Homeschooler V Middle School

By Keigh Serah

She’s a social misfit with a goal – normalcy. The plan? Middle school. This could get ugly.

Kerouac(Kerry) Gardener starts eighth grade with high hopes for learning the social skills that have eluded her as a homeschooler. She has an overactive imagination and a propensity for big vocabulary words and quoting dead people.

She meets Jesse, a kleptomaniac, Floyd, a bully, Cliff, a cute guitar-playing transfer student, Ally, a popular girl, and many more. She quickly gets a reputation for being nice but also for being weird. It’s her job to change that and learn how to fit in. If she can.

This book tells the story of eighth grade from the point of view of someone new to public school. The main lesson of this social experiment? Public school kids aren't normal, just sharing a common experience.

Different clowns, same house of fun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Keigh Serah
• Release date: Jun 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458090997

Keigh Serah

Keigh loves a good story and swears by strong females and memorable characters. Some of her characters even swear back! She's currently working on the novelization of a screenplay she wrote of the swashbuckling variety called "To The Rescue!" - due out in August 2011. Hint - it isn't the prince who does the rescuing. Keigh's life has been chock full of adventures and she looks forward to sharing (her take on them) with you. Okay! Her faithful and (oh so) loving blond dog (name of Rudolph Valentino) would like his walk now. Later. Keigh.

Book preview

Homeschooler

V

Middle School

by Keigh Serah

Homeschooler V Middle School

by Keigh Serah

copyright 2011 Keigh Serah

Smashwords Edition

a Girls’ Night In publication

http://girlsnightinbooks.blogspot.com/

Dedicated to the awesome middle schoolers who helped me

develop the idea and perform it as a stage play in the spring of 2006 at Athens Middle School in Athens, Ohio.

Also to Dr. Grippa, the principal, for putting up

with the (literally) theatrics.

And finally to Ms.Weber’s English class who helped me fine-tune

the story and characters as I was turning it into a screenplay.

Now go sink your teeth into Kerry’s story.

It’s not a true story – but there are true things about it.

And that, my dear, is storytelling.

ENJOY!

And if you bought this book without a cover, what can I say?

Boy, are you dumb.

Please don’t steal my story. It is copyrighted in several formats, and is available as both a stage play and a screenplay –

if you’re looking for material to produce, this is it.

Let’s get on with it, right? Doing what we do best.

We’ll split hairs if it becomes necessary.

Prologue

Kerry sighed.

She twirled a strand of her hair as she watched the dancers twist and turn and stomp their feet with joyful abandonment. The community room floor was warmly lit polished wood and it echoed with the strains of the banjo and the stamping of feet.

How many of these dances had she been to? Every third Saturday since the age of twelve, she and her homeschooled friends had dressed themselves up in ill-fitting, out-dated dresses, matching Converse, and distinctly unique and convoluted hairstyles. It was their big night out. Square-dancing with the geriatric set. Perfect.

She’d thought deeply about her situation. She’d listened to the homeschool fanatics rail against the corrupting influence of public schools, despair of the institutional disregard for the individual, and wax poetic about the social adeptness and maturity of homeschooled kids.

Yeah, right. Socially adept. With adults.

She watched as a fourteen-year-old boy wearing floodwater pants and sporting unfortunate acne handed his taller, older dancing partner a glass of water. In the exchange, which was awkward and tentative, he spilled some water down the front of her dress. He giggled and tried to wipe it off. She giggled and tried to get him to stop.

Kerry couldn’t look anymore. It was her worst nightmare. That would be her in another year or two – wearing her mother’s low heels and a frilly pastel frock, and happy, nay, ecstatic, to have any male attention, no matter how pathetic.

Kerry stood up. That sealed it. Things were going to change. She was going to learn how to be normal and fit in with regular kids if it killed her. What was the worst that could happen? She could always come back here. For a certain crowd, square dancing never went out of style. She held her head high and walked toward the door.

A hand on her arm stopped her progress and she looked down at an open, friendly, smiling, crooked-toothed face.

She sighed.

I’d love to dance.

He led her to a line of squares. They greeted the other dancers – three couples in their seventies. The music began and everyone clapped off the first four bars. They swung. They dosie-doed. They made hay.

Monday. Monday she would register for eighth grade. It was the only way out of despair and nerdiness that was never-ending. There was a light at the end of the tunnel.

It was probably a train.

Chapter 1

Her mother, Claire, was still being very quiet. The meeting with the guidance counselor had gone by in a flash, mostly because Kerry kept telling her mom that she’d be fine and was looking forward to this new challenge, while telling the counselor that she didn’t want to go to the high school for math and science.

She was sure she’d be plenty challenged in the eighth grade classes, no matter what her test scores were. Hello? The goal was to fit in and be normal, not just a different kind of nerd.

She let her mom buy her school supplies, notebooks and pencils (so many different kinds of pencils, jeez!) but she turned down the lunchbox options.

I think I’ll just pack my lunch for a few weeks, mom, until I figure out what the other kids do. Her mom just sighed and put the School House Rock lunchbox back on the shelf.

They paid for their purchases and loaded the car. Kerry could tell that her mom wanted to talk so she turned the radio off and then waited until they were on the freeway.

Mom?

Hmm?

I know it’s hard for you…letting me go. But I’m gonna be fine. I’ll be safe, and they’ll call you if anything happens. Kerry shifted in her seat to look at her mother, but her mother turned her head away. Kerry was at a loss. She wanted her mom to be okay with this but she didn’t know how to make it easier.

I really loved homeschooling with you, mom. I learned tons of stuff that I bet most kids don’t know, and I know how to interact really well with adults so I’m sure the teachers will love me. You know how helpful I can be…

Kerry’s mom turned off the main street into their cul-de-sac. She downshifted and bumped up into their driveway, put the car in neutral, pulled the brake and killed the engine. Finally, she turned to Kerry and took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were all soppy, like watercolors left out in the rain.

Honey, I know. I know it’s something you need to do. I’m just gonna have a big hole in my days with you gone. Another one. And it’s gonna take me some time to figure out how to fill it. I guess…I…I’m consciously trying to learn to let go.

Kerry pulled her mom’s head over to her shoulder and let her cry. Truth be told, she might have cried a little too. For both of them. For the pain and excitement of growing up. Of pulling away.

Of filling holes.

* * * * *

Kerry’s dad, Scott, drove her the nine blocks to the corner by her new school.

New school. Middle school. In-between school. The middle of her safe, sheltered, predictable, backward, homeschool days and…and what? Her reserved place as a typical high school student with major social drama and lots of practice for entering the adult sphere of responsibility and mature relationships? Or the roller-coaster of typical American, Midwestern teen angst, at once personal and routine? She imagined herself riding a roller coaster car filled with screaming kids racing through tunnels of angst and circling loop-de-loops of hormones. What would a tunnel of angst look like?

Time would tell.

Scott cleared his throat. Kerry popped back into the moment. He sailed the Honda to the curb and reached over to touch Kerry’s shoulder. He allowed himself to ruffle her hair a little. She smiled. No one else could touch her hair. She gathered her backpack and turned to open the door.

‘Grief has limits, whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what we know has happened, but we fear all that possibly may happen,’ he waited expectantly for her to identify the quote.

Pliny the Elder, Kerry responded. She reached over and gave her dad a peck on the cheek. Mom didn’t come down to see me off.

Scott fiddled with the gear shift.

I know, peaches. She was in bed. Crying.

Kerry sat back in her seat. She hung her head. Scott picked up her chin and turned her face toward him.

You are doing the right thing. For both of you. For all of us. Don’t worry, I took the morning off, I’ll go be with her. Okay?

Kerry nodded and swallowed. She smiled ruefully and opened the car door. Scott and the Honda were gone before the light at the crosswalk changed. Deep breath. Casual demeanor. One foot in front of the other.

She looked up at the school perched on its hill once she was halfway across the street. It loomed. It emanated menace. It towered over the kids who were walking willy-nilly into its great gaping maw of a front door. She fought down panic. It was just her imagination. Or was that the glint of teeth