www.amazon.com/Julie-L.-Casey/e/B00943SWXQ
Discussion Questions
1.What were some of the themes throughout the story? How did those themes affect the story and help move it along? (Examples: time, money—Benjamins, the number 13, color—the blue of Sara’s eyes, her red coat, the grey surroundings when she died, etc.)
2.Ben felt like Time was his enemy through most of the story. At what point did his perception of Time begin to change and when was he able to come to terms with it?
3.How would you describe Ben’s personality? Is he shy, sensitive, and introverted or outgoing and gregarious? Does he confront problems head-on or try to avoid thinking about them? How does his personality type help to shape the story?
4.What did Aaron mean when he said, “Well now. Emancipation is something I know a little bit about”?
5.Why did Aaron call the homeless people in Swope Park “Lost Souls”?
6.Why did the Lost Souls prefer to live in the park instead of some of the many empty buildings and houses?
7.Why did Patrick hurl the knife at Sara?
8.What was the significance of color when Ben found Sara dying?
9.Why do you think both old Mr. Westcott and Sara have peaceful expressions on their faces when they died?
10. Why did Doug “borrow” the gun from the empty farmhouse?
11. How did Bracken’s family’s perception of Ben’s personality differ from Ben’s reality? (If you’ve already read How I Became a Teenage Survivalist.)
12. Ben felt like he couldn’t stay with Bracken’s family. Why is that? Why did he feel more comfortable living with his three friends?
13. What are the things Ben learned about life by the end of the story? How can you apply these words of wisdom to your own life?
Find Out More
"Our sun is approaching a period of high turbulence, referred to as the solar maximum, with many scientists suggesting a peak in activity around 2013." This activity could result in a coronal mass ejection which, under the perfect circumstances, could cause the collapse of the power grid as portrayed in Time Lost: Teenage Survivalist II.
Find out more about solar superstorms and coronal mass ejections (CME’s):
NOVA Secrets of the Sun
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/secrets-sun.html
The Sun's Wrath: Worst Solar Storms in History
http://www.space.com/12584-worst-solar-storms-sun-flares-history.html
NASA Science: A Super Solar Flare
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06may_carringtonflare/
Solar Superstorm Could Knock Out US Power Grid
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/04/us-solar-superstorm-idUSBRE8721K820120804
Learning how to survive without electricity is all about creative problem solving. Think about everything in your life that runs on electricity and try to figure out a way to replace each of them. The links below show how Ben and Sara solved some of their most pressing problems.
Find out how to become a survivalist:
Surviving An Urban Disaster: Interview With Richard Duarte
http://www.offthegridnews.com/2013/06/12/surviving-an-urban-disaster-interview-with-richard-duarte/
Urban Survival Tips - Part 1
http://urbansurvivalsite.com/urban-survival-tips-part-1/
Urban Survival Tips - Part 2
http://urbansurvivalsite.com/urban-survival-tips-part-2/
Scavenging For Survival
http://uscrow.org/2013/05/12/scavenging-for-survival-after-shtf/
How to Turn a Pallet into a Garden
http://www.onehundreddollarsamonth.com/update-how-to-turn-a-pallet-into-a-garden/
A Message From the Author:
Thank you for taking the time to read my book. I would be honored if you would consider leaving a review for it on Amazon.
I’d like to shout a big thank you to all my
family, friends, and fantastic supporters
of the Teenage Survivalist series.
You all are the best!
About the Author
Julie Casey lives in a rural area near St. Joseph, Missouri, with her husband, Jonn Casey, a science teacher, and their three youngest sons. After teaching preschool for fifteen years, she has been homeschooling her four sons for ten years. Julie has Bachelor of Science degrees in education and computer programming and has written four books. She enjoys historical reenacting, wildlife rehabilitation, teaching her children, and writing books that capture the imaginations of young people.
Find out more at www.julielcasey.com.
ICE
QUEEN
Teenage Survivalist III
Julie L. Casey
Copyright © 2017 by Julie L. Casey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Book design by Julie L. Casey
This book is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, or incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1945667565
Printed in the United States of America.
For more information, visit
www.teenagesurvivalist.com
or
www.amazingthingspress.com
For Vona,
the smartest, sweetest person I know,
whose stories of her life and pets,
especially a Weimeraner named Spook,
have enthralled me for years.
I love you and miss you.
You will always be in my heart.
Chapter 1
Unicorns and Ice
Dad charged into my room madder than a sow separated from her piglets. He was yelling that I was holding out on him, that I had some dope hidden somewhere in my room. I froze, holding my glass unicorn and looking down at the floor to avoid a confrontation. That seemed to make him even angrier, and he slapped my hand, sending the unicorn flying across the room where it struck my desk and landed on the floor, its horn broken off. I just stared at it, refusing to let my anguish show to the man who had simultaneously saved me and made my entire life miserable.
“Ice Queen,” he sneered. He always called me that. At least it was better than the nickname he used to call me when I was a little girl—Tattle Taylor. I was angry with him, an emotion that felt as familiar to me as my own name, but I also felt sorry for him. I know that seems unfathomable for someone who has never lived like this, but I knew he couldn’t help it. I knew he was hurting, that the demons in his mind had come calling again. But this time there were no drugs, prescribed or otherwise, to help calm their strident demands. I feared that in time, without some substance to keep the demons at bay, he would get worse, the demons taking over his mind, his humanity. So I tried to stay calm, non-confrontational as always, to be as quiet and insignificant in his life as possible, so as not to incite the demons to action.
Dad had never been diagnosed with a particular mental illness, but everyone who knew him well could tell there was something not right about him. He never talked about the voices to anyone except Mom, preferring to self-medicate with marijuana at first, then crack cocaine, heroine, and meth. And always alcohol, of course. I often overheard him talking to her at night when my bedroom next to theirs.
“Libby,” I’d hear him say, sobbing. “I’m scared they’ll make me do something I don’t want to do.”
“Just hold on a little longer, Kyle,” she’d answer, half soothingly, half distracted. “We’ll find some ice for you soon.”
“Ice” was how they referred to their current drug of choice, the latest having been crystal meth. Mom was ill equipped to help him, though. She struggled from her own problems—depression, I suppose—which made her crave the diversion of drugs and alcohol almost as much as Dad did.
Dad picked up the broken unico
rn and stood looking at it for a moment. In that short span of time, the madness seemed to ebb out of him, his body slowly deflating like a balloon that had a pinprick hole in it. When he looked up at me, I could see sadness and remorse in his eyes. Maybe even a plea for forgiveness. He held the diminished figurine out to me and I looked away as I took it from him, not wanting to antagonize him into anger again nor wanting to forgive his behavior yet, even though I knew in my heart I always would. He turned away and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. I finally released the tears as I stared at the once magical creature that had now been reduced to a mere ordinary horse with a bump on its head.
The precious memories came flooding into my mind—my grandmother taking me at the age of nine to see The Glass Menagerie on stage. I was enchanted by the crystal animals and drawn to the character of Laura, who preferred to stay home with her menagerie rather than venture out into the world. I understood how she felt. The times I lived with my Grammy, when Mom and Dad were in rehab or jail or just on one of their binges, I never wanted to leave. I felt safe and unconditionally loved there. One of the saddest days of my life was six years ago, when I was ten: Grammy died of a stroke, my anguish compounded by the fact that I wasn’t there to hold her hand while her soul left this world and passed on to heaven.
Grammy had bought the unicorn for me soon after our cultural endeavor. I loved that unicorn, but it contained something inside which I loved even more. Whenever I felt trapped in my lonely life, I would hold the figurine up to the light and watch the rainbow escape from its carefully constructed prism prison. Rainbows always seem to yearn for freedom, liberated for only a few minutes after the rage of a thunderstorm or from a crystal cell when a beam of light hits just right. I liked to free the rainbow daily from the unicorn, which guarded it jealously inside its body, and let it bask in the sunlight on the windowsill like an aging cat. I had been just about to do that when Dad came in and slapped it from my hands, sending it soaring. Maybe he thought it was Pegasus the flying horse instead of a unicorn. Whatever the case, after Dad left, I placed the now-mere-horse on the sill and was pleased that it could still grudgingly permit the rainbow its few moments of liberty.
One of my last memories of Grammy, before Mom and Dad came back to snatch me away from my sanctuary, was when she gave me another one of my most precious possessions. She had pulled me into her bedroom one morning, shut the door, and locked it quietly behind us, so as not to wake up my older brother, Irvine, who was still asleep down the hall.
“Shhhh,” Grammy said, as she pulled a cardboard shoebox with a picture of old lady shoes on the side from the shelf in her closet. “I have something for you, but you must promise to keep it a secret. Especially from your parents and your brother.”
“But why, Grammy?”
“They’d just use it for getting into trouble.” She nodded and winked slowly and meaningfully. It took a little while to sink in, but I finally realized she was talking about drugs.
“Okay, I promise.”
She opened the box to reveal a pair of old lady shoes, identical to the ones in the picture on the box. I was slightly disappointed and more than a little confused. How could anyone use old lady shoes to buy anything, least of all drugs? But Grammy had a few surprises up her orthopedic shoes, and I would soon realize that sometimes the most drab and mundane things can hold the most amazing treasures. From one shoe, she pulled out a small handgun but quickly put it back, saying, “Oops, wrong shoe” and then, eyeing my startled expression, said with a wink, “You never know when you’ll need protection.” Then she reached into the other shoe and pulled out a wad of white tissue paper, the kind you stuff in gift bags to hide the present or cram in your shoes so they hold their shape when you’re not wearing them.
Grammy put the gloriously ordinary shoes back in the box and the box back on the shelf, then took the wad of paper to her bed. There, as she peeled back the layers of tissue, she revealed the most astonishing thing—a large, round, perfectly clear diamond. It immediately spewed a tricolor rainbow onto Grammy’s white chenille bedspread. Grammy said it was nearly a full carat and worth over two thousand dollars. “Save it for when you’re old enough to escape.”
“But Grammy, I can always just come here,” I said with ten-year-old innocence.
“You may not always be able to come here, child of my heart.” Grammy liked to call me that because I was not her biological granddaughter. Dad—her son—was really my step-dad, although he was the only father I had ever known and by all accounts was better than my deadbeat biological father who, among many other faults, was physically and emotionally abusive to my mother. Apparently, he suffered from mental illness too. How I was able to avoid the double genetic whammy, I’ll never know, but I do wonder if someday I might start hearing demons in my mind as well.
It was Dad—my step-dad—who rescued Mom, toddler Irvine, and fetal me from a lifetime of coldhearted brutality. For all Dad’s problems, he had never been physically abusive, and I know deep down, under the layers of insanity and substance-abuse-rot, he really loved Mom, and by accepting responsibility for Irvine and me, tenuous as it was at times, he loved us too.
And that’s why I would always forgive him.
Chapter 2
Spiders, Lilacs, and Hogs
PF Day. What can I say about Power Failure Day? Except that it happened three years ago on November 1st when I was thirteen. And it changed my life forever. As if my life wasn’t messed up enough already, the sun decided to spew a huge mass of electromagnetic particles at the earth, resulting in the demise of the world’s entire power grid. Everything run by electricity or electronics—computers (which ran everything, you know), most automobiles, all manufacturing—zapped in a split second as the electromagnetic pulse of a coronal mass ejection from the sun spread and conquered the geomagnetic shield, which normally protects the earth like a mother’s arms around her small child. But like a giant gravid spider, the pulse infiltrated and spread its spindly legs around the earth, releasing its tiny spiderlings, each an exact replica of their mama, to claim the power lines for their webs.
Spiders and webs were what I was doodling in class with my right hand while I took Biology notes with my left just before the power went off. Anyone who had been paying attention in science class knows that spiders are arachnids, gravid means pregnant, and the sun is made of ever-burning, ever-churning, ever-spewing hot plasma. I like spiders. Hot plasma, not so much. But who knows? In the end, it may end up being the catalyst I’ve needed to make my escape.
Shortly after PF Day, my parents were released from jail with the admonishment to stay in the area because as soon as the power was back on, they’d have to return to finish their sentences. Yeah, right. I expected Mom and Dad to flee as far from Missouri as they could get on foot. But I was wrong. Irv and I were surprised and even a little shocked to find Mom and Dad on the doorstep of the relatives we had been staying with since their incarceration. Dad’s cousin Lori and her husband Bob invited Mom and Dad to stay, as we had long since lost the lease on our house. The landlord had sold most of our possessions to pay for back rent.
But Dad had another idea—Uncle Owen’s hog farm six and a half miles outside of town. He warned us not to tell anyone about it though. I had visited Uncle Owen’s hog farm before and hated it. In fact, there was nowhere on earth I’d less like to be than Uncle Owen’s hog farm. The stench can be detected from a mile away and at the farm it’s overpowering. I wanted to try to dissuade him from his odoriferous scheme, but he was adamant, and I wasn’t willing to rouse the demons by arguing with him. The hog farm was to be our new home. He was sure Uncle Owen would welcome us. Uncle Owen, being childless and recently a widower, had been trying to get his nephew to go into the hog business with him since Dad was a teen.
A week after PF Day, we arrived at the Hog farm on foot, pulling our meager belongings behind us in a garden cart and a child’s red wagon. The odor almost made me turn back and make a break for it lo
ng before the farm came into sight, but I held my nose and breathed through my mouth until I felt light-headed. The fetid smell seemed not to affect my parents and Irv. Their senses of smell were probably eaten away by all the powdered poison they had snuffed before PF Day.
As Dad suspected, Uncle Owen was ecstatic to see us as he was in poor health and badly needed the help. He was a kind old gentleman and allowed me to pick out my room first. I chose an upstairs room on the south side of the house, away from the hog pens, a room under which grew a huge old lilac bush. At least I would have two or three weeks of heady fragrance in the spring to help mask the odor of hogs. Spring was six months away though, I thought sadly.
Since it was November, the putrid smell wasn’t as unbearable as in the heat of the summer, but it still made me queasy. After I unpacked my suitcase of clothes—mostly hand-me-downs from cousin Lori’s grown daughter—and my cardboard box of the few precious possessions I could carry, I sprayed one of Grammy’s handkerchiefs—she always called it her hankie—with a tiny spritz of her cologne, then held it up to my nose and inhaled the scent of White Diamonds while memories of Grammy stung my eyes and my heart. They were the only things I took from her house after her funeral. Well, those and the old lady shoes, complete with box and handgun and a small box of bullets. Don’t ask me the caliber—I know science and math and English, history and geography and Latin, but I know nothing about guns. Still, as Grammy said, you never know when you might need protection.
Teenage Survivalist Series [Books 1-3] Page 30
