insignificant events in the life of a cactus 2

But at Desert Ridge she immediately feels awkward because Aven has to use her feet to do everything including eating lunch. Aven would have sat with her friends, Emily, Kayla and Brittney laughing about teachers, complaining about parents and even catching the pretzels in her mouth that Kayla would toss at her.

In her old school, lunchtime was natural and easy with kids she'd grown up with. With a student population of a thousand kids, it's much larger than her school back in Kansas. Aven's curiosity is stirred by a blank spot on the museum wall and a nameplate that reads 'The Cavanaughs, Stagecoach Pass, 2004'.Īven starts school at Desert Ridge Middle School a few days after arriving in Arizona.

But it is the museum that Aven finds most interesting because it contains a collection of stone arrowheads and framed photographs on the walls. There is a shooting gallery, a theatre that shows old black and white western movies, a jail were you can pay to have someone arrested for something silly and a petting zoo that contains an old llama named Spaghetti who has a large tumor on his head. They move into the small apartment over the Stagecoach Pass Saloon and Steakhouse, mainly because her parents must be available all the time.Īt Stagecoach Pass Aven discovers the park has a gift shop, a gold mine offering gold spray-painted rocks, a soda shop that sells old-fashioned candy and ice cream and run by Henri who suffers from dementia and seems to already know Aven. Aven's father was unemployed when he was contacted by a guy named Joe Cavanaugh. Gradually Aven's classmates came to accept her disability and she never felt out of place in her school.Īven's life changes drastically when her parents move from Kansas to Arizona to take over running a western-themed amusement park called Stagecoach Pass. I loved the way her eyes grew wide with shock and the way her voice went all high-pitched with excitement as he asked me a bunch more questions about my charred arms.' Her parents however stopped Aven's wild storytelling.

I knew from the first moment I told a girl my arms had burned off in a fire, I had found a great hobby: making up stories.

'I got so tired of telling them the same boring story about being born without arms that I started making stuff up. She loves to make up crazy stories about what happened to her arms. Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus is a story about three teens with serious disabilities forming an unlikely friendship as they struggle to cope with everyday life.Īven Green is a thirteen-year-old girl who was born without arms.

Insignificant events in the life of a cactus 2