My feet were on the dashboard of my mom's truck. My backpack laid crumpled on the floor and my brother sat in the cramped sideways backseat. Our mom was back in the house because she had forgotten her keys. Typical. We were waiting for her to come take us to school. I spotted our neighbor, Mrs. Watts at the end of our long gravel driveway. She was haphazardly chasing a few sheep down the street, probably rounding up the ones that had escaped overnight. It was time Mr. Watts fixed their fence. Maybe I should have offered to help.

"What do you think of that, Meat?" my brother asked.

"I think you'd better not call me that when we get to school," I spat.

"Yeah, like you're ever even gonna see me. I'm a senior now. I won't have you in any of my classes, and we get off-campus lunch."

"Oh yeah? You're gonna eat out? With what money?"

"I'm getting a job this year," he said smugly. "I already talked to dad about it and applied at Spinelli's."

This news wasn't as annoying to me as was his tone. "What? No fair! Why do you get to get a job?"

"Because I get good grades."

Mom got back to the car and hopped in. 

"We just don't think you could handle it right now, Meat."

I could hear the grin on his dumb face. "And who are you, one of my parents? I have two dads now?" It was the best I could come up with.

"Now, now," my mom interjected, talking in that singsong mothery way. "Demeter, don't let him bother you, and Judah, don't bother your sister. You're not in charge of her, and I really wish you and your father would stop calling her that ridiculous nickname. I gave her a beautiful name, and I intend for her to be called by it." Somewhere in her speech she had started the car, lit a cigarette and started us on our way.

"It's a step up from 'Meat'," I said, "but I think I'm gonna go by Demi."

"It is your name, I guess," mom said. She dropped what was left of her cigarette our the window and cranked it up. It was old, so the glass panel shivered and bobbed back and forth as it rose into position.

I looked at my mom. I could still see the woman from the pictures of her and my dad in our photo albums. Her hair was still feathery and bouncy and brown, albeit streaked with silver. Her makeup was impeccable. She did it the same every morning since I could remember, and evidently, long before I was even around. Her cheeks had a tiny dusting of peach, her eyes a smear of gold, with a little eyeliner, and a nude lip. She wore a denim jacket, and aviator sunglasses on top of her head. It didn't make sense to me that she lived in the present, and she sort of didn't. She seemed to be frozen in the moment she and my dad bought our farm.

She noticed my staring. "What is it, honey?" she laughed, snapping me out of my trance.

"Nothing, nothing," I brushed her off. Then I softened. "You're just really pretty."

She cooed. "Thanks, darling. You are too. Now if you'd let me just doll you up a tiny-"

I groaned, and reached into  my pocket for my phone and headphones.

"All right," she she conceded, her voice doing a playfully sort of bounce. "I'll leave you alone."

"I think it'd be a waste of your time, mom," Judah said. 

I reached under my seat and yanked up on the adjustment bar, squishing him behind me. 

"Ow, ow, meat knock it off! Mom!"

"Eh, you had it coming, kid," mom dismissed. 

I let up and returned my seat ot its proper position. 

So, I might be getting a tiny bit ahead of myself here. All that stuff about my mom and Judah, it's important. And it's a really good picture of how my family works. We're regular, you know? But the thing is, I'm not regular. I'm special. And I know everyone thinks that to some degree, but really. I am, and that's what my story is about. So, I guess I'll take you back to when it started, because I have to set this up in order for you to appreciate the real story. What's that called? Exposition? Yeah, exposition. 

So, like you already know, I live on a farm with my family. We're a very happy family, most of the time, when Judah's not being a jerk. My brother and I go to school and work on the farm with our parents when we get home, but it's so much fun it's not even fair to call it work. From the time I could walk, I had little chores. I'd throw slop out for the pigs, or collect eggs from our chicken coop, or I'd help my mom pick our eggplants and carrots and whatever else we were growing. When I got bigger, I got to do harder chores, like throwing hay bales around, and hauling baskets of produce around.

It wasn't always easy, but like I said, I loved it, and I wouldn't trade my childhood for anything. As an eight year old, I remember 

the day I figured out I was special. I had just been struck with follicular inspiration and given myself what I’d thought was the greatest haircut any eight year old girl in the world had ever had. What had been my bangs, meticulously cut by my mom, were now chestnut-colored toothbrush bristles that crowned my forehead, and there was a ragged gap over my left ear. It’s really a wonder I didn’t cut the thing off. Judah never let me hear the end of it, and even if he had, there seem to be a disproportionate number of pictures from that era of my life.

Anyway, I was debuting my new ‘do to the chickens and exchanging pleasantries with each of them, and I noticed Beulah, our white mottled hen staring at me. She was usually pretty shy so it wasn’t out of the ordinary for her to not come forward to me when the rest of her friends and family clamored around my feet, chattering on about their day, and how they could kill for some cornbread stuffing mix.

But today, instead of minding her own business on the other end of the enclosure, or hiding in her coop, she was staring at me, rather intently. To someone unfamiliar with chickens, it’d seem like she was looking away from me completely, but I knew what was happening. Her head was turned away from me so her beady little eye could point straight at me. I did know about chickens, though, so I noticed and cocked my head to the side.

“What is it, Beulah?” I asked. “You want some crumbs?”

I fished a handful of bits of stale cornbread and when I looked back at her, my head filled with a low, rumbling sort of noise. In just a few seconds it seemed to rise and snap. There was a definite crack, and then I was seeing the world from Beulah’s eyes.

Now, I don’t want to come across as snobby about my chicken knowledge, but I do have quite a bit of it, since the chickens were my favorite part of the farm. I spent a weirdly large chunk of my time reading books we’d borrowed from the school library on them. A really weirdly large chunk. My mom shouldn’t have let me spend so much time obsessing over chickens, I’m realizing. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that this development was a little unnerving to say the least. Chickens, and all other birds’ eyes don’t move in their sockets, so they have to keep their heads very still or the world just doesn’t make sense. That’s why they bob their heads when they walk and sort of snap around all the time. They sort of live their lives in a slideshow, rather than a movie like we do.

So, there I am, looking at myself crumpled on the dirt with a bunch of chickens’ butts waving around in the air as they make a mad dash for the feed I’d spilled all over the place. As I’m sure you understand, this was not OK with me. I was upset and confused, and Beulah picked up on that and started running around the cage, bock-bock-bocking all the way. This only made my poor eight year old mind even more upset and confused, and somehow in all the snapshots of myself lying on the ground, and the inside of the chicken coop, I managed to think how great my hair looked, and the next thing I remembered, I woke up in my mom’s arms.

My poor, poor mom. Not only was her daughter having some kind of fainting spell in the chicken coop, she had been mauled. She was crying a wailing sort of cry, with her eyes all crumpled and her mouth as agape as her jaw would allow it to be. I came to, and put my hand to her face. Her anguish turned to bewilderment.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Bewilderment melted into laughter. She brushed what was left of my hair to the side, in all honesty, not really doing much, and she stood up, hoisting me onto her hip. “You fainted or had a seizure or something, sweetheart. And the chickens got you all scratched up. And look at your hair.” She let out a gasping sort of chuckle. “I didn’t even think chickens ate hair.”

This comment struck me the wrong way. “Excuse me, mom. I made my own haircut.”

Hey eyes widened and she pulled her head back. “You what?”

“I can’t believe you thought a bunch of chickens could do this.” I mimicked the motion the girls in the shampoo commercials did, where they shake their hair behind them, but really it turned out more like a violent shudder.

Mom took a pause. “We’re going to have a talk about this later, Demeter. For now, let’s get you cleaned up.”

And that’s where it all started. I’ll probably tell you a little more about growing up later, but for now let’s get back to the story. My mom dropped us at school, and as soon as I let Judah out of the backseat, he bolted into the building. Oh well. I probably wouldn’t be seeing him again today. I looked around. The parking lot was empty. It was a still day, and clouds hung low and gray overhead. There was a flagpole over between the main building and the big sign with interchangeable letter plates.

WELCOME BACK, STUDENTS. FIRST DAY, TUE SEPT 08

The flags on the pole hung limp, in direct defiance of the sign’s forced enthusiasm. We were early, so only a few other people were around. I walked into the building. There was a ridiculous cartoon of an angry ear of corn in a circle in the center of the floor. The administrative office was directly in front of me, behind a plate glass window. A bald black woman sat at a desk in front of the window. Two locker-lined hallways flanked the office.

I approached the woman. She had dark orange lipstick and clumpy mascara, but she wore a gorgeous teal blouse. I’m not much for fashion but I know what I like, and I knew then that that top was awesome.

“Hi,” I said, expectant, and more than a little nervous.

“Good morning,” She replied. “Happy Tuesday.” She raised her penciled-in eyebrows and smiled.

“Uh, you too.”

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Uh. Yeah. It’s my first day, and I don’t really know where to go. I don’t even have a schedule yet.”

She pointed over my shoulder. “There’s a bulletin board right over there.” I looked. There it was, on the wall next to the doors. “It has everybody’s homeroom. You’ll get your schedule there.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, and have a great year!” She smiled again.

“You too.”

I turned away and walked to the bulletin board. I searched the freshman classes to find my name. It was a pretty small school, so it didn’t take long. There were only four classes. I was in Mrs. Dolloway’s room, B24. There were a couple other flyers pinned up, but they were all teachers’ phone extensions and evacuation procedures. The hall to the left of the office was A, and the one to the right was B. I made my way down the hall, running my hand along the lockers on the right side of the room. It was habit. There were hooks meant to hold the doors open. I flicked them as I passed.

2. 4. 6. 8. Tink. Tink. Tink. Tink. The classroom doors had windows with sort of see-through plastic panels on them, and metal placeholders for teacher name plaques. Only a few names had already been installed.

Duncan, Pearson, Finn, Rossi, and finally Dolloway. She was already here. Her door was closed, but she was muttering to herself as she puttered around the classroom. She was nothing but a vague shadow behind the door. I tried the handle. It was unlocked.

“Hello?” I asked. Why was I so nervous? What did I think she would do to me? Whatever I anticipated I was wrong.

She responded in the sweetest tone I could imagine anyone using before nine AM, “Hello, come in, come in. I’m Mrs. Dolloway.”

She was an oldish woman. Her hair was gray and it curled around her neck. She wore a beige cardigan and a skirt in a shade of yellow that seemed inappropriate this far from Easter.

“Hi, I’m Demeter,” I offered.

“Demeter Lawrence?” She asked, pushing her glasses down her nose to look at me over them. The sweetness in her voice had turned sour.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Now, you’re going to get this a lot this year; I’m sure dear, but your brother has made a rather strong impression around here and I hope you won’t feel the need to follow in his steps.”

This came as a shock to me. Judah had always been great in school. “How do you mean?”

“Oh, un-crinkle your brow. I’m sure it’s no secret that he has a problem with authority.”

She was wrong. It had been a great secret. He was nothing but a model member of our household. He never got in trouble and always did his chores. I left my brow decidedly un-un-crinkled.

“Actually, I never heard anything like that.”

My confusion turned into intrigue. I took a seat in the front row, across from her desk, and slung my backpack around the chair.

Her desk was messy, already strewn about with stacks of stapled papers, framed photographs, a pincushion, a foam frog, and her thermos of coffee.

I leaned forward and rested my chin on my fists. “What did he do?”

A bell rang, and from out of nowhere the roar of a hallway full of students filled the classroom, as did the bedraggled teenagers, every bit as excited as I was to be ending summer vacation.

“Looks like that’ll be a story for another time.” Mrs. Dolloway gave be a wink.

The rest of the day went on sort of like that. It was easy to get where I needed, and I was constantly at the mercy of the crowd. In the halls, I surfed along with the flow of bodies in the cramped hallway, and all my classes were filled with the kind of introductory stuff that always goes on on first days. A couple other teachers gave me the same spiel about Judah as Mrs. Dolloway, which was actually kind of nice. I had been expecting to get garbage form people about my name, like I always had in junior high and elementary, so it was a nice change of pace at first, but it too got old.

Eventually though, I made it to geometry, my last period, and managed not to fall asleep before the bell rang. I decided to stay in my seat for a sec to let everyone else leap out of their desks and toward the door. Once the room was emptied and I thought enough time had passed to give me a clean getaway, I made for the door.

It had rained a little, but the sun was out now, and it was getting muggy. I scanned the parking lot for mom’s truck. It wasn’t there. I stood to the side of the doorway and leaned against the brick and mortar. The cars all crawled out of the lot, one by one. After a few minutes it was almost as barren as it had been when I’d arrived this morning.

Mom’s truck pulled up. I call her the Behemoth. She’s a working truck, and she’s got all the scars to prove it. She was dark blue once, but now her big, bouncy, boxy frame was more nick than paint. She waved and pulled right up to the entrance, with ease due to the lack of competition. I approached the car and started my story as soon as I opened the door.

“Did you know Judah was like some kind of mastermind?”

It was his turn for the front seat, so I pulled the lever of make it lean forward an dclimbed over it into the backseat.

“One of my teachers told me about this time he bolted all the furniture to the ceiling-“

Somehow in my unloading, I hadn’t noticed that I was face to face with a boy there in the backseat of the Behemoth. And he was cute. While mine were furrowed in surprise, his were bushy but in a cute way, and his eyes were green, and he had his head turned away a little and there was a tiny smirk on his dumb cute mouth, and can you imagine why my mom would have a cute boy back here? Was she human trafficking?

“Hi,” he said, stretching the word to two bouncy syllables.

“Mom, why is there a stranger’s knees touching my knees right now?”

His smirk turned into a full blown smile.

“This is Tanner. He goes to Sister Roxanne’s. They get out a little earlier than you guys, so I got him first.”

She said it like she expected it to make sense to me.

“OK, so why is he here?”

“He’s gonna help us out on the farm, since your brother’s working now.”

“Is he working already? He just said he’d applied this morning.”

“Well, they hired him. He texted me earlier.”

“OK, well-“

“It’s nice to meet you,” he interrupted. He stuck his hand out to me.

I hadn’t noticed how cute his voice was earlier. It was scratchy in a nice way. I took his hand and gave it a hard squeeze.

“You too.” I turned back to my mom, who was reapplying her lipstick. “So, are we driving Judah to work?”

“No, he left already.”

“So why am I still back here?” I asked.

“Because you haven’t moved yet,” my mom offered, not missing a beat.

“I don’t mind,” Tanner said, that smirk returning to his face.

Wait a second. Was that really smooth or was I just really off guard? Either way, I defaulted to defensive, and crawled over the front seat. My backpack flopped down over my head and I made a noise that got caught between a croak and a tiny scream. Who was smooth now?

I settled myself and my mom pulled out of the lot. We were home five pop songs and like thirty radio commercials later. My mom let Tanner out of the backseat, and took him on a tour of the farm while I got busy with the little homework I’d been assigned. I usually tried to knock a little bit out before starting my chores. 

For my English class we were assigned an essay on who we are. It wasn’t the first time this assignment had come to me, so by now I should have had some vague default answer to give to the question, but somehow it completely eluded me. I could go on for days about any number of subjects, but talk about myself? No way. All I can think of are things that I’d never tell anyone, like the time I wet my sleeping bag at a slumber party when I was nine, or the time I stepped on a chick and killed her, or my whole thing with animals, and then I get really nervous and completely clam up.

A lot of things make me clam up. Really, it’s my most natural reaction to any social situation.

I found myself hunched over the plain coffee table, with my pen to the English-designated composition book. There were about half a page of notes from earlier that day, and a generous helping of inane doodles. I struggled to fight the urge to add to them. If I was gonna burn daylight, I was gonna burn it productively. I spent a good few minutes, sitting there with my pen touching the page at the start of the earliest clean line, waiting for inspiration to hit me.

It didn’t come. I decided to get started on my chores. I scooped up my notebook and back pack and jogged the stairs to my room. They say you can tell a lot about a girl from her room. Is that true? Mine was relatively plain. There were white painted walls, with a couple books standing on a shelf next to the door, a pile of dirty clothes in one corner, my bed in the other. I had a purple lamp. Did that signify anything about me? My bedspread was plaid. What did that mean? What are the criteria these dwelling divinators look for? My room was really nothing special. Did that mean I was nothing special?

What am I doing? I’m fourteen. I have a lifetime ahead of me to become someone cool and interesting. Maybe I’d go steal a speed limit sign later. That’d spice things up. Maybe it’d come with a cool leather jacket and one of those cigarette packs you smack on your palm to dispense them.

I didn’t go steal a speed limit sign. I just tended to what needed tending. By sunset, I was ready for dinner and a shower, but I still had to feed the pigs. We collected our neighbors’ kitchen scraps for them. Mom usually did it before getting started with dinner.

I wondered if she took that guy, Tanner with her tonight. From behind the house, I could see into the kitchen. We had a screened in porch and the kitchen window had a big wide sill for pies or iced tea or whatever mom felt like putting there when she was in a homemaker mood. We reserved a little space for a yard, and then there was the pigpen and the chicken enclosure, and a little plot of vegetable garden. Behind those were the pastures where we rotated the cows. You had to drive to get to where we grew our soybeans. They were the main crop. We’d tried potatoes and a couple other things in the off season, but it was always too much work in the bitter cold, and it never really felt worth our while.

Anyway, the pigs still looked hungry, so I went around the side of the house and checked the Behemoth. Sure enough, the buckets were there, waiting for me. I’d forgotten the wheelbarrow. I did this all the time. We had ramshackle little toolshed where our water heater was, haphazardly fastened to the right side of the house. The wood on it was graying and starting to splinter. I couldn’t remember a time when it didn’t look that way, and it had held up all these years, so I guess dad was right never to fix it.

I opened the doors with a familiar creak and pulled the wheelbarrow right out. It wasn’t a big shed, so you’d have to pull it out to get to anything else inside it anyway. I waddled with the wheelbarrow to the Behemoth, gathered the slop, and hauled it back to the pigs. Wheelbarrows are really awkward implements. Am I wrong about that? I was never able to use them with any sense of grace or poise. I guess it didn’t matter, since I was taking it to the pigs, arguably the least poised animal ever domesticated.

I undid all four of the buckets’ lids at once and poured their contents onto the chute into the pen. All six of them came waddling to the trough.

One of them had white and black splotches on her back, Carol. I decided to incarnate into her. I hooked my fingers into the wire of the fence and locked eyes with her. I’d been training myself to do it standing up over the summer when I had free time. It was getting easier. I took a deep breath and the rumbling started after a second or two. I concentrated.

Crack.

I was in. It made me feel like a computer hacker from the movies sometimes, like I had figured out the code and gotten into “the mainframe”. The pigs were easier to get into than the chickens, but the chickens were easier to take hold of once I got used to their body mechanics. Weird how that worked. Right now Carol was waddling for the trough. It was nigh impossible to override instinct. I let go before she buried her face in the muck. That wasn’t an experience I was interested in going through.

Crack.

I was back to myself. I swallowed, and squeezed my eyes shut for a second to reorient myself. I stacked the buckets together and took them back to the shed. There was a hose next to it, wound up on a rack mounted on the wall. I undid a few loops of it to rinse out the buckets and returned them to the Behemoth.

I kicked off my shoes outside the front door and went inside. Tanner was sitting on the couch talking to my dad, sitting in his beat up old armchair. It wasn’t supposed to rock, but one of the legs was too short so it wobbled and my dad chalked it up to a late-developed feature.

“Hey, darling. How was school?”

“Eh, it was school.”

“That’s my girl.” He chuckled, the skin between his freckles flaring up red.

I continued into the kitchen. Mom was just finishing up, tossing salad in a big green plastic bowl. We were probably about to eat more vegetables than the pigs. I snatched up a roll out of a tea-towel lined basket. It was hot.

“Oh no you don’t young lady!” My mom smacked me with one of her salad forks and I dropped the roll. It bounced and ran under the table. There was an oily dressing stain on my hand.

“Well great, now it’s all dirty.” I got on all fours to look for it.

.”Well, you know better. You wash up before coming into my kitchen. Now go on! Dinner’s about to be ready.”

“You win this round mom,” I conceded. I narrowed my eyes at her and backed out of the room.

She laughed. I washed up and joined my parents and Tanner at the table. I took the seat across from him, next to the empty place set for Judah, whenever he’d get home. My mom had put a fall-themed runner on the table with yellow and orange leaves, and ears of corn and pumpkins. The rolls were still steaming a little. Yesterday’s leftover roast and potatoes smelled just as good today as they had fresh.

I decided I wanted some iced tea, so I got up to get the pitcher out of the fridge. I poured my parents each a glass.

“So you’re joining us?” I asked Tanner, holding out the pitcher to offer him a drink.

He held out his cup to let me fill it. “Yes, ma’am.”

Ma’am? I thought. Am I a ma’am? People had only ever called me ma’am in that patronizing what they do to kids. Why am I so bothered by this? I filled his glass. What is wrong with me?

I set the pitcher on the table and sat down. A drop of condensation trickled down the side of it and pooled in the burgeoning ring around its bottom.

Dinner was nice. We chatted about some new soy cultivar my dad wanted to ty out and Tanner advised me about some of my teachers. Mom brought out ice cream and a can of chocolate syrup for dessert. When it was done, she offered to drive him home.

“Oh, no thanks,” he declined. “I just live a little ways away. I don’t mind walking.”

“Are you sure” my mom pressed. “It’s really no trouble.”

“I am. Thanks, and thanks for dinner.” He smiled and nodded to each of my parents.

“So, we’ll be seeing you again tomorrow?” my dad asked.

“Sure will. Good night everybody.” He turned and let himself out.

My dad excused himself to the living room for some game and the paper. I helped my mom clean up. She put everything away and I started on the dishes. I’d never minded doing the dishes. It was nice having my hands get clean while working for once.

An overzealous audience’s cheers drifted into the kitchen. Mom took a cloth and started drying the dishes out of the rack, and stacking them on the counter next to her. She was still a few inches taller than me, and she stood facing me, leaning a hip on the counter.

“So, what do you think of Tanner?” she asked.

I knew immediately what she was thinking, where she wanted this to go, but I wasn’t letting her into my head that easily.

“I don’t really know yet. I didn’t see him much during chores. Was he any good?”

She cracked a half smile. “Oh yeah, he was great out there. I had him do a lot of weeding today.”

“You never have Judah weed, though,” I said, a tiny bit confused.

“Yeah, but how else am I gonna look at that behind?” She bounced her eyebrows.

My mouth dropped open. I flicked water at her. “Mom, he is a child!”

“Yeah, well, they don’t make ‘em to last.”

“What about dad?”

“Oh honey, you have nothing to worry about. I love your father’s behind just as much as that kid’s.” 

“Mom. That is gross, and I do not appreciate it.” It was like she was actively trying to give me the heebie jeebies.

Just then Judah came through the door. He looked beat. His skin was all shiny and his shoulders had a certain slump to them. He was wearing a candy striped apron and one of those weird paper hats.

“I don’t get it,” I called through the living room. “Are you a nurse or a sailor?”

Mom swatted my arm. “Demeter, your brother looks tired give him a break.”

Dad hauled himself up off his armchair and pulled Judah into a hug, giving him a few solid claps on the back. He didn’t hug dad back, but humored him with a halfhearted laugh. Dad pulled away and held Judah’s shoulders at arms’ length.

“My boy’s first day at his first job. How was it, kiddo?”

“Nothing like the farm, that’s for sure, but it was all right.”

“When do you get your first paycheck?”

Judah pulled off his ridiculous hat and walked through into the kitchen. Mom handed him a plate, which he quickly took to filling himself.

“Not for a couple weeks, but I did get tips.”

Dad had already returned to the game, but mom was quick to jump in.

“Oh yeah? How’d you do?”

“Pretty well. A bunch of my classmates were there with their parents tonight, since it’s the first day of senior year, but everyone said it was especially busy for a Monday.”

He plopped himself into a chair and dug in. I got the sense he’d be too tired to entertain any real banter with me tonight, so I patted him on the back and retired to my room for the night.

My notebook was there laying on my bed, still open to the first page, holding my pen in the fold between its leaves. How thoughtful. I gave it a solid ten seconds’ contemplation before I decided to cram the essay into my morning. I got started filling out the emergency contact forms, and the parent permission for homemade foods paper, and I opted myself out of the flu shot, alternating my mom’s prim cursive with exaggerated initials, and my dad’s chicken scrawl of a signature on each. I’d been signing for my parents since I could sign my own name. It was lucky for them I’d never had a penchant for mischief. Or was it that I’d never had the time?

Very tricky, mom and dad, but I was onto you now. From then on there would be no more child labor on the Lawrence Family Farm, no sir!

Oh, who was I kidding? I loved the farm every bit as much as they did.

I straightened the stack of papers and put them back into my binder, put my binder into my backpack, and shoved my backpack off my bed and onto the floor. No more school worries for me tonight.