Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Controlled
    Controlled
    Controlled
    Ebook74 pages51 minutes

    Controlled

    By Patrick Jones

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Rachel's junior year is going to be perfect—she's taking AP classes, is first-chair viola, and is busy planning her college visits. Then Misty, Rachel's wild and unpredictable cousin, lands on her parents' doorstep and turns Rachel's orderly world upside-down. Rachel's family hopes enrolling Misty in Rondo Alternative High School will help with her behavior issues, but her rough past and reckless choices make her a force to be reckoned with. As Rachel gets pulled deeper into Misty's dark secrets, she’ll have to figure out if can she transform the uncontrollable Misty—or will it be Misty who transforms her?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLerner Publishing
    Release dateAug 1, 2014
    ISBN9781467773829
    Controlled
    Author

    Patrick Jones

    Patrick Jones lives in Minneapolis and is the author of many novels including the Support and Defend series. A former librarian, Jones received lifetime achievement awards from the American Library Association and the Catholic Library Association.

    Read more from Patrick Jones

    Related to Controlled

    Related ebooks

    YA Coming of Age For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Advent

      Nov 22, 2018

      Advent
      8 min read

    • Article

      Yellow Is the Color of Choices

      Dec 10, 2023

      For whatever reason, when she sees me each weekend, Megan still hugs me like when she was five. Her skinny arms wrap around my waist, and her eyes squeeze tight like she’s absorbing me into her skin. This is both heartening and heart-wrenching. I wan

      13 min read

    • Article

      The End Is Near

      Jul 31, 2022

      The End Is Near
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Workbench

      Dec 23, 2020

      The Workbench
      6 min read

    • Article

      Frog

      Jan 16, 2022

      Frog
      3 min read

    • Article

      What’s In A Name?

      Dec 22, 2021

      What’s In A Name?
      9 min read

    • Article

      Counter Waves

      Oct 23, 2020

      Counter Waves
      8 min read

    • Article

      Daughters’ Bodies

      Dec 1, 2019

      WHEN I’M about to go away to college, my grandmother dies and my mother silently puts herself up for adoption. LOOKING FOR SOMEONE TO ADOPT ME: Kind, lonely, beautiful woman in her 50s. Dead husband. No children. Cooks and cleans. 4’11 and 90 lbs. Gu

      20 min read

    • Article

      Musings On My Father

      Aug 8, 2022

      Musings On My Father
      5 min read

    • Article

      Connecting the Dots

      May 24, 2019

      Connecting the Dots
      4 min read

    • Article

      The MOTHER ODE

      Apr 18, 2022

      The MOTHER ODE
      5 min read

    • Article

      Festival

      Sep 15, 2018

      My husband, who loved festivals, who was a great fan of festivals, wanted to get to the square in time for the first band at eleven o’clock. From bed, the dog and I watched him dress. He tried on various T-shirts, declaring some of them too tight and

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Problem with My Dachshund

      Dec 11, 2019

      The Problem with My Dachshund
      10 min read

    • Article

      How Postcards From My Mother Helped Me Survive Childhood

      Mar 3, 2017

      For years, my mother wrote to me every day. I’d been sent away to boarding school and for the first weeks was forbidden to call home­. I was eleven. This was just before mobile phones came beeping and clicking into the lives of everyday people. I di

      4 min read

    • Article

      The world ACCORDING TO JILLY

      Oct 22, 2020

      The world ACCORDING TO JILLY
      3 min read

    • Article

      Quarantine Album

      Sep 8, 2020

      It all started with a very simple request: I asked my mom, when she had time, could she look through old photos to see if there were any of pint-size me decked out for Halloween—primo Instagram content for my show Scream, Queen! (a podcast about scar

      4 min read

    • Article

      Always Someone Leaving

      Jul 6, 2023

      Always Someone Leaving
      5 min read

    • Article

      Social Promotion

      Mar 19, 2024

      I didn’t understand. If that boy couldn’t read, why was he up there? The girl they originally had hosting the ceremony didn’t show, but why they put that boy there? Just because he volunteer for everything? You can’t read off enthusiasm. It made the

      21 min read

    • Article

      Losses And Gains

      Feb 1, 2024

      A NEW YEAR. It’s a big one for my family, because our two eldest children are going into their final year of school. Soon they’ll be 18-year-old, grown-up humans. This summer has been different from all our other summers as a family because we have t

      3 min read

    • Article

      Mother House

      Aug 6, 2020

      Mother House
      9 min read

    • Article

      Shanda

      Jan 1, 2024

      Shanda
      13 min read

    • Article

      Certification of Righteousness

      Sep 14, 2020

      Certification of Righteousness
      14 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Jan 1, 2019

      Lydia Rosenburg, age 10 Bellingham, WA The boy curled against the rundown brick wall, too weak to even sit up. The pain behind his eyelids had dulled to a throb, but now his world was nothing but darkness. How long ago had it happened? Day and night,

      7 min read

    • Article

      ‘Never Say You Can’t, Always Say You Can And You Will’

      Aug 27, 2020

      Supportive parents really make a difference. My mum and dad, Marge and George, were always very encouraging. I think because I was born just after the war there was the sense in them of, ‘This is the generation that can have more than we had.’ She wa

      2 min read

    • Article

      ‘Motherhood Is The Best Role Ever’

      Jan 7, 2021

      The first day your baby smiles at you is everything. For me, that was even better than the day Billy was born. Maybe because he came three weeks early and was tiny, and having an emergency caesarean was quite traumatic. The day he smiled back at me I

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Controlled

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Controlled - Patrick Jones

      1

      Rachel, we need to talk.

      I’m barely through the front door, viola case still in hand. But my parents are blocking my path to my bedroom. I follow them into the kitchen.

      Rachel, honey, sit down. As always, I do as I’m told.

      I have some news about my sister, Dad says real soft. But the news doesn’t form into words. Dad just sits there and stares at his hands.

      Finally, Mom speaks for him. It’s what she does best. Your Aunt Molly died.

      I’m not sure what I should pretend to feel. Surprise? Sadness? I’ve met Aunt Molly maybe twice. It’s not like I actually knew her. And judging by the little that my parents have said about her, she wasn’t worth knowing. But Dad is working his jaw and not making eye contact. That’s code in our family for I’m upset. I won’t talk about it. But you should care.

      Sorry, Dad, I say. No points for creativity. But what else do they expect? How did it happen? That’s what I’m really feeling: curiosity, like a person driving past a car wreck.

      Does that matter? His nonanswer is the answer. A drug overdose is my best guess.

      So, we have to go to the funeral? I prompt. That wasn’t how I was counting on spending my weekend. School starts next week, and I need to be ready. I don’t have time to go all the way up to Hibbing and back.

      He sighs. The funeral will be here, in Woodbury. But it’s not just that. Her daughter—your cousin, Misty—needs a place to live.

      Wait … what? Every molecule in my body suddenly screams in fear.

      Your mom and I are going to pick her up tomorrow. She’s moving in. I wish life had sound effects like a movie. I want thunder.

      Do I have to share my room? I think of my closet. My bookshelf. The corner where I keep my viola case and my folders full of music. There’s no space for another person.

      She’ll stay in Denise’s room. Denise doesn’t need her own room here while she’s across the country in grad school. Out East, overachieving, as always.

      But what about when Denise comes home at Thanksgiving?

      Dad sighs again. Why does he sound like he has asthma whenever I even hint at talking back? We’ll work something out, he says. For now, the main thing is to be there for Misty.

      Honey, we expect your help on this, adds Mom.

      Misty will go to school with you. She’s actually in the same grade as you. Even though she’s a year and a half older? That sounds promising. Besides, don’t kids like Misty go to alternative schools, like Rondo in St. Paul?

      I barely know Misty, I remind Dad. You never wanted Aunt Molly around.

      She’s still family, Dad says. And she’s only seventeen. She can’t live on her own, and I won’t let her go into foster care. She needs us.

      For how long?

      At least until she graduates from high school, so this year and next, Dad says.

      Oh, you think she’ll graduate? I snap. Her mom was a dropout. That’s one of the few things I know about her.

      I told her that’s a condition of her living here. Mom now. She’s got to stay in school. Rachel, honey, you can help her. You’re a straight-A student. You can set an example.

      Mom, seriously? I’ve scheduled out my junior year, and this won’t fit into it. Three AP classes, first-chair viola in orchestra, college visits in the spring, but not this.

      You can at least be a friend to her, Mom adds. I’m sure she needs that right now. And I suspect her friends from home haven’t been a good influence.

      I can’t believe this. My parents have always made decisions for me, which is annoying but usually not worth a fight. But this is the first time they’ve picked a friend for me. That’s a new low. "She’s a stranger. You can’t just assign her to me!"

      This is going to be hard on us all, Dad says. We’ll all have to adjust to the change.

      I want to shout: I like my school.

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1