The Chardon Chronicles: Season One -- The Harvest Festival by Kevin Kimmich

was fun, but I’m beat from all that
anxiety, man! Poor car, too.” she patted the dash.
     
    “Don’t let this little lesson go to your
head--you’re no stunt driver.”
     
    “Believe me, if you weren’t here pushing me,
I would not want to drive like that.” she said.
     
    He smiled. “Ice cream?”

Chapter
Thirteen
    When Monday rolled around Tracy had a hard
time getting out of bed. She stared at the ceiling for a long time
and wondered what the point of school was. She heard Robbie milling
around and the smell of breakfast wafted down the hall to her room.
She got out of bed. The air wasn’t cold, but she put on a thick
robe as if it would insulate against a new, weird reality.
     
    “Morning Perry...” she knelt down by the dog
and put her head on his flank and gave him a good rub. He rolled
over on his back and eyed her.
     
    “Mornin’’ Robbie was still pretty groggy. The
coffee was still brewing and he stole a cup from the stream then
put the pot back. “Bacon’s there.” he gestured to a plate where
there was a big pile of bacon.
     
    She made some toast and took a few pieces.
She ate for a while in silence. Robbie was clicking around on his
laptop. His eyes were scanning stories between sips of coffee.
     
    “Uncle Robbie, that stuff was weird. Just
weird. I can’t process it all. I am trying to put all the pieces
together.”
     
    He glanced over at her. “It’s a lot to take
in. It’ll take a while to make any sense of it at all.”
     
    “Why didn’t anyone tell me about this
before?”
     
    “There’s really no right time to tell the
story--and there’s really no good way to start telling it. I
learned about this when I was around your age. David Mathis really
opened the door for me. One summer he just got interested in
mythology and started reading… He basically lived here for about a
month reading and talking to your grandpa. It was mostly over my
head.”
     
    “Is that why he’s a little out there?”
     
    He laughed, “I’m glad you met him, what a
great guy. Yeah, once you really see things from this
perspective, it can make you very deliberate about the choices you
make. And those choices might end up taking you far outside the
norm.”
     
    She became pensive and quiet.
     
    “There’s no recipe for dealing with all this.
The only thing I can say is don’t worry about it too much. The
world is still the same as it was yesterday, you just have more
complete information than a lot of other people.”
     
    She just raised her eyebrows and chewed her
food. “When I got up this morning, I thought ‘what’s the point of
going to school’?”
     
    “Yeah. I get that. David dropped out. I
almost did.”
     
    She laughed sardonically, “you’re no after
school special!”
     
    “Nope! Not even a little bit.” He laughed
hard, then took a moment to provide a more considered response.
“OK, look, Tracy, you’re an adult, but you’ve got really limited experience.” She nodded. He continued, “High school.
College. It’s a certain type of experience. It’s good. It can give
you a certain type of a frame of reference, but it’s one that won’t
hold up well against that ,” he pointed at the library.
     
    “Yeah, I get that, actually I was going to
say, ‘I thought what’s the point?’ but then I realized I was really
craving that dumb routine right now. So I’ma go.”
     
    “Alright, see you later.”
     
    “Bye! She rapped on his head with her
knuckles.” he ducked out of the way and waved over his shoulder.
“Bye Perry!” she slapped the dogs side. She went and got ready and
was out the door. The world seemed to tremble and pulse with a new
type of energy and life.

Chapter
Fourteen
    When she got to the parking lot, she saw
Chloe Marte by her new car. Chloe was chatting with a group of
kids. Tracy felt like she was stepping into a nice warm pool of
familiarity, back into the world she knew and took for granted. She
got out of the Austin Healey and