Iceworm

by Cherime MacFarlane

Genres: Family Life; YA Family

Synopsis

Ida fears her parents are separating. She wants to stay with her father.

A clean winter story about family and one little girl's place in it and her world in the Alaska Bush.
Is her mother tired of living at the end of a dirt road the state closes in winter? If her mother intends to leave, Ida isn't going with her, and the old cabin will be a good place to hide.

Release date: August 16, 2018

Publisher: Paper Gold Publishing

Print pages: 40

Content advisory: Clean and wholesome

Sample

 

Her Saturday morning duties finished, Ida pulled the snowsuit out of hiding. A few dust bunnies clung to the fabric when she pulled it out from under the dresser. If her mom found them, it would be obvious she hadn’t cleaned under there.

But Ida had to get out of the house before her mom or dad noticed she was dressed in winter gear. With other duties needing her attention, she had to slip away before anyone saw her.

The handful of hair and stuff went into her pocket. She’d take it to the cabin. The junk would make good tinder. With the snowsuit on, the little girl with the long dark braids put her ear to the door of her bedroom.

Unlike some of the other kids she knew, Ida possessed a grand luxury, a room of her own with a real door. Their cabin was a little larger than most out in the Petersville area. But her family had lived out here longer, and her grandpa loved working with wood. He had made a lot of improvements to the old place.

Their house was one of the warmer places. Ida understood that to be true because she had spent nights at other kids’ homes and some were downright cold.

Ida missed her grandparents. They had gone to the Lower 48 for the winter to visit family they hadn’t seen in years.

Momma said they might not come back. Ida didn’t doubt they would. Grandpa got grumpy when he had to drive into Anchorage. He didn’t like crowds, and neither did her grandma.

Grandpa and her dad closed their cabin for the winter in the middle of September. An uncle she hadn’t seen in a while, her uncle Mike turned up at the airport when everyone drove in to see her grandparents off. Auntie Dawn would pick them up at the airport in Seattle and take them to her home.

Aunt Dawn married a military man, and they moved around a lot. But Ida overheard her mom and Dawn talking on the computer a few months back. Dawn’s husband, Tracy wasn’t doing well. Ida missed the part of the conversation that would have explained why. Dawn and her family planned to drive home with the grandparents when they returned in the spring. Her aunt had said Tracy needed to get away from everything.

Ida knew she had cousins, two boys, and a girl. She looked forward to meeting the girl, but if the boys were anything like her older brother, Ida wasn’t interested. Four years older than she, Charles Franklin Morgan was a pain in her behind.

He never wanted to let her do anything. Charlie agreed with her mother, Ida played reckless games and was going to get in bad trouble someday. The day Charlie turned thirteen, he seemed to change overnight into a humorless pre-adult.