Laura Ingalls Is Ruining My Life

by Shelley Tougas

  “That stinks,” I said. “What if Mom needs to get a job? Where would she even work around here?”

  “Maybe that diner.”

  Mom had always been a writer, but she’d never gotten paid for it until last month. She’d been a bus driver who wrote and a receptionist who wrote. A museum guide, a bartender, a propane delivery driver—all those things, but always a writer. She wrote before and after shifts. She wrote on the weekends. Finally a publisher bought her biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss. She said the payment was small, but if we lived on a tight budget, she could quit working for a year and write a novel.

  Tight budget? We only shopped at thrift stores; we never had cable; and Freddy, Rose, and I shared a cell phone. When we were little, Mom would take her guitar to the beach in Tampa. She’d play and we’d sing, and tourists would drop money in her guitar case. Then we’d use the money for gas.

  Does a budget get any tighter?

  Mom said Lexington and Church Row had everything we needed, and that we’d live there for many years. But she’d said that about Richmond, Charleston, Raleigh, and Atlanta. Mom has the attention span of a gnat, so when Laura’s spirit beckoned her to Walnut Grove, we followed.

  “You’re Freddy and Charlotte, right?” A girl with light brown hair and charcoal eyes stood next to the bench.

  Freddy elbowed me, and I said, “Um, yeah. Why?”

  “I’m Julia. My grandma says you should come back for supper.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you like spicy food? Grandma says she doesn’t like too much spice, which is hilarious, because her enchiladas set off fireworks in your mouth.”

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  “Did you walk through town? Did you see the museum? Did you see the school?”

  I didn’t know which question to answer, but it didn’t matter, because she didn’t stop talking the whole time we walked to the house. “The Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum is part of several buildings. There’s a reconstructed church and school from the 1800s and a replica of Laura’s house. Plus you can see inside a sod house, which is incredibly gross, don’t you think? Living off the land is one thing; living inside the land is just creepy.”

  She took a breath, then continued. “Take my advice and stay out of the park. This new kid lives across the street. He crouches behind the slide and smokes, waiting for someone to pick on. His name is Chad, and he’s like fifteen or something. We call him Bad Chad.”

  Julia talked too much. She tossed her long hair over her right shoulder, and a few seconds later, tossed it back to the left. I knew all about hair-tossers. Two hair-tossing girls in Richmond used to trip me on the playground. Also Julia’s voice was high-pitched like a flute. She was a squeaky, hair-tossing motormouth. Freddy stared at Julia like his eyelids were tacked open. He usually looked away when people talked to him, but in Julia’s case, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He was that annoyed. Twin Superpowers, right?

  Finally we got to the house. I interrupted Julia’s chatter about her grandmother’s enchiladas and said, “We’ll meet you inside. We need to get something out of the car.”

  When Julia opened the front door, I got the duct tape from the glove compartment and tossed it to Freddy. He tossed it right back.

  “This stuff is sticky, Charlotte. It hurts to pull off. I’ll just be quiet.”

  “Just make the ends of the tape stick to your cheeks. Don’t press it against your lips.”

  “But we’re eating. I’ll have to take it off right away.”

  “What are you guys doing?” Julia shouted from the door.

  I whispered to Freddy, “She needs to chill out.”

  He rolled his eyes and walked to the house.

  Even though I understood Freddy’s point about the tape, I suddenly felt cold. I actually shivered in the August sun. It was the timing of the eye roll. He should’ve rolled his eyes after Julia pestered us. But he didn’t. He rolled his eyes after I said Julia needed to chill out.

  I didn’t think too much about it. I followed him into the house, knowing we were both annoyed—totally, completely, blindingly annoyed—by Julia Ramos.

  We ate the enchiladas, rice and beans, and chocolate ice cream. Mom, Julia’s grandfather Miguel, Rose, Julia, and Mia talked and laughed. I politely answered Mia’s questions about what I liked at school (math), my favorite food (chicken strips), and the best place we’d lived (Lexington). And Freddy kept the vow. Our Twin Superpowers seemed intact.

  But something was different.

  Something was wrong.

  I’d felt it while we walked from the park. I’d felt it when we stood by the car. And I felt it during dinner as Julia laughed and tossed her hair. But I shrugged off those feelings. It was just another new group of people in another new house in another new town.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Mia and Miguel Ramos had tried to make the basement feel bright, a not-quite-a-basement basement, with white paint, floral furniture, and pictures of outdoor scenes hanging on the walls.

  “Such beautiful art!” Mom smiled as she studied the picture of a creek cutting through prairie grasses. “Who needs windows when you can look at something this pretty?”

  The stairs from the garage channeled down into the small kitchen, which was open to the living room. There were three tiny bedrooms and a bathroom. Despite the bright paint and flowers, it smelled and felt like a basement—musty and damp. But I didn’t mind because we’d lived in worse places. Leaky ceilings, cracked windows, stained carpet. We’d had roach roommates in Tampa.

  Or was it Raleigh?

  Anyway, I helped Freddy set up his bedroom. We’d stopped sharing a room last year. Mom said we were getting older and needed privacy, which translated into me sharing a room with Rose and Freddy getting his own room. I tacked Star Wars posters on Freddy’s wall while he shoved clothes into the small dresser.

  “Observations?” I asked.

  “Mia Ramos is going to make us fat.”

  “Evidence?”

  “Her enchiladas rocked, and I heard Julia say she makes the best chocolate chip cookies ever,” he said. “Go.”

  “Julia Ramos is annoying.”

  He shrugged.

  “Evidence: she tosses her hair like someone in a shampoo commercial, and her voice sounds like a three-year-old playing a harmonica, and that waitress said her parents are a train wreck,” I said. “Go.”

  He flopped onto the bed. “Our parents are a train wreck.”

  “Mom’s not a train wreck. She’s unique. And our dad might be a train wreck, or maybe he’s not. We don’t know.”

  “I guess.”

  All Mom told us about our dad is they met in Boston, and he broke her heart. We don’t remember anything about him. She’d say, “He’s not the man I thought he was.” When we were babies, she’d moved us to Jacksonville, where she met Rose’s dad, Reydel “Rey” Mendoza. He also was not the man she thought he was. Nor were any of her other boyfriends. At least Rey stayed in touch. He worked as a tour director on a cruise ship, which meant Rose went on Caribbean cruises at Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break, and for a whole month in the summer. Freddy and I got a large collection of souvenir seashells out of the deal.

  Rose came in carrying the black velvet bag that held the box of Jack’s ashes. “Where should we keep Jack?” In our apartment in Lexington, Jack had been stored in a cupboard next to the flour and sugar. “Mom said in the bathroom cabinet with the toilet paper, but that’s just not dignified.”

  “What about a drawer in our bedroom?”

  “Mom thinks it’ll make me sad to see Jack every time I get a pair of socks.”

  “She has a point,” I said. “How about the top shelf of the closet in our room? Then he’ll be close but not too close.”

  Rose beamed and left with the Jack bag. I sat next to Freddy. “We should convince Mom to get Rose another dog.”

  “We should,
” Freddy said. “You do the asking. I’ll nod.”

  Our phone buzzed with a text message: Hi! It’s Julia. Want to get school supplies with us tomorrow?

  I glared at Freddy. “How’d she get our number?”

  “She asked after dinner.”

  “You broke the vow?”

  “I wrote our number on a piece of paper.”

  “Did you tell her about the vow?”

  He shook his head. “I went with the laryngitis plan. I wrote that my throat hurt too much to talk.”

  Julia was confident. Too confident. Here’s how I knew: She didn’t say my grandma said I should invite you. She asked straight up. Those confident girls were mean. They said whatever they thought the second they thought it—and all their thoughts were obnoxious! Freddy and I were in for a long year of her badgering us if we didn’t cut her off fast.

  Know what I mean?

  I started to reply, but Freddy grabbed my arm. “What are you going to say?”

  “I’m going to tell her Mom is shopping while we unpack. You have a better idea?”

  “No. Sounds good to me.”

  But Julia didn’t give up. Two days later, while Freddy and I were binge-watching The Hunger Games, Julia sent another text. Freddy paused the movie. “Julia wants to know if we’ll go to a water park tomorrow. Her grandma will drive us.”

  “Observation: Julia Ramos is a stalker.”

  Freddy sighed.

  “Aren’t you going to ask for evidence?”

  “I already know your evidence, Charlotte. She texted us twice.”

  I hit him with the pillow from the couch. “So you want to go?”

  Before he could answer, Mom and Rose came down the stairs with shopping bags. Mom said, “Guess what? Mia wants to take everyone to a water park tomorrow. What a great way to spend your last day of summer vacation.”

  “The best way!” Rose said. “We were going to have a picnic on the real banks of the real Plum Creek by the Ingalls family’s dugout. But we can do that next weekend instead.”

  “We don’t want to go to a water park,” I said. “We’d rather have a picnic.”

  That was how much Freddy and I dreaded going to a water park with Julia. We’d fake excitement about having a picnic on Laura’s creek.

  But Freddy pulled the little notebook and pencil from his back pocket. He scribbled a note and handed it to me. There are leeches in creeks!

  I wrote, There are Julias in water parks!

  He wrote, Snakes! Ticks! Wolves! Bats! Who knows what else?

  I sighed and said to Mom, “Never mind. I guess we’d rather go to the water park.”

  Freddy handed me a second note. Option B. I nodded. We had a four-option plan for the vow of silence when we interacted with anyone from our new school. Duct tape was for home, for Mom. But duct tape at school meant bullying. So our plan was:

  Option A: I talk for him.

  Option B: Whenever possible, he’d pretend to have laryngitis.

  Option C: If I wasn’t there, or we’d overused the laryngitis plan, he’d shrug or nod or shake his head.

  Disaster Option: If I couldn’t help and he was forced to speak, he’d answer with the fewest possible words.

  Mia drove us in her minivan to Fairmont, which was near the Iowa border. Walnut Grove was so small people had to go to Iowa to find a waterslide. Mom decided to go with us so she could visit with Mia.

  Guess who was quiet during the entire drive?

  Motormouth Julia! She leaned her head back while waiting for Tylenol to knock out a headache.

  You’d think I’d turn joyful cartwheels.

  You’d think I’d be able to relax instead of worrying about what to say to her.

  Wrong.

  This meant Mom had a very long and very quiet hour to talk to Mia.

  “I’m calling my novel Prairie Girl. The main character is a young girl in the 1800s who’s sent to live with relatives on the Minnesota prairie after her parents die. She’s used to city life, so the adjustment is enormous.”

  “That sounds like a sad story,” Mia said.

  “Joy can’t exist without sadness. That’s why I connect with Laura Ingalls Wilder. She conveyed both the good and the bad, but she didn’t let hard times get her down.”

  “I never thought about it like that.”

  I wanted to drown out the words with a drum solo. Mom was gearing up to the part about how Laura’s spirit had called her to Walnut Grove and I did not want Julia hearing that. “Will you turn up the radio? I like this song.”

  “I can barely hear your mother,” Mia said. “Let me turn it off for a bit. Then you can pick a station. Okay?”

  I looked back at Julia. She seemed to be napping, which was good. I did not want Julia hearing what Mom was saying because she might repeat it at school. You can’t be invisible if your classmates learn about your mom talking to a dead pioneer girl.

  Mom said, “I’ve been thinking about this story for years, but it felt locked inside me. Then I had a dream about Laura that helped me find the answer.” Freddy’s eyes opened wide and he elbowed me. But what was I supposed to do? Duct-tape Mom?

  “What was the dream?” Mia asked.

  “Laura and I had a picnic together and rode horses like we were best friends.”

  “Mom could literally smell the wildflowers,” Rose said. “Right, Mom?”

  “That’s right, honey. All my senses were awakened.” Freddy elbowed me again. I looked over my shoulder. Julia sat next to Rose in the back row. Her eyes stayed closed, so I shrugged at Freddy. Mom said, “Laura and I rode all the way to Walnut Grove. She faded into the horizon, but I stayed on the prairie and watched her leave. It was the most serene moment I’ve ever experienced. I knew immediately I needed to write my children’s novel in Walnut Grove.”

  “Well, that’s different,” Mia said.

  “So you moved here because of a dream?” Suddenly Julia was alert.

  Mom laughed. “I wouldn’t change my whole life because of a dream. That’d be ridiculous. I spent a lot of time connecting with Laura’s energy. Then I made the decision.”

  “How do you connect with a dead person’s energy?” Julia asked.

  “It’s like we’re talking to each other,” Mom said.

  Freddy coughed and kicked my ankle.

  I said, “In her book, the girl doesn’t like the prairie. She wants to go back to the city, but eventually she learns to love the land. The end! Can we listen to the radio now?”

  Mom turned around and looked at Julia. “The harvest is a metaphor for her growth. Do you think it’s too quiet?”

  “Is quiet another word for boring?” Julia asked.

  Mom sighed. “I think you just answered my question. I’ve been researching, and everyone says quiet stories don’t sell. You need dragons or wizards or vampires.”

  Julia said, “I like adventure stories.”

  “Maybe it can be quiet and exciting,” Rose said. “You might think the Little House books are quiet because they’re about prairies and pioneers, but they’re not. There are fires and blizzards and diseases.”

  Mom said, “When the story growth is internal, inside the character, that’s when a story is truly exciting, don’t you think, Julia? That’s what I think.”

  Freddy face-palmed himself.

  So I said, “I’d like to learn what kind of music gets played by radio stations on the prairie.”

  “Radio is radio. You moved to a new state, not a different planet.” Mia chuckled and turned on the radio.

  “A different planet?” Mom said. “What an interesting way to put it. That’s something to think about. Definitely.”

  The way her voice trailed off made my stomach squeeze tight. I leaned forward so I could see her reflection in the rearview mirror. She had a faraway look in her eyes. It was the look Mom got before she quit a job, before she started packing, before she started a new project.

  That look was never good.

  * * *


  The water park was small but it had everything you’d expect: a lazy river, fountains, a toddler section with a small slide that looked like a whale, and three spiral-shaped slides that dropped kids into the water. Julia and Rose went down the tallest slide over and over while Freddy and I floated on the lazy river.

  Freddy’s hearing aids were in the van, but he could hear me if I stayed close and spoke slowly.

  “I think we have a problem, Freddy, and that problem’s name is Mom-talks-too-much-about-spirits.”

  “We should’ve gone on that picnic. Julia’s going to think I’m weird.”

  “I don’t care if she thinks we’re weird as long as she doesn’t tell people we’re weird. How do we handle Julia? School starts Monday. She won’t forget all this stuff.”

  He thought about it. “If we were living in a spy movie, we could give her some memory-altering drugs.”

  “Or hypnotize her.”

  “What?”

  “Hypnotize.” I spoke louder. “We could hypnotize her.”

  There was a splash and suddenly Julia was next to us, clinging to my inner tube. Now I’d have to think of things to say, and that never worked out for me. When adults were stuck with strangers, they talked about gas prices or weather. But kids don’t stand around saying things like, How much did it cost you to fill your tank?

  “Don’t you want to go down the slide?” Julia asked.

  “Maybe later,” I said. “The line is too long.”

  “Are you afraid of water?”

  I shook my head. “I’d be at a picnic table if I was afraid of water.”

  Freddy mumbled something about going to the bathroom and swam to the edge of the pool. With Julia hanging on my tube, I couldn’t kick fast enough to catch up to him.

  “You can get your own tube,” I said. “They’re by the concessions.”