The Wrong Way Home: Chapters 32–34

She told me about things that have happened on the Ranch for two hours last night. Who’d gotten promotions and special privileges; how one of the littles got in trouble for trying to smuggle a chick into the dorm; a new meal that had entered the weekly rotation.

I glance to my left—Meadowlark is still asleep, flat on her back with an arm over her eyes. Her forehead is sweaty, and her cheeks are pink.
She told me about things that have happened on the Ranch for two hours last night. Who’d gotten promotions and special privileges; how one of the littles got in trouble for trying to smuggle a chick into the dorm; a new meal that had entered the weekly rotation.

I felt uneasy. But who knows. Maybe she’ll change her mind once we get home.

The van lurches and bumps. Meadowlark still doesn’t wake up.

Reluctantly, I pull the pages from the pocket of my coat and hand them over.

“You made friends?” Meadowlark asks. “Out here?”
Suddenly, I feel all flustered.

“I can tell from a single glance this isn’t the kind of reading that will nourish your mind. I thought you knew better than this, Fern.”

“My real name is actually Frankie. Did you know that? My mom named me after a singer. A punk-rock singer. Frankie Bellows. She had lots of things to say. She screamed and yelled and sang all the words she wanted to.”
I’m rambling now, I know.

Meadowlark shrinks away from me with a horrified look on her face, like I’ve got a contagious disease.

I can make up my own mind. And my mind is screaming at me to not get back in that van.
Because I suddenly know, with absolute clarity, that Mom doesn’t know I’m with Dr. Ben.

I can make up my own mind. And my mind is screaming at me to not get back in that van.
Because I suddenly know, with absolute clarity, that Mom doesn’t know I’m with Dr. Ben.
“No,” I whisper. “I don’t want to go.”

I glance back over my shoulder, even though Dr. Ben isn’t in view. The person who created the place I called home for six years. The person who I’d do anything to impress. The person I’ve been trying to get back to for months.

But I also think of Eddie in the hospital. Babs crying, telling me to wait, to let her explain. The special nook on the second floor beneath the fairy orb, all my unreturned library books scattered across the floor.

Airplanes, Dr. Ben has said, are worse for us than twenty years of internet exposure. Worse than drinking a cup of pesticide.

Airplanes, Dr. Ben has said, are worse for us than twenty years of internet exposure. Worse than drinking a cup of pesticide.

Finally, she looks up at me. “How could you?”
And then, in a flurry of doors slamming, they’re gone.

Suddenly, I can’t wait to hear everything about Alyssa’s life. I want to know how hard the first few months were for her, how difficult the transition was. I want to know all her stories.

She has a concussion, a hurt spleen, and a broken leg, but otherwise, she’s okay.

Tuna yowls at being jostled, and Eddie winces, clutching her stomach. “I shouldn’t laugh. It hurts.”

When we reach the bluff, Babs points to a patch of dense thickets surrounding its base. “We’ll go that way.”

Oh, she loved the magic of it. She was shown the path by a woman who was getting too old to do the hike. And when Birdie died…I couldn’t bear the idea of the tradition just…stopping.

Tricking people was never my intention. I had no idea what Eddie was up to.

As she goes around the side, to the second-floor entrance, I try to make sense of it. Maybe she’s already renovated it for the high-tea expansion and wants to show it to us?

Eddie snickers loud enough that Mom calls out, “What’s so funny, girls?”

She wanted to do paper lanterns, but I said no, because even the biodegradable ones aren’t good for the earth.