One Horse at At Time

The night it happened started out as a perfectly normal August evening in the Henderson household. I was hunkered over my computer scouring Shoptillyoudrop.com for the same pair of boots I had tried on that afternoon at the Green Mountain Mall in the insane hope that I might find them for, say, one fifth the price. I wasn’t having much luck for two reasons: First, the tip jar at the Common Café where I was pumping coffee that summer would have had to be filled with twenty dollar bills every day before I could afford the back-to-school wardrobe I really wanted. Second, my genius older brother was downloading some kind of free software to our home network and I kept losing my connection. I hollered at him. He hollered at me.

        My mom, who was in the living room on a conference call with her fellow social workers from the Families in Crisis Center, hollered at both of us. “Stuart! Anna! Keep it down. I’m dealing with a family in crisis here.”

       “This family is going to be in crisis if I don’t get my connection back soon,” I muttered and poked ‘enter’ again.

       Our house was so small nothing was private. I could hear my dad in the kitchen frying up tofu turkey burgers and talking back to the talking heads on the nightly news. He was a lawyer and had a detailed argument for everything.

       In the middle of all this my little sister Kellie wandered into my room dressed in her long ruffled skirt and sunbonnet. “Anna Banana, want to sleep outside in the backyard with me tonight? We can pretend we’re pioneers.” Kellie was six and deep into Little House on the Prairie. She wanted to live a sod hut when she grew up and herd sheep or goats or whatever it was they had on the prairie.

       “Oh Kellie-Bean, I can’t.” I gave a big, fake sniffle. “I think I have a head cold coming on.” I must have been the only fifteen-year old in the state of Vermont who hated camping. Hated it and all the creepy crawly things that crept and crawled all over you when you were sleeping on the ground. “Ask Mom and Dad. They’d love to.” My parents adored camping. Mention someplace that didn’t have heat, hot water, or electricity and their eyes would light up like kids at the penny candy counter in one of those tourist trap general stores.

       “Okey dokey, cow pokey,” Kellie chirped and turned to leave.

       That’s when it happened.

       My dad started to whoop. “Whooo-whooo! Way to go! Whoo-whoo!"

       A few seconds later, my mom began to shriek. “Ohmygod! Eeeee-eeee! I don’t believe it! Eeee!"

       “Whooo-whooo!”

         “Eeee-eeee!”

       Now my parents were not whoop-y shriek-y people. They were the people who went to bed at eleven on New Year’s Eve so they could get up the next morning and serve breakfast to senior citizens in the basement of the Unitarian Church.

       Kellie and I tiptoed downstairs. Stu emerged from his den.

       We found our parents waltzing around the living room. I caught a lamp right before it hit the floor. As far as I knew, my parents did not waltz. They did not two-step, rumba, cha-cha, or disco. The last time I had seen them dance was at my cousin’s wedding last March. They had gotten up, swayed back and forth for about thirty seconds, then sat back down to discuss the upcoming political primaries with the bride’s new in-laws.

        “Hey kiddo!” My dad, who saw a personal injury suit in every sudden movement, grabbed Kellie and tossed her up to the ceiling.

       My steely-willed mom who could listen dry-eyed to testimony from domestic violence victims that made hardened cops sob, hugged me with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Oh honey, oh sweetie.” Chalk up another miracle. My parents loved me, but they weren’t the gooey honey-bun, sugar-pie types

       “The numbers…” my mom gasped.

       “The Tri-State.” My dad waved a little piece of paper at us. They both pointed towards kitchen where the TV sat on a narrow counter. “One four oh three nine five.” My dad caught his breath. “When the girl pulled out the last ball and I saw that five light up on the screen I knew.”

       Stu and I examined the scrap of paper. When we realized what it was, we knew too. I began to whoop and shriek. Stu jabbed his fists into the air. We slapped palms. Kellie, who wasn’t sure what was happening, whirled around laughing hysterically. I damn near cart wheeled over the coffee table. We were rich. We were more than rich. We were just-won-the-Mega-Millions-Tri-State-Lottery-Rich. We were millionaires. Billionaires. All my problems were over.

       I plucked my phone from my back pocket to call Chloe and Jen. My fingers froze. These were the two best friends with whom I had raked leaves, shoveled snow, walked dogs, baby sat brats, and sold thousands of brownies at bake sales to raise money for band instruments, drama club dues, and class trips to Boston. These were my two co-workers at the Common Café with whom I emptied the tip jar religiously at the end of each day, splitting the take exactly three ways and dropping the extra penny or nickel back in for good luck. Now I was about to tell them, “Hey guys, you can keep the change. I’m rich. Totally, fabulously, awesomely rich.” How would I have felt if one of them said that to me?

DETAILS

In keeping with the details you requested here is a little more about me and my manuscript:

Genre: YA Contemporary 

Word Count: 45,000 

Hook/Synopsis: Anna is a small town fashionista with dreams of a designer wardrobe. When her dad hits the lottery the first thing she wants to do is hit the mall. Her ex-hippie parents, however, have other ideas. They want to quit their jobs, buy a hundred acres of wilderness and pursue their cherished dream of living off the land. The family's going to be home-schooling, growing their own food, chopping their own wood, weaving their own clothes, and digging their own outhouse. "Won't that be fun?" her dad asks. Needless to say Anna's answer is a resounding "No." How can she get out of being dragged off to "Little Hell-Hole on the Prairie," as she puts it? Fortunately (or at least so it seems) Anna encounters the fabulously wealthy and fantastically fun Brye, aka Bryerly Brigham. With her ineffable fashion sense, Brye is not just a kindred spirit, she's a role model, the very kind of rich girl Anna wants to be. Brye and her brother Trent are passing through town on their way to visit friends at Lake Champlain. When they ask Anna to come along she can't resist even though it means telling her mom more than a few half-truths. But Brye and Trent are not quite who they appear to be. Anna wakes up to find that her new BFF's have their own ideas about where she's going and what she's going to be doing next. Suddenly all she wants to do is get back home and that not going to be easy. Somewhere in this mix there's a good-looking guy with a shady past named Nicky, an antique carousel with an inspiring love story behind it, and an honest-to-god hurricane that nearly blows away everything Anna loves most and teaches her the value of what money can and cannot buy.

About me: I am the author of several works of fiction and nonfiction for young readers. My most recent book, a YA biography of the Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, will be published by Cavendish Square later this year. I am an active member of the SCBWI and teach writing to adults in Cambridge, MA. You can find out more about my work at my website: www.patricesherman.com

Many thanks for this opportunity to submit to Trident Media via Prose.