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Chapter One
They aren't here! They couldn't even make it to my trial.
"Leah Malone, you are hereby sentenced to twelve weeks on the Douglas farm. You will work for Mr. Douglas for eight hours a day, and report to him once a week on your progress. If you have not done your work or caused any problems, you will go back in to juvenile for not less than three years. At which time if there are any more outstanding arrests you will be tried in an adult court and sentenced to prison time. Is that understood?"
"Yes sir," She glanced around for her parents. They weren't there. She should have known, they wouldn't be. They sent Mr. McFarland to see to her. It figured. Little good he would do.
"Ms. Malone, this is a relatively new program we are trying out in this court and we hope that this experience will give you pause for thought and perhaps put you on the right track. Do you understand?"
"Yes sir." She replied.
McFarland sat there staring a hole through her, not even cracking one of his 'I told you so' smiles. Nothing to encourage and everything to discourage her. Why did she let it get to her? All her life her parents had been too busy for her, nothing was going to change if it hadn't in seventeen years. But she couldn't bury the hurt completely.
She also had to acknowledge, begrudgingly that they were sending her to some stupid farm to work. How lame was that. A farm. She knew zilch about farms. How was she supposed to work on one?
She wondered who Mr. Douglas was. Would he look and act like a warden?
She smacked her gum and the judge made a face at her. "Bailiff escort Miss Malone to Mr. Douglas' care."
"Yes sir."
The Bailiff motioned for her to follow him.
McFarland caught up to them. "I'll report this to your parents. It really is a shame. They aren't going to like this, Leah. You sure should have known better. What an embarrassment for them."
"Nice to see you too!" Leah spouted. She blew a bubble and popped it nearly in his face. He moved backwards and frowned. The Bailiff turned to introduce her to Mr. Douglas.
Unlike what she expected, Mr. Douglas was a very pleasant looking man in his early fifties. He had brown hair and warm brown eyes that actually twinkled when he smiled. He was the first person that had smiled at her since she'd been arrested.
"Hello Leah, I hope we can be good friends." Mr. Douglas was saying.
Aside from sounding like a character off the television, he was nice, and Leah hadn't had much nice lately. At least he greeted her.
"I don't know anything about farms." She told him right off.
"That's alright, no one does when they first arrive, but by the time they leave, they have had a small education in farm life. And it's not all bad Leah."
She tried not to react, after all this dude was friendlier than anyone she'd been around in a long while. She shrugged, "Okay. I'm game if you are. But I gotta warn you, I know nothing about animals either."
"That's alright, not many do that come to our farm," he said as they walked to his vehicle, which turned out to be an old truck. "Now I hate to start off with this, but you must understand. We have rules at the Douglas Farm."
"Sure, everyone has rules." She nodded woodenly.
"Fine, you understand rules then. Well, I can tell you this. If you obey the rules and do your work and stay out of trouble, then you won't be going back to juvenile."
"Where will I go?" She asked suddenly perplexed. Her eyes widened with something close to fear.
"Home, I suppose."
"Oh," she said dully. There was no home for her anymore. That was almost as bad as juvenile to her. What he didn't know, was that she couldn't go home, she wasn't welcome. McFarland proved that to her, today. Home was a lost word to her anymore. She had no place to belong.
"You don't want to go home, Leah?"
She shrugged her shoulders, "Doesn't matter to me."
He seemed to look at her strangely then.
"Alright, you must get up at six-thirty every morning, eat your breakfast and go to work. Lunch is at noon to one. Then you'll work until four-thirty and the rest of the day is yours." He told her.
"Sounds reasonable except the six-thirty in the morning, isn't that kind of early?"
"Not for the animals on our farm it isn't, and you'll learn to tend them. Actually my wife and I get up earlier than that. You see the chickens can wait for their scratch a bit, but the cows have to be fed early. They will expect it, and we feed them."
"Oh that has to be a downer," she tried not to sound one way or another, but it frightened her. She'd never taken care of animals in her life. She never owned a pet. Her mother insisted pets belonged outside.
