Here is an excerpt from the novel I am working on about Jaisa, a high school senior hoping to find out who she is after her boyfriend breaks up with her. Jaisa is a runner and I've posted a few other excerpts from her story in previous months. This part is fun for me because it gives a landscape of Nebraska. I'm from a small town in Nebraska and when my city friends go home to the lake with me, I think it's fun giving them these little tours of our state. In the passage below, Jasia is talking to her friend Lydia while her friend Cooper drives the girls to his brother's college cross country meet. The first line is Jaisa talking to Cooper about their Physics teacher.   

          “Remember when he asked that joke about Heisenberg’s wife? I could’ve died,” I say. “Lydia listen to this joke Mr. Miller said in class on Thursday. ‘Why was Heisenberg’s wife unsatisfied? When he had the time he didn’t have the energy and when he had the position he didn’t have the momentum.’ Haha!”

            She isn’t laughing.

            “Come on,” I say. “It’s a dirty joke. You don’t even have to know Physics or who Heisenberg is to get it.”

            “Oh, I get it,” she says, staring out the window of the backseat.

            Oh, well, I think. That’s all the conversation we got out of her the rest of the ride. Which is fine.

            “That field is soybeans,” I say to Cooper pointing out the window to the field on our right.

            “Ha! Sweet. The Nebraska girl is going to teach me the countryside.” He glances over and grins at me really quickly before turning back to the highway in front of us.

            “That’s a feedlot of cattle that are being fattened up to be butchered,” I continue, pointing out his window this time.

            “That’s gruesome.”

            “It’s true. Nebraska is known for its beef.”

            “Love me some steak.”

            “Those animals just hang out there in that feedlot, in that pen, until they weigh a certain amount and then they are killed for your steak.”

            “Jaisa, quit being morbid,” Lydia pipes up from the backseat.

            “Word,” Cooper agrees.

            “Seriously though. What if your life purpose were to sit in the dirt and eat unnatural crap to make you fat, rather than the grass you would naturally eat, waiting to die?”

            “I take it you don’t eat cows,” Cooper says.

            “No. We went to the stockyard when I was in kindergarten. Haven’t eaten any mammals since.”

            “That’s traumatic for a five year old.”

            “Right? It really annoyed my mom, but my dad grew up on a farm outside of town and he did 4-H and stuff and he hated seeing the animals he loved being shipped to market. He doesn’t eat red meat, just poultry and fish.” I frown. “There must be something less sympathetic about birds. He actually is a veterinarian but he’s going to Forrester now online to get his MBA so he can open his own practice. That’s a corn field.” I point out the windshield to the left. Cornfields are pretty obvious probably. He probably didn’t need that one. I don’t know why I’m telling him all of this stupid stuff. “In Northeast Nebraska we mostly grow soybeans and corn.” I pause. This is so dumb. Then he looks at me, waiting for me to continue the Nebraska lesson. “So if the plants are short, it’s soybeans, if they’re tall it’s corn. If you’re way out in Western Nebraska, there are wheat and alfalfa and sunflower fields. There are also different types of corn but I’ve no idea how you tell that. There are other things I’m missing. I don’t know a whole lot.”

            “Huh. Runner, Physics nerd and a farmer. You just keep getting more and more interesting, Jaisa Jameson,” he says. I expect to see mocking in his eyes when he looks my way this time, but I don’t. He looks…interested? Maybe he has some weird fascination with crops. I’ll have to take him running on the country roads on Monday. No, wait; on Monday Colin won’t be there so Lydia will run with us. I’ll take him Tuesday.

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