2013 //free\\ — Home Student
That summer, Leo didn't just go back to the farm. He went back with a grant proposal, a collaborator in Maya (who came out twice a week to "make sure he didn't turn feral"), and a new understanding. Home wasn't a place you escaped from. It was a place you carried with you.
For three weeks, they met in the school library after hours. Leo was terrified. The fluorescent lights, the sound of lockers slamming, the sheer proximity of other teenagers—it was a sensory assault. Maya was his translator. When a jock called him "homeskillet," she replied, "That’s original. Did you think of that during practice?" When a teacher questioned if he "really understood" the scientific method, Maya pulled out his 200-page lab notebook, filled with meticulous data from his own farm's test plots. home student 2013
"I did," Leo said. "Well, we did."
Leo wasn't home-schooled because of bullying or religious fervor. It was because of the farm. His father had a heart attack the previous spring, and someone had to manage the books, the vet calls, and the unpredictable temperament of the irrigation system. His mother worked the night shift at the county hospital. So Leo learned algebra between checking cattle water tanks, and wrote history essays while waiting for the farrier. That summer, Leo didn't just go back to the farm
Leo thought about it. "I used to," he admitted. "But 2013 is weird. I have friends in Australia. I've seen the Northern Lights on a webcam in real-time. I'm not lonely. I'm just... separate." It was a place you carried with you
