The Last Exit to Normal Read online

  Dad and I are getting along better, and after several beers one night, Edward finally admitted that he smoked pot as a teenager, and I didn’t let on that I already knew. I’ll give him a hard time about it forever.

  I called my mom, too, and I was scared to do it. Scared of what she’d say or not say, and scared it would all come back to the surface like some festering wound. It didn’t. There was pain in her voice, the kind that I knew and understood, even after almost four years, and I realized that she was just as human as I was. We talked for over an hour, she told me she loved me, and she gave me the answer to something I’d wondered about since she left: she had loved my dad, and she still did. That’s why leaving him hurt so bad.

  She also said that maybe in a while, when she felt ready, she’d come to Rough Butte to visit. I don’t think she will, but maybe I’m wrong. Just like Miss Mae told me one time after dinner as she and I sat on the front porch: time is a blessing. We’ll see.

  Every now and then, when the sun goes down and the moon rises full over that huge and empty sky I hated so much when we got here, I go to Billy’s ruined pet cemetery and sit, thinking about everything that led me here. That led us here. All the crap and turmoil that we’d been through and all the things that had almost destroyed me brought us to this place. Who would have known?

  And each and every time I sit in the moonlight on the rise overlooking all those dug-up graves, I tell myself I like it here. It fits. I can do something here, and I can be somebody here. I shake my head and laugh every time I think about it. Ben Campbell, country boy. My friends in Spokane wouldn’t know me.

  And then there’s Kimberly Johan. Yeah. Kimberly Johan. I think I’ll stay.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to my wife, Kimberly, the strongest woman I know, and to my family. To George Nicholson of Sterling Lord Literistic: thanks and gratitude for the faith, enthusiasm, friendship, and vast experience. Thanks also go to my editor, Joan Slattery, and her assistant editor, Allison Wortche, for advising and working with me in such extraordinary fashion. And, as always, thanks are in order for that timeless place, The River.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michael Harmon is the author of Skate, a “remarkable first novel,” according to Kirkus Reviews. He was born in Los Angeles and now lives with his wife and two children in the Pacific Northwest, where he is at work on his next novel for Knopf. To learn more about Michael Harmon and his books, please visit www.booksbyharmon.com.

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Michael Harmon

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Harmon, Michael B.

  The last exit to normal / Michael Harmon. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  SUMMARY: Yanked out of his city life and plunked down into a small Montana town with his father and his father’s boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Ben, angry and resentful about the changed circumstances of his life, begins to notice that something is not quite right with the little boy next door and determines to do something about it.

  [1. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 2. Homosexuality—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 4. Child abuse—Fiction. 5. Coming of age—Fiction. 6. Montana—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H22723Las 2008

  [Fic]—dc22

  2007010107

  eISBN: 978-0-375-84939-8

  v3.0