Little Blog on the Prairie

by Cathleen Davitt Bell

  And I was like—yes. Surprised. A good word.

  And then I was like, “What am I going to do with Nora for a whole week at my house?”

  Epilogue

  A week after Halloween I had just gotten dropped off by Kristin’s mom after a soccer game (we won 2–1 and I had scored—I sometimes ask to play offense now) when I ran into Gavin in the kitchen. He had been out at the 4-H club, which he’d joined. He’d brought three of Pumpkin’s chicks home with him and the 4-H club was letting him use them to start a flock. We got right down to business. Gavin was in charge of the popcorn and I was mixing up iced tea with a hand blender—one of my all-time favorite snack combinations. We had to hurry.

  As the bubbles on the iced tea were achieving maximum foam, we heard my dad’s car pull into the garage, and my mom came padding down from the upstairs in her stocking feet. She’s studying for a master’s in library science now—another dream—and is always locked up reading or writing papers in her bedroom.

  But none of us could afford to miss our eight p.m. date with our television. I was still muddy from the soccer field, and we hadn’t even had a chance to order pizza, but it didn’t matter. Gavin had the remote in his hand before he’d even put his food down on the coffee table. The opening credits of Nora and Rebecca’s show—Little Hell on the Prairie they’re calling it—had already started to roll.

  After imagining what it would be like so many times, it was funny to see it actually come to life on the screen. It didn’t feel like it could possibly be real.

  And yet there was the opening shot of Rebecca Cheney, smiling coyly at the camera.

  And then, boom: there was a satellite image of the world as seen from above. The picture zoomed in in dramatic chops until you could tell you were over the United States, and then the middle of it, getting closer and closer until it focused in on the rooftops of Ron and Betsy’s house and barn, and all around, as far as you could see, were woods.

  “Oh my God!” we were all shouting.

  And then the camera showed the stream rolling by, and a cow walking through the grass, and children playing with rocks or something, and over all this was the theme song to Little House on the Prairie.

  Then came a noise, like brakes squealing, or someone was scratching a record player needle across a record followed by Rebecca Cheney’s voice: “For some, a vacation in the land of Little House on the Prairie is a dream come true.” There was a shot of a couple dressed in 1890s clothes walking through a sun-streaked field, holding hands—”It’s Clark and Maureen!” my mom shouted—and then immediately a cut to Ron and Betsy’s cow, Peanut, taking an enormous poo in her stall, followed by a pull back to Nora’s squinched-up face groaning, “Yeah, guess who’s going to have to clean that up,” and then Rebecca was talking again. “For others,” she said, “life here is more of a nightmare.”

  The camera showed Nora now, mucking out the stall. “She’s fast,” Gavin said, and I had to agree. She put the rest of us to shame. Meanwhile, Rebecca was doing a voiceover. “We will trace the life of a girl who has been raised, for all intents and purposes, as if it is the year 1890. She rarely sees other children.” A shot of Nora fishing. “She is homeschooled by her mother, and her parents are her only friends.” There was a shot of Nora sitting at the table with Betsy, reading a book. “Though she wants to go to college and have a normal life someday, the question must be asked: can she? What does she even know of the modern world?”

  Suddenly, we were watching an ad for cough medicine. We paused for a second, as if just seeing the world of Camp Frontier had brought us back to it again. Then Gavin shouted, “I can’t believe it’s on TV!”

  “I can’t believe it even ever was,” said my dad.

  “I know,” I answered. “I mean, I know we were there. But now that we’re back, and everything’s the same as it ever was, I kind of don’t feel like Camp Frontier ever happened.”

  My mom gave me this sappy look but not for long.

  The show was back on.

  Rebecca was interviewing Nora while Nora milked a cow—actually it was Jezebel. “Hi, Jez,” Gavin called to the TV.

  “Do you ever make friends with the guests who come here during the summer?” Rebecca said to Nora, on screen.

  We heard Nora talking about how hard making friends was. We saw her pulling an iPod (“That’s mine!” I shouted) out of the burlap bag Betsy kept them in in the electricity shack, and listening to my music—they must have filmed that before we’d left. We saw Nora going online, showing Rebecca the sites she liked to visit, explaining why.

  In between all these scenes we saw the family groups gathered for the town meeting, we heard a lot of animal noises isolated for the soundtrack, we heard country music on a banjo like this was that corny old show Green Acres, we saw lots of mud, lots of mosquitoes, lots of slop being scraped into the pig’s eating trough.

  Caleb called during the second set of ads. “You’re watching?” I said without even greeting him—I’d seen the caller ID.

  “Of course,” he said. “It’s amazing.”

  Caleb and I talk on the phone almost every day. I know it sounds dumb, but just before we left camp, he made me promise that we’d keep in touch this way. “No texting,” he said. “It would be nice to keep this private. And real.”

  “No texting,” I’d agreed.

  But the problem with talking on the phone is that it can make you miss the person even more. “I can’t wait to see the part when they go to New York,” I said, when what I meant was “I can’t wait to see you.” How many times can you say something like that without becoming boring?

  “I know,” he said, and the thing is, I knew he meant exactly the same thing as me.

  I had been IMing a lot with Ka. She texted me a picture of her new hair—platinum blond. Plus a picture of herself in her new cheerleader outfit—she’d gone out for the squad.

  “Are you okay?” I’d texted her back.

  “I’m GREAT,” she said. “I’m taking this whole So Cal thing ON. The uniform will make a killer Halloween costume when I go to college at NYU.”

  The commercial ended and Caleb and I both shouted “Gotta go!” and hung up fast. We’d just watched Nora catch a fish and now she was in the middle of skillfully bludgeoning it with a rock. This was not to be missed.

  When the show was over, Mom, Dad, Gavin, and I were silent—the New York section had been filled with hilarious moments, including Nora talking to the horses that take people on carriage rides through Central Park. But it was the Camp Frontier sections we were all thinking about.

  We’d been home for more than two months now—longer than the time we’d been at camp. I no longer had the embarrassing hand and neck tan you get from spending all the day outside in a long-sleeved dress. I no longer thought anything of it when I poured myself a bowl of Cocoa Krispies for breakfast. Even store-bought eggs had stopped tasting strange to me—in the beginning I’d hardly been able to eat them because the ones that were fresh from our own chickens were so much better.

  After the show was over, I went up to my room and I did something I hadn’t done since we’d gotten home. I read my blog. At first I thought I was just going to glance through it, maybe read the first post or something. But once I started I couldn’t stop. It all came flooding back—how hot and sticky it had been during the day, how frigid at night, how cold and damp and boring the cabin had felt after supper. And then as I read, I remembered all the feelings I’d had as the summer moved along. How exciting it had been to be with Caleb. How funny Ka is. Churning butter. The corn Gavin and I ate raw. After I got my phone back, I’d written about getting caught, the fire, TV.

  The week we got home, I read through all the comments. It had felt really exciting while I was doing it, and then for a couple of days after, the feeling was like having water stuck in my ear.

  Strangers—people I didn’t know aside from their e-mail addresses—had seemed to really care about the littlest things! Everything I was think
ing or hearing came with an echo and I felt a little bit dizzy. For a few days after reading them, as I struggled to pick an ice cream flavor, or got dropped off by Kristin’s mom at tryouts for the high school soccer team, or went shopping with Ashley at the mall, I kept imagining what my blog readers would say.

  And then, reality took over and the echoes in my head died away. Mint chocolate chip was the best—no discussion necessary. Kristin could still beat me in suicide sprints—a fact. Going to the mall with Ashley still meant being ignored by the boys who always follow her around. They like her better, even if my picture had been on TV.

  This time, reading through the blog, I skipped the comments. They weren’t what mattered.

  The blog felt private again. Or at least, personal. It helped me, more than Little Hell on the Prairie had, to recall the smells and tastes and feel of the summer—the itchy hay up in the loft, the softness of the quilt when I pulled it up to my cheek in the morning to stay warm five more minutes, the feel of Jezebel’s solid body against my hand, the whorls of hair on her haunches that I would stare at as I milked her.

  As I’d written in the blog, one of the strange things about Camp Frontier was never seeing yourself in the mirror. At home, I have two mirrors in my room, there’s one in the bathroom, I pass a fourth next to the front door when I leave to catch the bus, and at school, there’s a floor-length window at the entrance to each classroom. I see myself reflected every five seconds as I walk down the hall.

  Still, seeing myself in the mirror always comes as a surprise. The person I am inside does not jibe with the girl with the big head who is so much taller than everyone else.

  Reading the blog, though, I felt like looking into a true mirror. Finally, I was seeing me. Who I wanted to be. Who I am. And even though I was dressed up in a costume as I wrote those words, pretending it was 1890 when it was not, the blog was real.

  After I finished reading it, I wanted to do something to save it forever. Print it or copy it to my hard drive or laminate it—something.

  Or maybe I really wanted something even more extreme.

  I’m not sure I would say this out loud, or even write it in my new blog (I took Nora’s advice and made it restricted) but I wanted to go back.

  At the airport, when he dropped us off, Ron had turned to my family and said, “I guess I’ll see you next year?”

  “Ha!” I’d said, like he was cracking a joke. But then both my parents’ faces lit up. Gavin’s too. And I knew that we were going to go.

  This is totally insane, I’d thought.

  And then I’d raised my hand, given Ron an enormous high five, and said in a voice that could have been sarcastic or could have been sincere—I was still trying to figure that out—“Bring. It. On.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wrote this book fast and furiously and could not have managed at that clip without the support, enthusiasm, and guidance of Melanie Cecka. Thank you. George Nicholson has been a bulwark of confidence and advice throughout as well.

  The material for this book was years in the making. On a cruise of the Greek Islands with my grandparents, I cracked open Little House on the Prairie for the first time—I was eight then, and by my tenth birthday I was knitting blankets, sewing doll clothes, baking my own bread, and making architectural sketches of a camp that would transport visitors to the frontier. Thank you, Laura Ingalls Wilder, for providing me with years of magic.

  In researching this book, I read widely beyond the still-beautiful and informative Little House saga—most useful were Far From Home: Families of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel, Byrd Gibbens, and Elizabeth Hampsten, and Pioneer Women: The Lives of Women on the Frontier by Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith. I am indebted to PBS’s Frontier House, and also to docent explanations of old-fashioned artifacts given to me on a lifetime of historic house tours.

  I am grateful to my family and friends for their insights, book parties, school invitations, and more—thanks especially to Sophie, Lorri, Theresa, Audrey, and Christine. My mother is unwavering in making time to read and respond thoughtfully, my husband Rick read early and often as well, and even allowed me to overexplain all my jokes—thank you. My nieces and nephews—Jordan, Jacob, Ryan, Ariana, Miriam, Kelsey, Alani, and Rachel—I have been inspired by your lives and what you know about the world. Max and Eliza—you fill me with love and joy every day.

  ALSO BY CATHLEEN DAVITT BELL

  Slipping

  About the Cathleen Davitt Bell

  CATHLEEN DAVITT BELL’s first book for young readers was Slipping. She received her undergraduate degree from Barnard College and her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two children.

  www.cathleendavittbell.com

  Copyright © 2010 by Cathleen Davitt Bell

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner

  whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief

  quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  First published in the United States of America in May 2010

  by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers

  E-book edition published in April 2011

  www.bloomsburykids.com

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to

  Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Bell, Cathleen Davitt.

  Little blog on the prairie / by Cathleen Davitt Bell. — 1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Thirteen-year-old Genevieve’s summer at a frontier family history camp in

  Laramie, Wyoming, with her parents and brother is filled with surprises, which she

  reports to friends back home on the cell phone she sneaked in, and which they turn into a

  blog.

  ISBN 978-1-59990-286-9 (hardcover)

  [1. Frontier and pioneer life—Wyoming—Fiction. 2. Camps—Fiction. 3. Family life—

  Wyoming—Fiction. 4. Blogs—Fiction. 5. Wyoming—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B38891526Lit 2010[Fic]—dc22 2009046897

  ISBN 978-1-59990-577-8 (e-book)