your father left it’s been hard. I can’t be both parents all by myself. How can I find someone else if I spend all my time sitting home in my bathrobe, doing nothing but arguing with my kids?”
“But why do you have to find someone?” asked Lucinda.
“Why?”
“Because it’s a tough world out there. And because I get lonely, you know?” Mom gave them both her most sincere, brave-but-about-to-cry look. “Can’t you two just help me out for once?”
“By disappearing?” demanded Lucinda, losing it all over again. “By moving into Castle Stinkfoot and spending the whole summer watching Martin and Anthony play Star Wars and take turns bubbling milk out their noses?”
“Jeez!” Mom rolled her eyes. “Who are you two, the king and queen of Romania? Can’t you ever do anything that isn’t exactly what your highnesses want?” She paused, staring at the open letter in her lap. “Gideon? I don’t remember any Uncle Gideon.”
Lucinda had picked up the family cat and was holding him on her lap, even though he didn’t really seem to want to be there. When Lucinda was upset she petted the cat so much that Tyler figured someday she’d just rub the fur right off him. “Isn’t there anyone else we can stay with?” she asked. “Why can’t I stay with Caitlin? Her family said it’s okay.”
“Because they don’t have room to take Tyler, too, and I’m not going to have him go stay at the neighbors’ by himself,” said Mom, but she was reading the letter and not paying much attention. She lifted the envelope and looked at it, then went back to the letter again.
Tyler scowled. “I’d rather watch Martin Peirho eat boogers than have to sit around listening to you and Caitlin talk about boys all summer.” His sister and her friends spent all their time talking about the guys on television, musicians and actors, as if they knew them personally, and about boys in school as if they were the guys on television- “Oh, I think Barton isn’t ready to have a real relationship yet, he’s still getting over Marlee.” Tyler hated it. He wished there was a game where you could chase stupid, fakey celebrity boys like that and shoot them all into little pieces. That would rock .
“Well, maybe you won’t have to do either.” Mom was looking strange, the way she looked when someone was giving her good news she didn’t quite believe, like the time Tyler’s teacher had told her how much she liked having Tyler in her class, how hard he worked in math and how good he was on the computer. Tyler had been proud, but at the same time his mom’s surprise made him wonder if she’d actually thought he was stupid or something. “Apparently you have a great-uncle Gideon. Gideon Goldring. Some relative of my dad’s, I guess. I sort of remember him and Aunt Grace, now that I think about it. But he’s dead, isn’t he?” She obviously realized this sounded pretty silly. “I mean, I thought he was dead. It’s been years… He’s a farmer, it says here, and he has a big place out in the middle of the state and he wants you to come visit. Standard Valley, it’s called. I’m not sure where that is, exactly…” She trailed off.
“What valley?” his sister asked. “Who’s this Gideon? Some crazy old family member, and you’re going to send us to stay with him now?”
“No, he’s not crazy.”
“But you don’t know that-”
“ Stop it, Lucinda-just give me a moment to read this carefully! You obviously learned how to be patient from your father.” Mom squinted at the letter. “It says that he’s been meaning for a while to get in touch with me since we’re almost the last of the family. He says he’s sorry he hasn’t contacted me sooner. And he says he understands that I have two lovely children. Ha!” Mom did her best sarcastic laugh. “That’s what it says here-I wonder who told him that whopper? And he wants to know if they-that’s you two-could come and spend some time with him on his farm this summer.” She looked up. “Well? That solves all our problems, doesn’t it?”
Lucinda looked at her in horror. “A farm? We’ll be slaves, Mom! You don’t even know this man, you said so-he might not really be your uncle. Maybe he just wants kids so he can work them to death milking cows and pigs and everything.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s related to your grandfather. And you can’t milk pigs.” Mom returned her attention to the letter. “I don’t think so, anyway.”
“So now you’re going to send us away to some… death ranch,” Lucinda said, almost to herself, and then she dropped her hair over her face and clutched her arms around her middle again.
Tyler didn’t like arguing, but he wasn’t any happier about this idea than his sister. “Not a ranch. A farm.” He had a sudden memory of a picture he’d seen in his American history book, a decaying shack in the middle of a huge field of dust, a place as empty as the moon’s surface. “Uh-uh. No way.” He didn’t think they had the internet on farms. He was even more sure they didn’t have GameBoss and SkullKill. “I’m definitely not going to any boring farm all summer.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Don’t be so closed-minded,” said Mom, as though they were talking about whether or not he should try a bite of something gross like fried squid instead of ruining an entire summer that they’d never get back for the rest of their lives. “Who knows, you might really enjoy yourselves. You could… go on hayrides. You might even learn something.”
“Yeah,” said Lucinda. “Learn how to be pecked to death by chickens. Learn how people break child labor laws.”
Tyler leaned forward and snatched the envelope from Mom’s hand and examined the strange, squinchy handwriting. On the back of the envelope was a little drawing of two old-fashioned letters tangled together-they looked like an O and an F -and a return address that explained those two letters and confirmed all his worst fears.
“Mom, look at this!” he said, holding it out. “Oh my God, look at the name of this place! Ordinary Farm! ”
“Yes, it does sound nice, doesn’t it?” she said.
Chapter 2
M om was in such a hurry to get them to the station that Lucinda forgot her hair dryer. She couldn’t imagine how she was going to get through the summer without a hair dryer, and she was pretty sure that they wouldn’t have something that modern and useful on some stinky old farm in the middle of nowhere.
“Don’t worry about it too much,” Tyler told her as they walked across the train station parking lot. “They probably won’t have electricity, either.”
Mom looked at her watch three times between the parking lot and the platform where the big board said the train to Willowside would leave. “Come on!” Lucinda told her. “Would it really kill you to be a little late to this singles thing? This is probably the last time you’ll ever see your children before we get mangled to death by some kind of farm machinery.”
“I’m not even leaving for that until tomorrow morning, as it happens,” said Mom. “I’m just worried about you getting on your train.” She grabbed one of Tyler’s backpack straps to get him to move faster, but Tyler yanked it away again.
“It’s the only one for days that stops in Standard Valley-I don’t think it’s a very big town. Oh, good, there it is. Come on, children! Give me a kiss. Don’t forget to write and tell me all about it. I’ll find out the address of the retreat and have Mrs. Fleener next door forward your mail to me.”
“Which means that when we write to tell you we’re prisoners of a satanic cult and they’re about to sacrifice us, you’ll find out, what, two or three weeks later?” Lucinda asked, only half joking. It was like they were Hansel and Gretel abandoned in the woods or something.
“You kids, you’re so funny.” Mom shook her head. “You know, if you stopped complaining you just might enjoy yourselves. Now, give me that kiss.”
Lucinda kissed her mother on the cheek even though she was angry, just in case it was the last time they ever saw each other. She didn’t really think they were going to get chewed up by a haymower or something, but she couldn’t help feeling frightened and sad, and the fact that she was tall enough now that Mom didn’t have to
