Katy's New World

by Kim Vogel Sawyer

  Excerpt

  The same clanging noise that had called everyone in from the front lawn blared again. It seemed to come from right above Katy’s head.

  She cringed, wishing she could drop her backpack and cover her ears. “What is that?”

  Shelby gawked at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted green ears and a tail. “That’s the class bell. That’s how we know it’s time to go to the next class.”

  “Bell?” Katy shook her head, her ears still ringing from the horrible attack of noise. “Bells go ring-a-ling. That thing goes braaawnk!” The classroom door flew open and students spilled into the hall just in time to hear the awful sound leave her throat. Laughter rang, even more offensive than the so-called bell.

  Katy asked one more question.

  “Where is the ladies’ room?”

  Shelby pointed.

  Katy turned and ran.

  Praise

  “To every thing there is a season,

  and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

  …A time to rend, and a time to sew…”

  Ecc. 3:1, 7a

  Katy’s New World

  Kim Vogel Sawyer

  KATY LAMBRIGHT SERIES

  ZONDERVAN™

  Katy’s New World

  Copyright © 2010 by Kim Vogel Sawyer

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

  ePub Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 978-0-310-41666-1

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sawyer, Kim Vogel. –

  Katy’s new world / by Kim Vogel Sawyer..

  p. cm.—(Katy Lambright series ; bk. 1)

  Summary: Katy Lambright gets permission to attend a public high school outside of her Mennonite community, but her relationships with her family and lifelong friends become strained as she struggles to find a balance between two very different worlds.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-0-310-71924-3 (softcover)

  1. Mennonites—Juvenile fiction. [1. Mennonites—Fiction. 2. Christian life—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Friendship—Fiction. 6. Family life—Kansas—Fiction. 7. Kansas—Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.S26832Kat 2010

  [Fic] – dc221 2009032639

  * * *

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, King James Version, KJV.

  Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers printed in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

  Published in association with Hartline Literary Agency, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15235.

  _________________ 10 11 12 13 14 15

  Dedicated to the many boys and girls

  who entered my fifth grade classroom

  at Morgan Elementary.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  Praise

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Discussion Questions for Katy’s New World

  Kauffman Amish. Bakery Series

  Acknowledgments

  About the Publisher

  Share Your Thoughts

  Chapter One

  Like wisps of smoke that upward flee,

  Disappearing on the breeze,

  Days dissolving one by one…

  Time stands still for no one.

  Katy Lambright stared at the neatly written lines in her journal and crinkled her brow so tightly her forehead hurt. She rubbed the knot between her eyebrows with her fingertip. What was wrong? Ah, yes. Two uses of “one” at the ends of the final lines. She stared harder, tapping her temple with the eraser end of her pencil. What would be a better ending?

  She whispered, “Time’s as fleeting as the—”

  “Katy-girl?”

  Just like the poem stated, her thought dissipated like a wisp of smoke. Dropping her pencil onto the journal page, she smacked the book closed and dashed to the top of the stairs. “What?”

  Dad stood at the bottom with his hand on the square newel post, looking up. “It’s seven fifteen. You’ll miss your bus if we don’t get going.”

  Katy’s stomach turned a rapid somersault. Maybe she shouldn’t have fixed those rich banana-pecan pancakes for breakfast. But she’d wanted Dad to have a special breakfast this morning. It was a big day for him. And for her. Mostly for her. “I’ll be right down.”

  She grabbed her sweater from the peg behind her bedroom door. No doubt today would be like any other late-August day—unbearably hot—but the high school was air conditioned. She might get cold. So she quickly folded the made-by-Gramma sweater into a rough bundle and pushed it into the belly of the backpack waiting in the little nook at the head of the stairs.

  The bold pink backpack presented a stark contrast to her simple sky blue dress. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips, while at the same time a twinge of uncertainty wiggled its way through her stomach. She’d never used a backpack before. Annika Gehring, her best friend since forever, had helped her pack it with notebooks and pencils and a brand-new protractor—all the things listed on the supply sheet from the high school in Salina. They had giggled while organizing the bag, making use of each of its many pockets.

  Katy sighed. A part of her wished that Annika was coming to high school and part of her was glad to be going alone. If she made a fool of herself, no one from the Mennonite fellowship would be there to see. And as much as she loved Annika, whatever the girl saw she reported.

  “Katy-girl!” Dad’s voice carried from the yard through the open windows.

  Would Dad ever drop that babyish nickname? If he called her Katy-girl in front of any of the high school kids, she’d die from embarrassment. “I’m coming!” She yanked up the backpack and pushed her arms through the straps. The backpack’s tug on her shoulders felt strange and yet exhilarating. She ran down the stairs, the ribbons from her mesh headcovering fluttering against her neck and the backpack bouncing on her spine—one familiar feeling and one new feeling, all at once. The combination almost made her dizzy. She tossed the backpack onto the seat of her dad’s blue pickup and climbed in beside it. As he pulled away from their dairy farm onto the dirt road that led to the highway, she rolled down the window. Dust billowed behind the tires, drifting into the cab. Katy coughed, but she hugged her backpack to her stomach and let the morning
air hit her full in the face. She loved the smell of morning, before the day got so hot it melted away the fresh scent of dew.

  The truck rumbled past the one-room schoolhouse where Katy had attended first through ninth grades. Given the early hour, no kids cluttered the schoolyard. But in her imagination she saw older kids pushing little kids on the swings, kids waiting for a turn on the warped teeter-totter, and Caleb Penner chasing the girls with a wiggly earthworm and making them scream. Caleb had chased her many times, waving an earthworm or a fat beetle. He’d never made her scream, though. Bugs didn’t bother Katy. She only feared a few things. Like tornadoes. And people leaving and not coming back.

  A sigh drifted from Dad’s side of the seat. She turned to face him, noting his somber expression. Dad always looked serious. And tired. Running the dairy farm as well as a household without the help of a wife had aged him. For a moment guilt pricked at Katy’s conscience. She was supposed to stay home and help her family, like all the other Old Order girls when they finished ninth grade.

  But the familiar spiral of longing—to learn more, to see what existed outside the limited expanse of Schellberg—wound its way through her middle. Her fingernails bit into the palms of her hands as she clenched her fists. She had to go. This opportunity, granted to no one else in her little community, was too precious to squander.

  “Dad?” She waited until he glanced at her. “Stop worrying.”

  His eyebrows shot up, meeting the brim of his billed cap. “I’m not worrying.”

  “Yes, you are. You’ve been worrying all morning. Worrying ever since the deacons said I could go.” Katy understood his worry.

  She’d heard the speculative whispers when the Mennonite fellowship learned that Katy had been granted permission to attend the high school in Salina: “Will she be Kathleen’s girl through and through?” But she was determined to prove the worriers wrong. She could attend public school, could be with worldly people, and still maintain her faith. Hadn’t she been the only girl at the community school to face Caleb’s taunting bugs without flinching? She was strong.

  She gave Dad’s shoulder a teasing nudge with her fist. “I’ll be all right, you know.”

  His lips twitched. “I’m not worried about you, Katy-girl.”

  He was lying, but Katy didn’t argue. She never talked back to Dad. If she got upset with him, she wrote the words in her journal to get them out of her head, and then she tore the page into tiny bits and threw the pieces away. She’d started the practice shortly after she turned thirteen. Before then, he’d never done anything wrong. Sometimes she wondered if he’d changed or she had, but it didn’t matter much. She didn’t like feeling upset with him—he was all she had—so she tried to get rid of her anger quickly.

  They reached the highway, and Dad parked the pickup on the shoulder. He turned the key, and the engine spluttered before falling silent. Dad aimed his face out his side window, his elbow propped on the sill. Wind whistled through the open windows and birds trilled a morning song from one of the empty wheat fields that flanked the pickup. The sounds were familiar—a symphony of nature she’d heard since infancy—but today they carried a poignancy that put a lump in Katy’s throat.

  Why had she experienced such a strange reaction to wind and birds? She would explore it in her journal before she went to bed this evening. Words—secretive whispers, melodious trill—cluttered her mind. Maybe she’d write a poem about it too, if she wasn’t too tired from her first day at school.

  Cars crested the gentle rise in the black-topped highway and zinged by—sports cars and big SUVs, so different from the plain black or blue Mennonite pickups and sedans that filled the church lot on Sunday mornings in Schellberg. When would the big yellow bus appear? Katy had been warned it wouldn’t be able to wait for her. Might it have come and gone already? Her stomach fluttered as fear took hold.

  Dad suddenly whirled to face her. “Do you have your lunch money?”

  She patted the small zipper pocket on the front of the backpack. “Right here.” She hunched her shoulders and giggled. “It feels funny not to carry a lunch box.” For as far back as she could remember, Katy had carried a lunch she’d packed for herself since she didn’t have a mother to do it for her.

  “Yes, but you heard the lady in the school office.” Dad drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “She said the kids at this school eat in the cafeteria or go out to eat.”

  Embarrassment crept over Katy as she remembered the day they’d visited the school. When the secretary told Dad about the school lunch program, he’d insisted on reading the lunch menu from beginning to end before agreeing to let his daughter eat “school-made food.”

  Truthfully, the menu had looked more enticing than her customary peanut butter sandwich, but Dad had acted as though he thought someone might try to poison her. She’d filled three pages, front and back, in her journal over the incident before tearing the well-scribbled pages into miniscule bits of litter. But—satisfaction welled—Dad had purchased a lunch ticket after all.

  The wind tossed the satin ribbons dangling from the mesh cap that covered her heavy coil of hair. They tickled her chin. She hooked the ribbons in the neck of her dress and then brushed dust from the skirt of her homemade dress. An errant thought formed. I’m glad I’ll be eating cafeteria food like a regular high school kid. It might be the only way I don’t stick out.

  Dad cleared his throat. “There she comes.”

  The school bus rolled toward them. The sun glared off the wide windshield, nearly hiding the monstrous vehicle from view. Katy threw her door open and stepped out, carrying the backpack on her hip as if it were one of her toddler cousins. She sucked in a breath of dismay when Dad met her at the hood of the pickup and reached for her hand.

  “It’s okay, Dad.” She smiled at him even though her stomach suddenly felt as though it might return those banana-pecan pancakes at any minute. “I can get on okay.”

  The bus’s wide rubber tires crunched on the gravel as it rolled to a stop at the intersection. Giggles carried from inside the bus when Dad walked Katy to the open door. Katy cringed, trying discreetly to pull her hand free, but Dad kept hold and gave the bus driver a serious look.

  “This is my daughter, Katy Lambright.”

  “Kathleen Lambright,” Katy corrected. Hadn’t she told Dad she wanted to be Kathleen at the new school instead of the childish Katy? Dad wasn’t in favor, and Katy knew why. She would let him continue to call her Katy—or Katy-girl, the nickname he’d given her before she was old enough to sit up—but to the Outside, she was Kathleen.

  Dad frowned at the interruption, but he repeated, “Kathleen Lambright. She is attending Salina High North.”

  The driver, an older lady with soft white hair cut short and brushed back from her rosy face, looked a little bit like Gramma Ruthie around her eyes. But Gramma would never wear blue jeans or a bright yellow polka-dotted shirt. One side of the driver’s mouth quirked up higher than the other when she smiled, giving her an impish look. “Well, come on aboard, Katy Kathleen Lambright. We have a schedule to keep.”

  Another titter swept through the bus. Dad leaned toward Katy, as if he planned to hug her good-bye. Katy ducked away and darted onto the bus. When she glanced back, she glimpsed the hurt in Dad’s eyes, and guilt hit her hard. This day wasn’t easy for him. She spun to dash back out and let him hug her after all, but the driver pulled a lever that closed the door, sealing her away from her father.

  Suddenly the reality of what she was doing—leaving the security of her little community, her dad, and all that was familiar—washed over her, and for one brief moment she wanted to claw the doors open and dive into the refuge of Dad’s arms, just as she used to do when she was little and frightened by a windstorm.

  “Have a seat, Kathleen,” the driver said.

  Through the window, Katy watched Dad climb back into the pickup. His face looked so sad, her heart hurt. She felt a sting at the back of her nose—a sure sign that tears were coming. S
he sniffed hard.

  “You’ve got to sit down, or we can’t go.” Impatience colored the driver’s tone. She pushed her foot against the gas pedal, and the bus engine roared in eagerness. More giggles erupted from the kids on the bus.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.” Katy quickly scanned the seats. Most of them were already filled with kids. The passengers all looked her up and down, some smirking, and some staring with their mouths hanging open. She could imagine them wondering what she was doing on their bus. She’d be the first Mennonite student to attend one of the Salina schools. She lifted her chin. Well, they’ll just have to get used to me.

  Katy ignored the gawks and searched faces. She had hoped to sit with someone her own age, but none of the kids looked to be more than twelve or thirteen. Finally she spotted an open seat toward the middle on the right. She dropped into it, sliding the backpack into the empty space beside her.

  The bus jolted back onto the highway with a crunch of tires on gravel. The two little girls in the seat in front of Katy turned around and stared with round, wide eyes. Katy smiled, but they didn’t smile back. So she raised her eyebrows high and waggled her tongue, the face she used to get her baby cousin Trent to stop crying. The little girls made the same face back, giggled, and turned forward again.

  Throughout the bus, kids talked and laughed, at ease with each other. Katy sat alone, silent and invisible. The bus bounced worse than Dad’s pickup, and her stomach felt queasier with each mile covered. She swallowed and swallowed to keep the banana-pecan pancakes in place. Think about something else…

  High school. Her heart fluttered. Public high school. A smile tugged on the corners of her lips. Classes like botany and music appreciation and literature. Literature…