Summer camp, Frances Cressen understood, was for kids - not for their parents. Parents were supposed to send their kids away for a couple of weeks in July or August and miss them a lot while they were gone. And even though the kids might get lost out in the woods, or almost drown in a marshy lake, or get mosquito bites and poison ivy all over their bodies, they wouldn't miss their parents. Not very much. Their parents were supposed to be missing them.

But Frances' mother seemed to have the whole thing backwards. She was going to camp. She had signed up for a retreat in Oregon. Two weeks of adult camp at the end of July.

" I don't get it," Frances said. "I thought I was going to camp. Here in Ohio."

" You are, but that's earlier. Yours starts on July sixth." Her mother was speaking with a certain determination, a quiet patience. When her mother sounded patient like that, Frances knew that her patience was actually wearing very thin.

"Why are you going?"

"I am going because it's my turn. And because I have the opportunity. You and Everett are coming with me." Frances' mother was a high school English teacher. She always spoke in full sentences. In only eight days, she and Frances would both be out of school for the summer.

"So what kind of camp is it again?"

Her mother sighed. She was doing laundry. She seemed to hate doing laundry. She often accused Frances and her brother, Everett (correctly, of course), of throwing perfectly clean clothes into the hamper to be washed, just so they wouldn't have to put them away.

"It isn't a camp, Frances. I already told you. It's a retreat. A spiritual retreat. It's called Mountain Ash."

"So it's just like church." Frances picked up a clump of dryer lint and squeezed it.

"No, it isn't just like church. If it were just like church I could do it at home."

Frances sneezed. Little puffs of lint were floating around in the air in front of her. "I think you should do it at home. I want to stay here. I already have my summer planned."

" It isn't too late to change your plans," her mother said. "You need to be flexible."

" I think you should be flexible," Frances mumbled.

Her mother rested both hands on the dryer and looked down at its metal surface. Frances knew she was counting - at least to ten, and probably twenty - so that she wouldn't shout or say something she might later regret. Frances thought about taking back what she had said. Sometimes she felt as if a small and terrible person lived inside her and spoke with an ugly voice and had only ugly things to say.

"I think we should talk about this later," her mother said.

Frances said she didn't care if they ever talked about it at all.

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Excerpted from Grass Angel by Julie Schumacher. Copyright© 2004 by Julie Schumacher. Excerpted by permission of Delacorte Books for Young Readers, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.