Surviving the Applewhites: Chapters 1–9

Only Aunt Lucille, whose view of life was almost pathologically sunny, would get the idea that after an entire state had admitted it couldn’t cope with the kid and after Traybridge Middle School had been defeated in less than a month, the Applewhites should take him in.

It had surprised him considerably since his parents used those words at home all the time.

All the fuss and furor afterward had made a permanent impression on him.

Jake couldn't see the main road from here, the way the drive curved around a row of trees and bushes, but out there was a wooden sign with WIT’S END spelled out on it with bark-covered twigs. Quaint and rustic and weird.

Jake couldn't see the main road from here, the way the drive curved around a row of trees and bushes, but out there was a wooden sign with WIT’S END spelled out on it with bark-covered twigs. Quaint and rustic and weird.

The oldest of them, a wiry old man with white hair and a droopy white mustache, pushed his way through the others and headed straight for the wooden rocking chair in the corner of the porch.

“Zedediah Applewhite, patriarch of the Applewhite clan,” he said.

Applewhites loved spontaneity. E.D. wanted a schedule and a plan she could count on.

Hal was not just a typical introverted artist.

Sometime in the last year he had become an actual recluse. He didn’t come out of his room except, as far as anyone could tell, in the middle of the night, when he was reasonably certain everyone else would be asleep.

The point of the family meeting had been to outline The Plan for Jake’s assimilation into the Creative Academy.

Even his silver-spiked black leather collar and his Vampire Zombies from the Beyond T-shirt with the skull and fangs that dripped bright red blood didn’t faze her.

The combination of this particular expression and this T-shirt, even without the spiked leather collar, had totally unnerved the principal at Traybridge Middle School.

An entire row of small, flickering candles in glass containers surrounded the photo, and a sprig of what looked like goldenrod stood in a narrow vase next to it.

He glowered at them as they came in.

At Lucille’s vegetable garden, Winston flopped in the shade again while Lucille explained to Jake that nature spirits had told her to make the garden round instead of rectangular and that they came into her dreams sometimes to give her advice about planting and cultivating.

E.D. was so used to her aunt's weird notions that she'd forgotten how strangers tended to react.

In the wood shop Zedediah and Archie were both at work, Zedediah at the lathe turning spindles for one of his trademark rocking chairs and Archie carving a series of complicated lines and squiggles into the legs of a turtle-shaped object.

In the wood shop Zedediah and Archie were both at work, Zedediah at the lathe turning spindles for one of his trademark rocking chairs and Archie carving a series of complicated lines and squiggles into the legs of a turtle-shaped object.

The strange, cacophonous music Cordelia had written and recorded for her ballet was blaring from inside.

E.D. wished she’d written up some bogus projects to send Jake off in completely different directions from her own—something like the history of the pickle industry or the place of the preposition in English grammar.

She pretended to be too engrossed in her reading to hear.

Jake patted the dog gingerly on the head.

It's the most saccharine, sentimental piece of tripe the two of them ever wrote.

It's the most saccharine, sentimental piece of tripe the two of them ever wrote.

The Miata careened back around the line of trees, scattering gravel in all directions.

The young man, his hands up as if to ward off a blow, was protesting in a high, reedy voice that he wasn't the one who’d been driving like a madman.

The young man, his hands up as if to ward off a blow, was protesting in a high, reedy voice that he wasn't the one who’d been driving like a madman.

His words were all but drowned out in a fresh deluge of verbal abuse.

"This is an unmitigated catastrophe! I am supposed to have dinner with the president of the board of the Traybridge Little Theatre in exactly twenty minutes to talk about my work. These people are none too stable. When I don’t show up on time, she’s likely to panic and hire some lawyer to direct their show. Some accountant. That’s what they’ll do, they’ll hire an accountant to direct my production of The Sound of Music."

But our readers are getting a sneak preview of her new work. The first two chapters of what will no doubt be heralded as the literary masterpiece of the new century will be printed in the next issue.

The world is awaiting the coming Great American Novel with bated breath.

“Ah. Ophelia. Unrequited love, madness, drowning! Superb material for a ballet. An opera even.”

He did his best, in spite of his total loathing of cooked vegetables, to eat enough to keep body and soul together, slipping bits of zucchini and beet and cooked carrot to the dog at his feet under the table.

The Applewhite artistic dynasty and the home school designed to perpetuate it.