“Nora’s right,” I said. “The blog is a lie. In spite of everything I wrote, I don’t hate it here. In fact, I think I’ve come to like it. At home, we go around in our own separate worlds. My mom takes care of us, I play soccer, Gavin does who knows what, and my dad goes to work. Here, we were forced to be together and though it wasn’t always fun, we got to know each other. At home, I won’t let my little brother into my room, but out here, he’s kind of been my best friend.
“I don’t know very many thirteen-year-old girls who go a whole day—or even a whole hour—without checking themselves out in the mirror, but I’ve been pretty much mirror-free for a month and a half. I know I look disgusting. I know I smell kind of funky, and that you can tell what I ate for dinner in the past week just by looking at my dress. But I have a better sense of who I am right now than I do any day of the week back home.
“Okay, I really can’t stand doing the dishes. It still grosses me out every single time. I may never be able to pull another weed again after those first few weeks we spent in the corn. I still haven’t gotten used to the outhouse and I don’t think at this point that I will. My reunion with indoor plumbing is going to be a happy one, let me tell you.
“But you know? Before you interrupted him, my dad was going to make an announcement. He was going to share the results of our family’s vote on whether we should stay here at the camp or go. And not that it matters now, but I want you all to know that we voted to stay.
“Because Ron is right. You feel strong here. You do things you didn’t know you could. And it’s beautiful. Nora, you have no idea how ugly the rest of the world is compared to this place—there’s nothing uplifting about neighborhoods filled with minivans and houses and families and their dogs.
“What I was saying before, about how this place makes you stronger. That’s true. I am stronger for coming here. I am strong enough that I know that I want to finish what I set out to do.
“It is not fair that Ron and Betsy and Nora should have their lives wrecked. The blog, Happy Morning—it just isn’t right.”
I took a deep breath. I noticed that everyone had been listening. Some people, like Caleb’s mom, Susan, and Disa Puchinski, were looking me right in the eye. Others, like Anders and Ka’s stepdad, Clark, stared at the ground.
I don’t know exactly what I expected to happen now that I was done talking. Applause? Cheering? I’d talked longer just then than I ever had before in my life, including the time in fifth grade when Kristin and I had traded stanzas reciting “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” for our elementary school’s poetry festival.
But there was nothing. Just silence. I had the panicky sensation that no one had heard me, or if they had, they’d not understood. Maybe I’d spoken in tongues? What had I even said? I couldn’t remember. Something about strength. I think I’d mentioned Gavin. Had the cameras been on the whole time?
“Turn off the camera,” I said to Rebecca. She signaled to the crew and they moved away from the machines, covering the lenses.
“And the lights.” At another signal, they went dark.
Rebecca put her hand out and I shook it. “I respect your decision,” she said. “We got a lot of great footage, so if you change your mind, let me know.”
“I’m not changing my mind,” I said.
It wasn’t until she was walking away that I realized what I had done. And I know this goes against everything I’d just said about strength and resolve, but I wanted badly for a second to call her back, to tell her I’d only been kidding.
Had I really just given up the chance to stay in a hotel with a real bed and bathroom where everything was completely clean? I’d chosen an outhouse and a smelly cabin, weeks more of my mother’s beans? Watching Nora and Caleb be secret boy-and girlfriend while I hauled corncobs from the field to the barn every single day?
I watched as Rebecca walked over to Ron and Betsy. I assumed that she was going to apologize. Or say good-bye. I wasn’t actually listening, and then, all of a sudden, I was. Because the words coming out of her mouth didn’t sound like an apology or a goodbye. They sounded, in fact, like quite the opposite.
“I have great news for you,” she was saying. “And also great publicity, if that’s what you’re looking for. You see, we were really excited about Gen’s story. It’s already rocked the country and has a great fan base, but even before she made it clear she wasn’t interested in being on TV, I was pitching another idea—not for Happy Morning. Something bigger and cooler than that—something I thought the network might like for prime time.”
It wouldn’t be honest for me not to admit right then and there that I was kind of annoyed. I mean, I’d turned down being on TV. I’d made the ultimate sacrifice. What more was out there?
“From the beginning,” Rebecca went on, “reading Gen’s blog, we knew we had a fantastic profile on our hands. And it has borne out—we have not been disappointed. I mean, reluctant girl on family vacation at frontier fantasy camp? Yes, that plays well. But reluctant girl living at frontier fantasy camp? Sneaking out of the house to listen to strangers’ iPods? Looking up new technology on the web so she can find out how the rest of the world lives? That’s pathos. That’s fascinating. That…” She paused, and for a second I felt like she was actually expressing something that belonged to her, something she cared about, not just something she was trying to trick into betraying itself on camera. “That is Nora. That,” she repeated, “is good TV.”
All eyes were turned on Nora now. Her parents looked as horrified as they had when I was confessing about the blog. Or more horrified—if that was possible.
Nora, however, looked as if the hand of an angel had passed across her face. Her seemingly permanent scowl lifted, replaced by an expression of wonder and joy so obvious, one might have thought her incapable of experiencing anything but those two emotions.
“In fact,” Rebecca went on, “it goes beyond a segment on this show. From the beginning, I’ve been pitching the network a couple of ideas. The lazy, obvious one would be about Gen and the blog. But the other is for a show for Nora alone.
“What’s great about the Nora idea is that it would be playing out in real time. So much of what Gen’s blog tells us has already happened, but with Nora, we could build a show around some kind of ongoing project. Perhaps it would be introducing this girl to the real world? Helping her realize her dream of going to college? I got the approval just before our taping began this morning. Starting today, with Nora’s permission, I’ll be producer and host of my very own reality show based on a year in Nora’s life.”
“Me?” Nora squealed. I didn’t know she had such a girly squeal in her. “I’m going to be on TV?”
“Yes, you,” Rebecca said, flashing Nora a brilliant smile. “We were going to speak to your parents—and you—later this afternoon. Basically, our offer is this, and of course you don’t have to accept if you feel the publicity would be too damaging for you or your family’s business. But we’d like to profile your family life here—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and then whisk you away for a week on the town in New York, capturing your reaction to big, glitzy city life and well, frankly, all of modernity in a show we are sure our viewers will love. We have this idea to structure the show as a college tour road trip—each episode will feature some of your life here and college visits across the country. But more than college too. There will be parties, career shadowing, shopping sprees, massages. Don’t answer now. Talk to your parents and let me know.”
I was glad no one was looking at me anymore because, like Nora, I could no longer hide how I felt. I had refused the TV and I’d meant it. I didn’t want to be part of it. But to have Nora be on the show instead of me? To have her be so clearly delighted by the prospect of one more thing she had stolen from me? I mean, did she have to have everything?
Without thinking about it too much, I found myself glancing at Caleb. He was looking at Nora in openmouthed amazement.
And Nora? Did she appreciate how great i
t was to have Caleb’s undivided attention? Was she staring back at him, sharing the absurdity of this moment? Did she even understand that it was absurd?
She wasn’t. She didn’t. She had eyes for Rebecca and Rebecca only—for the twenty-first century, the future, her new and improved life.
“You want this?” Ron asked, his voice cracking.
“New York City is awful,” Betsy warned. “The crowds. Everyone pushing. The buildings are so tall, you can’t see the sun. And you’ll be homesick.”
It was obvious, though, what Nora’s answer would be. Her cheeks were flushed red now, her eyes opened wide with delight and surprise. “Are you kidding?” she said. “Just tell me where to sign.”
“Come on,” my dad said, putting a protective arm around me and one around my mom. “I think it’s time we all went home.” Strange to believe that by home, he meant a closet-size cabin filled with mosquitoes and smelling of mildew where we had not yet—except for the Quiznos—enjoyed a single satisfying soup to nuts meal.
As we were leaving, Caleb touched my elbow and slipped something into my hand. It was my phone. “How did you get this?” I said.
“Before the meeting I asked Nora if I could use it to make a call.”
“That’s it?” I said. “You just asked?”
“She knew where Ron was keeping it.”
“Wow,” I said.
And while my mom was gathering up the picnic basket I whipped behind a tree and wrote the first thing that came into my mind.
Week 8 – Sunday
11:17 am
I’m alive! Erase the blog, k? Will explain later.
What’s with 500,000 readers? XXOO Gen.
I could still hear Nora squealing with delight.
27
As if by silent agreement, none of us mentioned what had happened with the blog and TV and the meeting when we got back to the cabin. We sat down at the table with the picnic basket and we all ate. My dad took some pills. My mom boiled water. And then Gavin slunk away, who knew where, until he came running back red faced and shouting for us to come see.
“It’s starting!” he shouted. “One of Pumpkin’s chicks! It’s starting to hatch!”
“Really?” my mom said.
Forgetting the meeting and the TV show, we all ran.
And when we got to the barn, there indeed, in a box tucked away in a corner of an unused stall, was Pumpkin, sitting on a pile of eggs sunk down into the straw. She’d sort of shifted her body off some of them, and one of the exposed eggs was rocking slightly. It was also cracked along one side. The crack was wide enough that you could see a kind of rubbery, almost clothlike second layer inside. I’d always thought a chick used its beak to poke through the shell, but it was pushing against the egg in random directions with every part of its body. It seemed like it was panicking, struggling out of fear more than out of any sense that it needed to break through something. It was chirping a lot too, and I wondered if that was a baby chick’s way of screaming for help.
“It’s freaking,” I said.
“Shush,” said Gavin, but he sounded like he was talking to the chick, not me.
“What do we do next?” my mom said. “When it comes out? I think it’s important for them to stay warm, right?”
“I don’t know,” said Gavin. “I didn’t think that far ahead.”
“Here,” I said, pulling the phone out of my pocket and passing it to my mom. She looked scared.
“You can use it to go online,” I prompted, and she took it in her hand.
“You’ve been going online?” she said.
“No,” I said. “It costs extra, and I knew you’d see the charges.”
My mom shook her head, and started to press buttons. Then she handed the phone right back. “I don’t even know how to turn this on,” she said. “Can you just get me to Google?”
I figured it out, but first I had to stare at the chick, because it had gotten its head out of the shell now. Or maybe that was its rear end. “I thought they were supposed to be yellow,” I said, passing my mom the phone again.
“Me too,” said Gavin.
“Me three,” said my dad. “Maybe they just don’t put the brown sticky ones on the Easter decorations.”
“Is its leg supposed to look like that?” I asked. It was folded up and kind of flattened against the chick’s body in a way that made me think it must be broken, but I could tell that part of it was supposed to be the foot. “Something’s wrong with it,” I said.
Gavin looked up at us wild-eyed. I thought he was going to cry. “I’m going to get Betsy,” he said, as if he was daring us to say he couldn’t. “She’s going to know what to do.” None of us told him not to, and he took off. At a sprint.
While he was gone, the chicken managed to straighten out its leg and stand up on it. I never in a million years would have thought that spindly twig would be able to hold the chick upright, but it did. Next a blob emerged from part of the amorphous body, which I probably wouldn’t have recognized as its head if I hadn’t seen the tiny beak.
“I can’t find anything on what you do after they’re born,” my mom said. “It’s all about what you do if you have an incubator, but we don’t have an incubator.”
“What did people used to do?” my dad asked.
“I don’t know,” my mom said. “I can’t find that anywhere.”
Then my dad was staring at the phone. “Can I use it to check my e-mail?” he said. My mom and I looked at him for a few beats before we realized he was joking. Joking! My dad! It had been a while.
The chick was wobbling around on its legs now, and then as if it was no big deal, Pumpkin lifted her wing, and the chick disappeared underneath it. “Is that good or bad?” I said.
“She’s probably keeping it warm,” my mom guessed.
“Or suffocating it,” I said. “Shouldn’t someone be sponging it off?”
“I don’t know,” my mom said. “Do you think we should try?”
None of us moved. There weren’t any other eggs cracking, and yet we didn’t want to leave. My mom was still clicking the buttons on my phone, while my dad and I watched Pumpkin and her eggs as if we had to keep our eyes on them or they would disappear.
“I found something,” my mom finally said. “It’s a Web site kept by a family in Vermont who raise chickens using broody hens. How do you scroll down?”
I showed her and then she scanned quickly until she stopped. “It doesn’t really say anything besides that the mother hen takes care of everything if she’s there.”
“But what does ‘everything’ mean?” I asked. “What’s the mom supposed to be doing?”
Just then, Betsy rushed in. She was moving as quickly as I’d ever seen her, holding her skirts up. Gavin came running in behind her.
My dad quietly pulled the phone from my mom’s hands so Betsy wouldn’t see it. He slipped out of the barn.
“Is it born yet?” Gavin asked, out of breath. “Is it okay?”
We explained what had happened, and Betsy told us that that was normal. “Pumpkin will take it from here,” she said. She looked at the hen long and hard. “You sly girl,” she said. “Here you were getting broody on us and we took it to mean you were just a rooster!”
Then Gavin said, “Look!” We followed his pointing finger to see another shell cracking and another chick rolling and rocking, peeping madly like he’d just woken up from a bad dream to find himself buried alive.
And after that one emerged from the shell, two more hatched. I can’t describe what was so cool about it except to say that with each one I was certain it would never be strong enough to break through the shell, and then when it did, I thought it would never be able to untangle its deformed legs and pop out its sticky, slime-coated head. But they did. Every single time.
While we were watching the eggs hatch, we could hear my dad laughing somewhere outside the barn. I assumed he was talking to someone—or was it the medication he was taking? I didn’t think that much of it.
But then he came in and touched my mom on the shoulder. She left the barn with him, and soon they were both laughing in a way I hadn’t heard in a long time. At one point, Mom was clearly having a hard time breathing.
They came back into the barn just as the fifth chick hatched and Betsy was getting ready to leave. From another stall I could hear Jezebel making impatient noises and I knew it was milking time.
“Well,” said Betsy. She stood up and rubbed her hands down the front of her apron, smoothing it. I think it was only then, as we all looked at each other, that we remembered everything that had happened earlier in the day: the lights, the cameras, Rebecca Cheney, my blog, Nora’s new career as a reality-TV star. “Oh, my,” Besty said, and the rest of us just looked down.
My mom stepped forward, her face flushed, her hair disturbed. My dad had his good hand on her shoulder. “We should talk,” she said.
“Now?” said Betsy, and I could tell that the idea terrified her.
“No,” my dad said. “We’ll come back with you. We want to talk to Ron as well.”
And so the three of them trailed off, leaving Gavin to watch even more of Pumpkin’s chicks get born. I milked Jezebel, and then Gavin and I drank most of the milk right out of the pail, as we’d done on the days when we were alone.
I sat on the garden fence and looked out at the view—the ragged clearing littered with stumps, the edge of the woods, the cornfield on the opposite side, the mountains looming above it all. I was going to miss it, the feeling of space out here.
Friday morning, after we’d finished eating our Quiznos, we had written our votes on pieces of paper—S for stay or G for go. All summer I’d wanted nothing more than to rock that G for go into action—and trust me, being able to get away from the whole Caleb and Nora situation definitely increased that option’s appeal. But somehow, the letter S snaked out of the tip of the pencil instead of the G I’d been expecting to see.
But now, I knew we couldn’t stay. Not after everyone had found out about the blog and all the things I’d said. I was sure that was why my parents had gone to talk to Ron and Betsy. They must be making arrangements for packing and getting us to the airport now.
Little Blog on the Prairie Page 20