by Amanda Bybee
This January was Spence’s second year working with the high school community service program at the San Francisco Zoo. He was also completing his Zoology thesis for San Francisco State University; a 21-year-old prodigy. Spence had grown up among large, wild animals within developing African safaris, and in the rural outskirts of Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa.
He had managed to visit animal kingdoms all over the world by the time he reached puberty. Young Spence had camped out mostly at preservation sites meant to protect and maintain wild species. Privileged tourists would have the chance for camping at the sprawling grasslands, sixty miles from “Joburg” after the sites were deemed fit for the custom safari tours from Spence’s family, the Farnsworths. Inside their flimsy tent, at seven years - the age of reason - the boy would sandwich himself between his parents, safari developers, preferring the tent to a city bed.
While he persisted in their preserve developments, Spence Senior, insisted his wife, Tilly, move their son’s education - for his and her safety, after Spence Junior was nearly shot - to the great indoors. There he was home-schooled.
With a very proper, British-sounding, English, that came from Spence’s wide lips, and a self-assured countenance, he gave a remarkable first impression. He had long legs and wore his black hair over the collar, tousled halfway away from his fine angled face. Being home-schooled, he didn’t get to have classmates, but Spence’s mom didn’t have the discipline to keep her prince of the home from doing whatever and going wherever he pleased.
Running wild with his mates or penned up at home, he got nearly everything he wanted. With women, outwardly, he appeared sure of himself, and always attracted the girls.
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Jaime was just getting used to being closer to the curve of Spence’s strong arms and his scent, a mixture of hay and grass. The closer he was, the warmer he felt, and the better he looked in his Ben Davis coveralls, jungle green. The café smelled of strong coffee and toasting cheese breads with an aroma of burnt sesame left over from the morning’s bagels. She pulled out her iPhone to bring up Zoofari’s menu, in order to select for herself and Spence, turkey sandwiches with cheddar cheese and sweet potato fries. The voice-over even told her the current prices, which they noticed had recently gone up.
“Why don’t café prices ever go down?” he asked.
“Do they ever in South Africa?” she asked.
“Only if a rhinoceros finds the flame too high and stomps the place down. That’s how store closures happen where I’m from,” he joked.
“Nooooo,” Jaime cooed.
“Naw, just the one time,” he finished.
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Preview Two: GRANDMA
Chapter 1
As if it wasn’t bad enough with fourteen years of growing up being called the Albino, now I learn that I have ADD, which stands for Attention Deficit Disorder. This means that I have a problem focusing my attention, and keeping other people’s attention.
“It doesn’t mean that she’s not intelligent,” the school’s Psych said, “quite the opposite.” So it is another reason besides having white hair all over like an old lady, bad eyes, and a low tolerance for the sun that has kept me from making friends in my new school. Apart from me being overweight and under confident.
I think I am the only one I know of in my class who has a disability. Usually I’m the only one who has a visual impairment. Albinism, it’s called that I have. But now, the West Maple School’s Psychologist just confirmed that I also have an Attention Deficit Disorder that causes me to have more problems.
My name is Amelia, despite my Grandma’s attempts to convince my parents to come up with something else. She said the name sounded like an old woman wearing a bonnet and traveling across the prairie in a covered wagon. Amelia actually means hard worker. “She’ll be named for Amelia Earhart,” said my Mom, “for the first lady to fly solo across the world.” Attempted to fly. She disappeared and was never found! Now my Mom tries to make me feel better by saying that I’m just like everyone else, even though I know I get distracted easily, and look old with my poufy white hair, white lashes, and squinty pinkish eyes. “If someone doesn’t want to be your friend, it’s their problem. They are just missing out on a V.I.P. That stands for Very Important Person.” But I know it also stands for Visually Impaired Person. And that’s me. A V.I.P. with A.D.D.
Another acronym I know is L.O.L. And I don’t mean Laugh Out Loud. Natalie, at my new school, calls me Little Old Lady- which is just mean - when I walk past her and her friends. Anyway, my best friend was the kindest person I ever knew and she was a little old lady. She was my Grandma Lorraine, My Mom’s Mother. She’ll always be my Grandma, but she died last summer from lung cancer. And now she’s gone and I can never see her again. At least, not as I knew and loved her. But maybe she will come back as something else. And I can be with her again. I just hope I’ll know it’s her when she returns.
We’ve moved eighteen times so far in my life. Four more than each year I’ve been alive. That includes moving from apartments, to family friend’s houses, to our three houses we owned, traded in, and lost. Both my parents are realtors. They sell houses. There were some bad years for buying and selling houses, which caused all of this packing up and leaving. In just the last three years we moved to England, where my Dad, Evan Newcastle, is originally from. We moved three times in one year and came back to California in the middle of the school year to stay back at Grandma’s in Sacramento, my birthplace. Then to another place there where my parents were property managers, until we moved back in to Grandma’s, and then to Canada – the city of Stratford, in the province of Ontario - where we are now and we’d better stay put. Here we’ve already moved twice this school year.
I just hope Grandma knows to find us in Canada. It’s no wonder I have a hard time keeping my attention on one thing. I always have to start over meeting new friends and getting used to new teachers, who have to get used to me. English words are even spelled differently here than they are in the United States and some are even spelled different than in England, where many words they used I never heard of. They like to add the letter u here. “Favorite color” is “favourite colour.” And French is on every label, as Spanish often is, back in the States. In England they called things differently, like “boot” was the trunk of a car, and “bonnet” was the hood. “Tire” was spelled “tyre,” “Tired” was never spelled with a “y”. Oops, I missed that one, when I actually thought I knew more English than anyone. Oh yeah, and, I need a magnifier to read most anything, or I have to bring the words up really close to my face in order to make them out.
At every school I’ve had to have a special teacher to make sure I either get my print enlarged. Because of Albinism, I can’t read regular print. I can’t just dye my hair darker and get glasses. I don’t have enough pigment or colour tones in my eyes and skin, so I have to be extra careful when exposed to the sun, that I don’t get burned. I have a hard time seeing a lot of detail, especially with too much glare. Bright sunlight not only hurts my eyes, it blinds me. I have to wear sunglasses nearly every time I go out because my eyes are extra sensitive too with so little colour they sometimes appear pink with amber. My Grandma once described them as the same shade as dusk. “Your eyes are dusky rose,” she said. She also used to say I was meant to see the world through rose-coloured lenses. That means that I am optimistic.
Sometimes I haven’t been assigned to a special teacher yet, or no one has had any time to photocopy my worksheets in large print for me to see them. When that happens I get teased for reading them too close up like a little old lady. Then I get all nervous and eat too much, and I get these stomach aches, that keep me from having to go to school. And that’s when I miss Grandma most. When I’m stuck at home.
She was a teacher. She used to teach me how to use my mind, to work with my hands and to put my heart into everyth
ing I do. That was how she put it. From keeping up a garden to cooking with fractions. She could teach me more at home in one hour, than I ever learned in a day of school and she was not even a Special Ed. Teacher. But she sure was very special. We had to live in her house without her in the end, when she was in hospice, because we couldn’t afford rent. Now we are living here, extremely far away, with the money we inherited. But I’d rather have my best friend, than any of her money –any day.
My Mom, Norma Jean Newcastle, who shares Marilyn Monroe’s original name, gets fed up easily with me, since she is so busy and stressed studying online for her Canadian realtor licences. She can’t even work here yet, legally. She is not the movie star, who Marilyn was. We can’t drink champagne all day and do ourselves up. I have to go back to school, even though my stomach still aches. I eat until I’m beyond full, but nothing seems to feel complete.
I have a Teacher for Students with Visual Impairments now that sees me once a month, Miss Brach. And we’ve worked out that the metric system -which I still don’t get- can wait until summer school. Then, I can concentrate on only that. The psychologist says someone will see me to talk to me and my Mom during lunch time about medications that can help me to focus better and can help to control my weight. If they have bully resistance serum, I’ll be up for taking that.
I have a sister, Janelle, who is tall and popular with green eyes and dark hair with three green striped braids, like snakes. It’s natural. j.k.! She is a junior in High School. Two years ahead of me, a freshman. I wish she could be more of a friend. She even goes as far as trying to make my friends for me, to occupy me, so her time won’t be taken up with me and my problems.
Unlike me, Janelle has a lot of skin pigment. We have different birth moms. Janelle’s actual mom is black. But Norma Jean is the one Mom who raised both of us. Angelique, Janelle’s birth mom, is out of the picture. Janelle’s able to get beautiful Club Med-style tans, I could never get. Once she convinced me to get a spray-on tan. It just made me look like a hamster who rolled in flour through all the parts the spray couldn’t reach. Not pretty and sun glistened, like Janelle.
Her homeroom classmate, Monica, has a disability called Asperger’s and Janelle should know better than to set me up with other problem people. People with Asperger’s have a hard time expressing themselves. They go over and over things in their head, and they tend to learn an incredible amount of things usually on one particular topic of interest to them. At least, that’s what the Internet said when I looked it up. It’s just too bad that discoverer had such a funny sounding name, Asperger. But Janelle says Monica needs a friend and so do I. What are we gonna do? Disable the world together with our funny named conditions? Our disabilities are not who we are.
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Hope you will want to read more…feel free to purchase for more of GRANDMA, and leave Reviews at Amanda’s author’s page.
About Amanda Bybee
Amanda Bybee is a special educator and an author of young adult fiction
Connect with Amanda
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amanda.bybee.33
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/bybee_amanda
Coming soon…
GRANDGIRL (the second book of GRANDMA)