Читать книгу Escape To Anywhere Else - Robert Rippberger - Страница 7

prologue—driving through

I saw the dew bead to the grass a thousand times. The sun rose, only to sink again over the ceaseless cornfields like the last grain in an hourglass. There were no families close by, no friends to play with, never any excitement.

If you’ve ever taken a road trip through Kansas and gotten lost, you probably saw our house. Remember the one surrounded by nothing but miles of corn, where the land is so barren and underdeveloped the state has to give it away? Sure you remember. You probably wondered what kind of people would live in such a place, and then you saw me. Sitting on the porch, staring toward the road, begging to be rescued—never thinking the day would come.

My name is Ivey Jane Schooler, but when I was seventeen, living with my parents and brother, Louie, it was Ivey Jane Doede. Dad plowed the infertile soil while Mom took care of the dilapidated house. It was simpler than the simple life. People drove by and guessed we were Amish, not only because we lived in the middle of nowhere but because we (and when I use the word “we” I really mean my parents, but that’s what happens when you’re seventeen and living at home) didn’t believe in radios, phones, televisions, computers, school dances, or revealing pictures of boys. Growing up, Louie and I quipped, “Possessions other people require are what the Doede children desire.”

It was an unstable house with an unstable roof just waiting for the lightest breeze to help it to the ground. Paint hung in sheets from the walls, fire ants scaled the wood paneling like a red Niagara Falls flowing in reverse, and overgrown trees and bushes enveloped us like a cocoon. Yet this last facet had a purpose. As my parents said, it was to blanket us from the outside world. In the coming months Louie and I would discover it was for a different reason entirely, to keep the outside world from seeing in, to safeguard secrets kept behind chained doors.