Free Brownie Points by Jennifer Coburn Page A

was fine.
    “Today was the first time I had a good time here.” Then flippantly, Logan added, “Actually, it was the first time since we moved that I didn’t wish I was dead.”
    Then again, maybe Logan wasn’t fine.

Chapter Seven
    October
    Neither Logan nor I could catch a break trying to find our place here. It was as if every time we tried to carve out a space where we belonged, Utopia rushed in to fill it. I had a dream that I was planting azaleas in the back yard, and as soon as I dug a hole, a marigold appeared in it.
    We searched for a fencing academy for Logan, but the closest thing was a retired Marine who staged battle reenactments in his back yard thirty miles away. Needless to say, my son passed on the invitation to paint his face blue and play an angry Scotsman at the annual Braveheart Festival.
    The school chess club was so poorly attended that the detention center used the club room as an overflow facility. Anytime there were too many thugs condemned to after-school penance, they were sent to Miss Penn’s Chess Room. In a Hollywood movie, the prehistoric spinster with seven inches of white cotton candy hair would inspire the troublemakers to seek redemption through chess. In reality, the teacher was one step away from assisted living, and both chess club members frequently left with pawns firmly shoved up their nostrils.
    Our last hope was the drama club, but they didn’t even start auditioning for their musical until second semester.
    Jason helped me build a small studio in the garage, which was quickly condemned by Val Monroe’s CC&Rs Enforcement Committee. I swore I saw Ellie and Stacey driving past the house every day, taking notes as Jason and I constructed the frame and hammered plywood walls. But Val’s human accessories waited until we finished before the two slipped a Notice of Code Violation under the front door.
    I found moments of refuge from Utopia working on a new sculpture in a spare bedroom. Logan sought comfort in the weekly Girl Scout meetings, where he earned more merit badges than any of the other members. Maya and Jason were acclimated by their first week, but Logan and I were still scavenging for moments when we fit in.
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    By the middle of the month, Indian summer was officially over and the air had a cold bite. Yet Maya insisted it was warm enough to go trick-or-treating dressed as a scantily clad pirate. It’s never easy to see your daughter making the transition to womanhood, but Maya made matters worse by squeezing her young breasts into a tiny black pleather bustier and covering her legs with torn fishnet stockings. With a little makeup she would have looked like a page from Playboy’s “Girls of the High Seas” issue . The night she came downstairs to model her costume, my poor husband almost choked on his drink.
    “Get yourself upstairs and put on some clothes,” Jason demanded after he stopped coughing.
    “Why? It’s for Halloween,” she protested.
    “Maya, you look like a street walker!”
    “I’m a pirate,” she said, feigning innocence.
    I chimed in. “A plank walker then. Maya, there’s no way you’re wearing something like that at thirteen years old.”
    “She’s not wearing that get-up at any age,” Jason barked.
    “This is so unfair!” Maya cried. “Bianca, Ashley and I are going trick-or-treating as pirates together. No one else’s parents are being all Amish about it.”
    Logan suppressed a laugh and gave Maya a look as if to say he’d told her so. Nonetheless he tried to come to his sister’s defense and explain life in the tween lane to us. “You guys don’t understand how important Halloween is for girls,” he said. “They get to dress super-slutty without anyone talking smack about them the next day.”
    Jason lowered his reading glasses and looked at Logan in disbelief. Did he actually think this line of reasoning was going to work with us? Then Jason returned his glare back at our daughter. “You looked beautiful as Snow