Shucked

Copyright © 2013 by Megg Jensen

Published by 80 Pages, Inc

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
are either products of the author’s imagination or used factitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be
reproduced or transmitted in any form by or any means, electronic or
mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

1
^st
Edition: April 2013

Cover design by Steven Novak

NovakIllustration.com

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author.

Chapter One

I snapped a picture of the message on
the postcard. Then I tore it into a million tiny pieces, letting them float to
the floor like a snowstorm in the middle of my bedroom.

“I cannot believe this.”

Whirling around, I grabbed a pillow
from my bed and tossed it in the air. As it dropped, I punched and swung with
every ounce of strength in my tiny body. I screamed out a long string of Korean
curse words with each swipe. When the pillow landed on the floor, I dropped on
it, sending my elbow into the middle of the stuffing.

I lay there, on the pillow and the remains
of the postcard, beyond pissed at my mom. My heart raced, threatening to do to
my ribcage what I’d just done to my pillow.

“Tabitha?” After a firm knock, the
door opened. My grandma stood in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest.
“Are you feeling better now?”

“No, Mimi.”

Obviously.

“If your mother says it’s too
dangerous, then that’s it.” She walked over and sat down on the bed. Her bare
feet, almost as big as my head and as leathery as my purse, rested inches from
my ear. Better than next to my nose. I made sure not to roll onto my side.

“In fifteen years it’s never been too
dangerous. Why now?” I’d grown up around the world, traveling with my
archaeologist mom. During the summers I lived with my grandparents on their
farm in Illinois. But with this one little postcard, everything was about to
change.

“It won’t be so bad.” Mimi tapped her
foot on the hardwood floor. “You might like it for a change.”

“Impossible. I won’t do it.”

“You don’t have a choice. You know
that.”

I took in a deep breath and held it
until I counted to fifteen. Then I let it out slowly. My taekwondo grandmaster told
me this technique would cleanse me of the bad. I would have to text him later
and tell him it didn’t work this time.

Nothing would change what was about
to happen to me, thanks to my mom and her supposedly dangerous assignment. Her
boss at the museum knew I could handle myself in any situation. Well, maybe not
in this one. Leaving me on the farm was far more dangerous for my health and
wellbeing than any politically unstable country.

I sat up, the light bulb in my head
glowing. “I have an idea! You could homeschool me.”

Mimi’s eyes narrowed. “Nice try, but
it won’t work. I don’t know the first thing about homeschooling. And I’m not
taking the time to learn when there’s a perfectly good public school just a few
miles away.”

I groaned, laying my head on her lap.
“Mimi, I’ve been homeschooled my whole life. Or enrolled in foreign schools, or
just learned by living life and experiencing everything it has to offer.
There’s nothing they can teach me in public school that I can’t learn from the
comfort of my bedroom on my computer.”

Mimi patted my cheek. She smiled.
“No.”

Uttering that one tiny word, she took
away all the power I had. I learned at a young age that no was irrefutable.
Once it was said, it could not be undone.

“It’s not fair.” I whined like a
six-year-old who’d just been grounded from her iPad for a week.

“It’s not. I agree. Your mother
shouldn’t accept assignments that separate the two of you. But what’s done is
done. And I can’t say I’m unhappy you’re staying longer. I hate it when you
leave.”

“Oh, Mimi.” I hugged her. “I always
miss you too. But how am I supposed to go to a regular school? I’ve never been
around American teenagers. That many at once could prove fatal.”

Mimi grabbed my chin, forcing me to
look at her. “If anyone can adapt, it’s you. Look at where you’ve been and
everything you’ve done. Surely you can handle a few harmless teenagers.”

Famous last words. Even the greatest
of adventurers knew they had limits. Mine were other teens. The few American
teens I’d met were rich, spoiled, self-important, and entitled. They had no
idea what it was like to live in a hut with a floor made of mud. Or have only
one meal a day of whatever could be gathered from the forest around them.

Their lives were so easy and they had
no idea what the world was really like.

Instead of getting a plane ticket to
an exotic locale in my inbox like I had at the end of every summer on the farm,
Mimi had brought me the postcard from today’s mail. My mom was abandoning me to
the life she’d left behind at twenty. The life she swore she’d never return to.
The life she’d never talked about, other than to tell me high school were the
worst years of her life.

And yet she’d left me here for the
foreseeable future with only a short message:

Tabitha,

You can’t come with me this year. I’m so, so sorry. The higher-ups said
it was too dangerous for kids. Obviously they’ve never met you! I think you
could handle anything, but what can I do? Your grandparents will take good care
of you. Go to school, have a normal life. Don’t hate it too much, okay?

Love you,

Mom

Saying I was mad was an
understatement. I loved my grandparents, but I wanted to get back to my real
life, the one without boundaries. The unexpected was welcome. Staying on the
farm and going to high school was the biggest nightmare of my life.

Chapter Two

I peered through the overgrown bushes,
observing the beasts in their native habitat. My heart pounded, tapping an
unfamiliar beat. I’d subdued a croc after an attack in the Amazon, looked a
lion in the eye in the African bush, and swam with sharks in the Great Barrier
Reef, but nothing compared to the fear ripping through my chest, infecting
every bit of my essence with panic.

“Tabitha,” my grandmother, Mimi,
bellowed, “get over here right now!”

I backed away from the evergreens, swinging
my backpack over one shoulder. “Coming.” My whole life I’d been surrounded by
adults or kids from cultures so far removed from civilization that American
teenagers became the epitome of uncivilized behavior. I’d seen their TV shows
on the Internet. All I could hope was that reality TV wasn’t real.

The double doors of the school loomed
in front of me. The embedded crosshatching in the windows skewed my vision of
the masses of kids opening lockers and chatting in groups. A select few were already
swapping spit. I rolled my eyes. Suspicions confirmed.

“Do I have to go in there?” I turned
around, arms folded across my chest. Mimi stood her ground, towering over me at
nearly six feet tall, a giant to my mere five foot one inch. I wasn’t afraid. Intimidated
yes, afraid no. I’d spent years cuddled on her lap reading stories but as I
grew up, I realized that she was the powerhouse in her marriage and nearly
everywhere else. No one crossed her except for my mom. I think that’s why Mom
hadn’t come back to her hometown in the last sixteen years.

“Of course you have to go in. It
wouldn’t do for you to be late on your first day of school.” She had that same
look on her face as when I’d first met her. Exasperated, annoyed, and definitely
not in the mood to be defied.

“But Mimi,” I started.

“No buts,” she barked. Her bear-like
hand grabbed the door handle, opened it and she pushed me in with the other
paw. “Have fun, Tabitha.”

I stumbled in as the heavy door
thudded behind me. How could she leave me here alone? Among some of the most
frightening creatures on earth – teenagers. I felt the bile rise in my
throat but I swallowed it. Just what I needed, to be the girl who barfed on
everyone the first day of school.

The cream-colored lockers glared,
their buffed first-day-of-school reflectiveness nearly blinding me. The kids
milled around the hall. It was so obvious who they all were. The jocks punched
each other. The cheerleaders fixed their lipstick. The geeks’ huge watches
encircled their bony wrists. The emos wore black everything and the band kids,
well, they were the normal looking kids. I may not have lived in America much,
but I had Internet. I’d seen 90210.

I glanced at my palm. 432. My locker
number. Halfway down the hallway, I guessed from the numbers on the lockers in
front of me. I’d need to walk through nearly every species of teenager. I said
a silent prayer, asking Buddha to help me find the inner peace to traverse this
jungle of hostiles.

“It’s her,” someone called out.

“The new girl.”

“What’s her name, again? Tasha?”

I glanced out the side of my eyes. I
refused to show fear or interest, but since I was shorter than ninety percent
of the student body, I had to crane my neck when a voice said, “Tinkerbell, I
think.”

I heard the quiet laughter. It
reminded me of the hyenas in Africa as they stalked their prey. I would not be
a lion cub to these predators. I would not show any fear.

“Who wants to know?” I asked in my
toughest voice, sure they wouldn’t bother with me if I beat my breast and
stared them down. Or at least if I answered back.

“Who wants to know?” the voice
mocked, high-pitched. Obviously a boy. Not a very clever one either. The hyenas
laughed louder.

“I’m Tabitha. I’m new here and I
really don’t give a crap about your stupid cliques, high school mind games, or lame
jokes.”

Did I just say that? Crap. I’d never
been good at controlling what spewed out of my mouth.

I heard one person clapping, but
again I couldn’t see where it was coming from because of those midwestern
giants surrounding me. Without seeing who clapped, I didn’t know if it was
congratulatory or sarcastic. I hated not having the basic facts about a
situation. High school was going to kill me.

“Ignore them.” A girl grabbed my
elbow and steered me down the hallway. Red hair, impossibly tall, t-shirt, and
jeans. I couldn’t place her. What was she?

“I’m Becky,” she said. “You’re
Tabitha. Everyone knows all about you and it’s not fair because you don’t know
anything about them. But I’ll bet you know they’re all jerks, though, right?”

For the first time that day, I
smiled. I liked this girl.

“I’ve never been to school before,” I
said. People turned to stare at me as we walked down the hall. I tried to
ignore them, but it was like trying to ignore a school of sharks. Impossible.

When I turned eight, my mom told me I
was going to spend the summer with grandparents I’d never met, put me on a
plane with little more than a wave with her fingers, and I didn’t see her again
for another three months. There was no advanced warning, no time to plot
against her. She probably knew I’d try, which accounted for the last minute
trip.

After that first visit to my
grandparents’ farm, my mom shipped me there every summer. She called it Farm
Camp. I skulked in corners at festivals in town, never spoke to anyone at
church, and just before school started, I’d receive a plane ticket to wherever
she was working. Creative homeschooling was our technical term. It meant I
learned stuff no other kid my age knew. But this year, something else came
instead of a ticket.