Be Good Be Real Be Crazy by Chelsey Philpot Page B

interrupted.
    â€œThat’d be super. Mr. and Mrs. Jackson had a double-wide and it was so cozy.” Mia scooped her bag off the ground and fell in beside Daphne. “We had eight of us in there, but it wasn’t bad.”
    â€œWho are Mr. and Mrs. Jackson?” Homer said as he bent into the half-raised tent and swept the stuff that had fallen out of his bag into a pile.
    â€œShe didn’t hear you.” Einstein’s sneakers appeared in Homer’s peripheral vision. “They already started walking.”
    â€œOh.” Homer shoved everything into his duffel, zipped the tent door closed, and stood up. “This is a little weird, right? We should get Mia and set—” Homer felt more than heard the backof the tent, the one part he and Einstein had actually gotten to stand up, billow to the ground. “Shit.”
    â€œSet up the tents?” said Einstein, gently kicking a pole. “I think at this point we’d have to enlist NASA to make that happen.”
    Homer glanced at the pile of faded canvas. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” He flung the duffel over his shoulder. “Let’s catch up.”

THE PARABLE OF THE ACCIDENTAL ORACLE AND THE FORGOTTEN PLACE
    THE STORY OF THE FORGOTTEN Place is not so different from the stories of many other disremembered locales. Once, the town had been prosperous; then Company X, Y, or Z had pulled up stakes, jumped ship, skedaddled, boarded the proverbial last train out, leaving a community to remake itself out of dust and ruins.
    Before it was the Forgotten Place, the secluded town in the hills of South Carolina had been a harmonious world unto itself. It had buildings painted the colors of Easter eggs, and mail carriers who smiled and always had dog biscuits in their pockets. Neighbors kept their doors open after dusk, and every Sunday the Divine Promise Baptist Choir sang gospel so powerful the walls of the church were permanently curved.
    Unfortunately, by time the Accidental Oracle was born, that town was all but gone.
    The Accidental Oracle got out as soon as she turned eighteen:two days after her high school graduation. She let folks believe she was moving on to find fame and fortune in the Big-Wide-Elsewhere. She figured there was no need to upset anyone with the full truth: she was leaving to escape just as much as she was to succeed.
    Everyone said she was going to make it. Her theater teacher raved about her “God-given talent.” Her mama told her that if her name wasn’t on the marquees of the best theaters within a year, then the sky was purple and up was down.
    They were right.
    And they were wrong.
    It turns out that trying to find your place in the Big-Wide-Elsewhere is really hard. Mostly because there are so many others trying to do the same.
    The Accidental Oracle was just another smart, lovely, talented girl in a city full of smart, lovely, talented young people—all of them determined never to return to their own versions of the Forgotten Place.
    She fought the good fight for nearly four years. She waited tables at night and went to auditions during the day. She lived in a crowded apartment ten blocks from the subway station at the very end of the line to save money for a voice coach, acting coach, style coach. She worked and worked and worked until the Tuesday morning she woke up and realized she was too tired to keep running in sand. That morning, she called themanager at the uptown restaurant where she was scheduled for the dinner shift and explained that she wouldn’t be in at four o’clock, or ever again, for that matter. She left a month’s rent and the few pieces of furniture she’d accumulated in her shoddy apartment and boarded a bus that dropped her off two towns over from the Forgotten Place.
    Back in her grandma’s house for the first time since she turned eighteen, the Accidental Oracle slept for days. Then she got restless and started walking.
    She found