritchard four times now, and each time he’s seemed a little bit smaller. It’s possible that one day he’ll simply disappear into thin air

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