Sunrise

“Remember,” Mom was saying, “an average attention span is about seven minutes. Plan two activities in each fifteen-minute block. Seven minutes of direct instruction, eight of individual practice, workstations, or buddy practice. The point is to break it up. Match your instruction to your students’ attention spans.”

Alyssa was listening and nodding, soaking it all in. Nobody had noticed me.

“Do you realize,” I said loud enough to carry over my mother’s words, “that it’s almost lunchtime?”

Max jumped to his feet. “Oh, crap. I haven’t fed the goats yet.”

“You’re supposed to do that first thing,” I said.

“I know. Mom used to . . . never mind. That’s no excuse.” Max took a step toward the door of the barn and then stopped, looking back at Alyssa. “Um, Alyssa, um, I mean teacher, Mrs., I mean Miss Fredericks. May I be excused?” Max’s face was flushed, and Alyssa was failing to suppress a laugh. Alyssa said, “Yes, you may go.” At nearly the same time, my mom said, “School isn’t over until lunchtime.”

Max didn’t wait for them to sort it out. He was off like a shot, heading for the house, where we kept the goats stabled in the guest room so they didn’t freeze to death at night.

Rebecca and A

“Go,” I said. “We’ll hold off on lunch until all the morning chores are done.” Rebecca and A

Ben was still sitting in the dirt, working math problems. Mom was glaring at me, her arms folded over her chest, and now Alyssa was frowning.

“What were you supposed to be doing this morning, Ben?” I asked.

“Ben’s assignment was changed by the Sister Unit,” Ben said.

“Is the Sister Unit in charge of the chore roster?” I asked.

“Ben always does what the Sister Unit asks of him,” Ben said.

“Almost always,” Alyssa said. “We were on fire duty.”

“The fires under the greenhouses are out!” I said.

“I’m sorry,” Alyssa said. “Will the kale be—”

“It’ll be fine,” I said, although I wasn’t totally sure about that. “Ed’s getting the fires relit, and the ground holds heat a long time. But what were you doing? Playing school?”

“We weren’t playing, Alex,” Mom said. “These kids need to be in school.”

“We need to eat,” I said. “School is a luxury we can’t afford right now.”

“Education is no kind of luxury,” Mom said. “Without it we’re only one generation removed from barbarism.” “Without food there won’t be another generation.” “Why do you have to fight me all the time?”

“That’s not the—”

“I’ll go help Ed with the fires,” Alyssa said, stepping toward the barn door.

“Wait,” I said.

“Well,” Mom said, “you seem to have ended all hope for any more learning taking place this morning.” She pivoted abruptly and marched off toward the house.

I stared, not sure whether to chase after her or not. “I’m sorry,” Alyssa said. “I just . . . Dr. McCarthy asked me this morning what I was pla

“You’d be great at that.”

“Your mom was there, and she started telling me how she got her start teaching special ed.”

My mother was a special ed teacher? She’d never told me about that. She’d been a principal for as long as I could remember.

“And anyway,” Alyssa continued, “things kind of snowballed from there, and everyone was really enthusiastic about the idea, especially your mom. I figured we could teach practical classes too. I was going to ask you to run a taekwondo class, maybe have your uncle teach gun safety and marksmanship, stuff like that.”

“It’s a good idea, but—”

“I know. We should have waited until all the work was done. It doesn’t seem like there’ll ever be enough time to do everything we need and want to do.”

“Could you design lessons that could be taught while you do chores? It doesn’t take much brainpower to water the kale or wash clothing. I could change the duty rotations to give you time with each of your students and with Mom if you want.”

“That could work.” Alyssa turned toward Ben, who was still sitting on the floor, scratching columns of figures into the dirt. “Come on, let’s get our chores done.” He stood and brushed off his pants.

I started to leave, but Alyssa caught my arm, leaned in, and kissed my cheek.

“What was that for?” I asked.

“You’re sweet.” She left the barn, Ben trailing behind her, heading for the greenhouses.

I rubbed the spot she’d kissed, wondering what I’d done to make Alyssa think I was sweet. And why did my mother seem to disagree so adamantly?

Chapter 14

Dr. McCarthy and Mayor Petty were with us for almost a month. Petty clung to life stubbornly despite his amputated legs, despite the infections that raced through his body leaving him feverish and incoherent. When his condition improved enough, Belinda drove out in Dr. McCarthy’s old Studebaker, a folded wheelchair jammed into its backseat. A few days later, Petty, McCarthy, and Belinda moved back to town, and the farm settled into a routine of sorts.

We tore up all the carpet in the living room. It was too badly stained with blood, urine, and other unidentifiable fluids to be salvaged. The rough wood floor underneath wasn’t as comfortable, but it smelled a lot better.

Our kale crop came in blessedly fast, as if the soil in the greenhouses had stored up all that energy from going unplanted and now was pumping it into our crop. As soon as the first shoots were a few inches long, we started harvesting them, eating only one shoot per person per day to prevent scurvy.

Alyssa took all the most boring, repetitive jobs so she could practice teaching while she worked. She hung around Mom a lot, talking about her students: A

Darla got steadily stronger, working longer and longer days beside me. There was—as always—no end to the work. Clothes had to be washed by hand, wood had to be cut, kale watered. Darla kept sleeping beside me too, abandoning the girls’ room where Alyssa, Rebecca, and A

Darla had started challenging me to arm wrestle every night after di

Finally, after almost two months on the farm, she beat me. The next night I won—barely—but then she beat me three nights ru

The night after that, she waited until everyone else had left the di

“Not tonight.”

“Really? You beat me, what, fifty or sixty nights ru

“Four losses. And yes.”

“Weak.”

“My ego may be weak, not my arms. You’re just freakishly strong.”