Stranded by J. T. Dutton Read Free Book Online Page A

society thinned and frayed. One misdeed, he claimed, jeopardized all our forebears had built after they arrived on the prairie to homestead.
    Somehow I had hoped God would lay better on me when he got in touch. I already knew the planet was rolling speedily downhill since Nana’s pig-greasing days. Our rivers were polluted and our teens too cynical, just like Nana claimed. It was hard to escape the news. The question was, what were we supposed to do about it? Pastor Jim ran his hand through his hair and slapped the back of one hand into the open palm of the other.
    “The body of a young girl”—Pastor Jim spoke carefully while simultaneously casting his eye over the full pews—“is a vessel that can be filled with light. She walks on special ground. She contains Jesus’ perfection and shares in the glory He brings to the world, the creation of Iowa and its beautiful fertile fields.
    “I ask you”—Pastor Jim lifted his voice again—“what you will do. How you will change what has come to pass.”
    People glanced at one another. They weren’t surehow they were supposed to answer.
    I suspected it was a trick question.
    Nana put her hand on my shoulder, and I turned to meet her gray eyes. Her touch meant, “Kelly Louise, I forgive you for the mess on the carpet.”
    She had no idea how hard forgiving was going to have to be.
    One of the boys on the other side of Nana hit the other. The little girl pushed her bottom into the air. Nana helped tip the girl upright so her underpants wouldn’t show, but thirty seconds later the little acrobat was upside down again. Pastor Jim spoke for thirty minutes about the Gospel of Saint John.
    “Are you there, God? It’s me, Kelly Louise.” I left another message, but the sermon continued and I didn’t hear anyone other than Pastor Jim.

7
    ON MONDAY MORNING, I GATHERED PENS AND notebooks and prepared myself for my first day at Carrie Nation High School. An ugly ache swelled in the pit of my stomach. A few days earlier I had been excited for all the boys I was about to scope, new sentences I could diagram, but now my only hope was that Natalie’s secret would go unnoticed in the excitement of learning the history of quadrilaterals. My mother sipped coffee at the table. Nana paced between the refrigerator and the sink, assembling a marketing list. Both of them were irritated I had left the refrigerator door open after waking up at 2:00 a.m. to drink a glass of milk. I wasn’t batting a thousand keeping to the rules at Nana’s house.
    I wasn’t sleeping well either. The thought of Baby Grace Sorenson chafed like a pea under my mattress,causing my eyelids to puff on a day I had to go light on the cover-up because Nana had enforced cosmetic rules. I had a lot of problems stacked in spaces in my brain that had once been empty.
    “Time to go.” Natalie, in her coat, urged me to hurry in order to make the bus.
    I stuffed the last of my toast into my mouth, kissed my mother (leaving crumbs on her cheek), and rushed through the kitchen door into the garage. Nana flipped her hands as if shooing a cat, telling me to scoot faster. Everyone else’s idea of what my internal speed should be at 7:30 on a Monday morning outstripped my precaffeine reality.
    I bustled as fast as I could, doing my best not to panic at the thought of what might happen with so many outside forces propelling my body while my brain remained so dangerously understimulated. One of my new boots resisted yanking. I hopped across the lawn, kicking while balancing my backpack on one shoulder. After a three-minute dance that resembled a Highland fling, I stumbled aboard the bus long after Natalie had reached it.
    She waited, talking to the driver.
    “You look lovely today, princess,” he complimented her.
    “Thank you, Ernie.” My cousin beamed.
    Ernie noticed me, glanced at the boots that Nana had not allowed me to wear to church, and tugged at his shirt collar.
    “Hello, miss,” he said.
    I acknowledged him