Mrs. Parker had miscalculated how much cereal everybody would eat. I put five boxes of Cheerios into my cart. Original Cheerios was the bestselling cereal in the country. It had been invented in 1941 and was called Cheerioats until 1945. I knew this because we once had to do a paper on one of the top ten crops raised in Kansas. Oats were much less important to the economy of Kansas than wheat, but I chose to write about oats because I figured I already knew a lot about wheat, and I just felt like learning something new. There were something like twelve different types of Cheerios the last time I counted.
In the dairy section I found buttermilk, fat-free milk, flavored milk, lactose-free milk, low-fat milk, reduced- fat milk, whole milk, almond milk, coconut milk, rice milk, and soy milk. Mrs. Parker wanted 2 percent milk. This really annoyed Obaachan because she was a firm believer in whole milk, especially for growing kids. So I bought an extra carton of regular milk for Jaz and me, even though it wasn’t on the list and even though Mrs. Parker had told Obaachan to get exactly what was on the list. I guess we were already going rogue.
Then we bought all the other stuff and checked out while the cashier smiled almost the whole time, even when nobody was talking. Then she smiled harder and said, “Thank you. We hope to see you again!”
The whole way back, Obaachan was growling “Errrr,” so I knew she was in a lot of pain. She took seven aspirin, then said, “If I die from aspirin poisoning, Parker fire us. Here. Take this.” She pulled over and handed the cell phone to me.
When we got a signal, I helped Obaachan call Mrs. Parker. “We almost back,” she told her. “Yes ... Yes ... Yes ... Yes ... Yes ... Good-bye.” She handed the phone back to me. “Make sure that turned off.”
I looked at the phone. “It’s turned off.”
“If you wrong and she hear me, you grounded. I keeping list of every time you grounded during harvest. Then you be grounded for long time.”
“It’s off,” I said again.
“I just want to say, then. I want to say that woman drive me crazy.”
“Well, she’s just very detail-oriented,” I said.
“I like detail too. I love detail! Detail my most favorite thing in world! But she drive me crazy.”
When we arrived at the Laskey farm, it was already afternoon. The combines were going strong. When we got back to the camper, I called in on the radio. “Mrs. Parker? We’re back. Should we make everyone sandwiches?”
“Yes, of course. I’ve decided to move dinner to eight for this job.”
“Okay.”
“Personally, I believe in three nice, big meals a day, not in those six smaller meals that are so popular today.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Personally, I believe in the traditional method of just about anything.”
Obaachan was watching me glumly. “Yes, ma’am,” I told Mrs. Parker.
“I’d like to get on one of those cooking shows. I think my recipes are just as good. I looked into self- publishing a cookbook; I think it would be a bestseller.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Anyway, you’d better get to making the sandwiches.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I put the radio down.
Obaachan was pressing her palms against her temples. “She give detail a bad name.”
Obaachan made the sandwiches and went to drive them out to the combines. I went into the bedroom and took out my lucky amber, with the mosquito in it. I pressed it against my forehead for luck and then meditated the way Jiichan had taught me. First I did alternating-nostril deep breathing, then I lay down on my back and spread out my limbs. Thunder took that as an invitation and climbed back and forth over me three times before settling down on my shins. Jiichan liked me to pick a person to open my heart to. I picked Jenson. “I accept you for who you are,” I said. I hadn’t even realized he was still in my mind, but apparently, he was. I tried to picture him. But usually when I closed my eyes, all I saw were chaotic lights and shapes. Mrs. Parker once said she could see pages and pages of writing in her head if she’d just read a book. She could pick out a page number and know exactly what was on that page.
After I did my breathing, I opened my heart to Jaz, as Jiichan sometimes asked me to do. Then I tried to untangle some of what I saw when I closed my eyes. I could never quite meditate because of the chaos in my head. After a while I thought I was awake ... unless I was asleep. The next thing I knew, Jaz was leaning his face a foot over mine.
“Hey, Summer?” Jaz asked.
“You surprised me!” I yelped.
“Two kids at school said I’m a freak.”
“Which two kids?”
“Just two kids.”
“You’re not a freak,” I said.
“Why do you think they said it, then?”
“Because they don’t know what they’re talking about,” I told him firmly.
“Summer, can you just answer honestly?”
I considered that and decided to tell him what my true opinion was at that moment. “I think you’re a very intense boy and are really good at concentrating, and Jiichan says people like that are very successful in life.”
“Like thinking hard can make me successful?” Jaz asked. Something in his voice indicated that he was already moving on from the idea that he was a freak and was now playing with the possibility that he was a great thinker.
“Yes.”
“That’s interesting,” he said, clearly pondering which particular type of greatness he should aspire to.
I could hear voices in the kitchen and realized Robbie was talking to Obaachan. I really wanted to go out there to see Robbie, but Jaz’s earnest expression—with a few scars on his forehead—told me that he needed my full attention right then.
“So why can’t I make friends with any kids from school?”
Trying to be helpful, I said, “Sometimes you say the wrong things at the wrong time.” I heard Robbie saying, “Okay, thanks, bye,” then I heard the door open and close. Rats.
“How can you say the wrong thing at the wrong time?” Jaz asked me. “If you have a thought, why not say it?”
“It’s like that time the teacher said you started singing during a test.”
“I got an A on that test.”
I ignored that and said, “There was that time we went into town and you asked that boy from your class if he wanted to come over and play.” I felt the camper shake from the wind. Tonight would be dry and windy. The dust and bits of cut wheat would make the combines look like gigantic tumbleweeds.
“What was wrong with asking him that?”
“You can’t just ask someone that.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s not your friend yet.”
“How can he become my friend if he doesn’t come over?”
Jaz was making my brain hurt. I heard Obaachan growling and pushed myself up, then pulled my knees in close and rested my chin on them. I didn’t know what to say. He was a strange boy.
“You’ll make another friend,” I said finally. “It just might take time.” I stood up. “I have to help Obaachan. You coming?”
“No.”
In the kitchen Obaachan was making lasagna. She didn’t even turn her head. “You make brownies,” she ordered.
“How did you know it was me?”
“I have eyes on back of head.”
I took out the mixing bowl. “You always lecture me to tell the truth.”
