Distinctly Montana Magazine

The Miseducation of Cameron This book is about a girl named Cameron from Miles City who struggles with her sexual identity. The book opens with her receiving a kiss from her best friend, Irene, after which she learns of the sudden death of her parents near Hebgen Lake. The following scene, which takes place after the funeral, gives a sense of Cameron's personality. Despite her feelings of guilt, eventually through the love of her friends, she begins to deal with the traumatic events of her life. This abridged scene takes place shortly after the book opens with the tragic death of 12-year-old Cameron's parents near Hebgen Lake. Emily Danforth By in June. I © 2012 Excerpt published with permission of Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins rene and I hadn't seen each other much since our robothug at my parents' funeral Mrs. Klauson kept trying to arrange sleepovers and day trips to the mall in Billings, to a rodeo in Glendive, But I would back out at the last minute. When, in late August, I had finally agreed to go with them to the Custer County Fair, I spent the whole evening wishing that I hadn't. Irene and I had done up the fair before—we'd done it up big. We'd buy the wristbands that let you ride all the rides you wanted. We'd eat graveyard snow cones—lime, orange, grape, cherry mixed together—and pacos from the Crystal Pistol booth—seasoned beef in a cocoon of hot fry bread, orange grease squirting and burning the insides of our cheeks. We'd wash everything down with lemonade from that stand with the wasps buzzing all around it. Then we'd make fun of the S P R I N G | 2 013 12 blue-ribbon craft projects and dance a wild jitterbug to whatever lame-o band they'd brought in. In years before, we thought we owned the fair. But that August we haunted the midway like ghosts—stopping in front of the Tilt-a-Whirl, then the fishbowl game, watching like we'd already seen everything there was to see but couldn't quite pull ourselves away. We didn't talk about my parents, the accident. We didn't say much of anything at all. Irene bought us tickets for the Ferris wheel, a ride we'd deemed too boring the year before, but it seemed like we should be doing something. We sat in that metal car, our bare knees just touching. Even when we'd jerk them apart, they'd wind up magnetized again some moments later. We were lifted up into the hot embrace of the ever-blackening Montana sky, the lights from the midway sluicing us in their fluorescent glow, a tinny kind of ragtime music plinking out from somewhere deep in the center of the wheel. Up on top the air smelled less DISTINCTL MONTANA | DIGITAL Y D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A Gal Watch the book trailer at: www.distinctlymontana.com/cameronpost132

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