CHAPTER
ONE
The highway stretched as far as you could see, but Mom insisted on stopping at the Prairie Diner.
It didn’t matter that the diner looked like an abandoned shed, that only four cars sat in the parking lot, that a vent belched smoke from a deep fryer. It didn’t matter because a few miles back a billboard proclaimed, AT THE PRAIRIE DINER KIDS EAT FREE ON WEDNESDAYS! It was Wednesday. There were three kids in the car. No calculator required.
“We’re only twenty miles from the new place,” I said. “Can’t we eat when we get there? Or go to McDonald’s?”
Cornfields and prairie grasses surrounded the diner. It was the only building I could see on the highway, and I could see for miles. The land was so flat a ball wouldn’t roll without a hard kick.
Mom got out of the car and snapped a photo of the place with her phone. She liked to document adventures, and in her mind, a roadside diner equaled adventure. “It’s perfect. Who wants to eat at a chain restaurant? There’s no adventure in that.”
See?
“At least it’s not gas station pizza,” my half sister, Rose, said.
“That’s my girl.” Mom smiled.
My brother, Freddy, reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a roll of duct tape. Mom said, “Freddy, do you have to do this? You’re projecting negative energy, and it’s not fair to the other customers.” Freddy ripped a piece of tape from the roll and pressed it over his mouth. I hid a smile. “Really?” Mom asked.
Freddy nodded and walked across the gravel parking lot with Rose skipping behind him. Mom turned to me and said, “Please don’t play along. I’m serious about energy. We get what we give. It’s karma.”
“What goes around comes around,” Rose singsonged.
But by covering his mouth and staging a silent protest Freddy was doing exactly what Mom and Rose said. He was making sure “it” came back around—“it” being the bad feelings about moving from Lexington, Kentucky, to the western edge of Minnesota. We moved all the time, but always to real cities with malls and movie theaters and bus lines; never to a place like this, a land so quiet and empty the wind had nothing to blow. Rose was no help. She hadn’t wanted to leave Lexington, either, but she never complained. Mom and Rose were all sunshine, all the time, the Florida of moods.
Inside a sign said SEAT YOURSELF, so Freddy picked a table in the middle of the diner. About ten people were scattered at tables, and one by one, they looked up from their meals and stared at us—at Freddy, the boy with tape on his mouth. Normally Freddy blended into the background like a beige chair against a beige wall. He kept his head low, his eyes down, his voice quiet. When you constantly switch schools, you learn to become invisible. Calling attention to yourself is an invitation to bullies. I learned that the hard way at Sherwood Elementary.
Or was it Sherman Elementary? I can never remember.
During sharing time in kindergarten, I stood up and shared that my mom could play both piano and guitar. Except I said guiptar. I don’t know why. It just came out wrong. Everyone laughed, even though the teacher shushed them, and Tommy Jackson called me “stupid head.” All week, Tommy Jackson yelled “guiptar stupid head” in my face every morning.
Was his name Tommy or Timmy?
Doesn’t really matter. My point: if you don’t stand up and share, nobody will call you guiptar stupid head.
I scanned the menu. “I told you, Mom. The kids menu is for kids ten and younger. Even Rose doesn’t qualify for a free meal.”
“Rose just turned eleven, which is practically ten. You and Freddy can pass. It’ll save a ton of money.” Mom ignored karma whenever it involved money.
I groaned. “This is so embarrassing.”
“People shouldn’t make a profit from food,” Mom said. “It’s an essential human need. Besides, it’s not more embarrassing than your brother’s vow of silence.”
Freddy’s cheeks lifted a bit, like he might be giving me a mission-accomplished smile through the tape. He’d taken the vow when Mom had announced she was quitting her job and moving us to a town no bigger than a pea, all so she could write her children’s novel. The vow symbolized his protest about not having a voice in the decision. That’s what he wrote in the tiny notebook he carried in his back pocket.
“Hot enough for you folks?” The waitress’s name tag said Gloria. She held a tray across her thick belly.
“I love this weather,” Mom said. “In the South this would be considered mildly warm.”
“I’ll take your word for it. What can I get you?”
“I’d like the grilled cheese and fries, and the kids will be ordering from the kids menu because they’re nine and ten and ten.” Mom pointed at me, then Freddy. “Twins.”
“Sure they are.” Gloria’s voice was as flat as the prairie. The part about being twins was true, but we were twelve, and we looked it.
I ordered a chicken strip basket. Freddy pointed at the menu. Gloria looked at the tape on Freddy’s face and then turned to Mom, who said, “It’s a silent protest. I’m trying to validate his feelings without encouraging his behavior.”
Gloria raised an eyebrow and grunted. Rose asked, “What is tater tot hot dish?”
“I guess you’re not from around here.” I couldn’t tell if Gloria thought that was a bad thing or a good thing. “It’s ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, corn, green beans, and tater tots. Kids always love it.”
“Sounds like an adventure. I’ll try it,” Rose said.
“That’s my girl,” Mom said.
When Gloria left, Rose said to Freddy, “Are you really going to be silent for an entire school year? Give it a chance. We might like it. We might love it.”
“Freddy wants you to know he has the right to feel however he feels,” I said. I knew what he was thinking because I could read him, and he could read me. We had Twin Superpowers. Freddy nodded.
Mom’s eyes moved to Freddy, then to me, even though she was speaking to Rose. “I’m so proud of your positive attitude and sense of adventure. You just jump into life and enjoy it, no matter what.”
When Mom praised Rose, there was always a hidden message, and you didn’t need police training to decode it. Her words said Rose is awesome, but she meant Be more like Rose. Freddy and I weren’t like Rose, and we didn’t want to be like Rose, sweet as a jellybean wrapped in taffy. When it rained, we saw puddles and gray sky. Rose saw the birth of a rainbow. Maybe it was because Freddy and I were older, or maybe it was because we had a different father than Rose. But Freddy and I are close. It’s just the nature of twins. There’s only room for two.
Rose pulled a book from her bag—On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder. “I can read out loud while we wait for our food.”
“Great idea!” Mom looked at me. “Isn’t it great?”
“Doesn’t matter to me.” Realistically, I was stuck with Laura for a year. I had to deal with her the way you deal with an upset stomach. You wait it out. Eventually you puke and feel better. Freddy had an opinion, though. His eyes widened, and he made sure we were watching as he lifted his arms, put one hand on each ear, and turned off his hearing aids.
“Nice job, Rose,” I said. “Now Freddy can’t speak or hear.”
“That’s his choice,” Mom said.
“His choice.” Rose cleared her throat and began reading. “Chapter one. ‘The dim wagon track went no farther on the prairie, and Pa stopped the horses.’”
Gloria delivered our drinks before Rose could start the second sentence. Gloria looked at the book and smiled. “I’m a big Laura fan, too. The biggest. If you like On the Banks of Plum Creek, you’re near the heart of it all.”
“I know,” Rose said. “Laura Ingalls lived here in the olden days during the grasshopper plague. That’s why we’re here.”
“Not because of grasshoppers.” Mom laughed. “We’re moving to Walnut Grove because of Laura. I’m a writer.”
“You’re writing a book about Laura Ingalls?”
I needed to shut this down before Mom launched her crazy spirit-of-Laura explanation. “When is our food going to be ready?”
Obviously Gloria believed children should be seen and not heard because she didn’t answer my question. She said, “I live a stone’s throw from Walnut Grove. You’ll like it. It’s a nice little town. People are friendly but not too friendly, if you know what I mean. Where are you living?”
Mom said, “We’re only going to be here for the school year, so we’re renting. Do you know Miguel and Mia Ramos? We’ll be living in their basement.”
“You bet. They both work at Schwann’s up in Marshall. Their granddaughter Julia just moved in with them. Seems like a sweet girl. I don’t like gossip, so let’s just say Julia’s parents are a train wreck. You can read into that what you want.”
“How old is their granddaughter? It’d be nice to have a friend the same age as my kids.” I don’t know why Mom didn’t say friend for Rose, because that’s what she meant. Rose was a friend magnet. Freddy and I didn’t have friends, didn’t want friends, didn’t need friends. We had each other.
“Not sure. I don’t know them. I just know of them.” Gloria tucked the tray under her arm. “Anyhoo. Is it just you and the girls and the duct-tape boy?”
“Just us and our dog, Jack. He’s in the car,” Rose said.
“You can’t leave a dog in the car with this heat. He’ll keel over!”
“He’s already dead,” I said. “We’ve got his ashes.”
“Well, that’s different. Folks here bury pets in the backyard.” Gloria winked at Rose. “After they’re dead, of course.”
Rose said, “I wanted to leave his ashes in the pond at the dog park in Lexington because he loved it there. But we had to leave fast. Some guy—”
“It just didn’t work out,” Mom said. “That’s all.”
It didn’t work out because three days before we were supposed to leave, our neighbor told us a guy had been looking for Mom. That guy was going to take back our car because she ran out of money and stopped making payments. We packed all night and sped out of town before sunrise. Mom said she was going to catch up on those bills once we got settled in Walnut Grove.
Then a man with a thick mustache yelled, “Gloria! If you want me to pay before I die, you better bring my tab.”
“For chrissake, Harold, you get the same meal every time, and every time it’s $5.99, and every time you write a check. So write a check and leave it on the table and add at least a dollar for a tip.”
“A dollar! I grow soybeans, not money trees.”
Gloria wandered to the man’s table where they argued about whether he was cheap or she was greedy. Mom smiled at me, a smile as blinding as the sun. I wished her happiness was like a cold, and if she coughed hard enough, I’d catch it. So I looked out the window and tried to think like Mom and Rose, to see beauty. I saw an ocean of prairie grasses. The wind churned waves through the landscape, rolling the grasses toward a sky of endless blue. And it was beautiful in its own way.
But the view came with a new school. There would be new classmates and new teachers and new neighbors. For Mom and Rose, those things were shiny. For Freddy and me, they were just new—new and weird, new and scary.
When you constantly move, you know the world is big. But when you stare at the prairie sky, stretched across the Earth, unmarked by mountains or trees or buildings, you realize the world is bigger than you ever imagined.
So big it could swallow a girl.
Copyright © 2017 by Shelley Tougas
