Excerpt from Glory O'Brien's History of the Future by A. S. King, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Getting dead didn't make her famous either.

Regardless, having a dead mother isn't convenient, especially when she died because she stuck her head in an oven and turned on the gas.

That is not convenient.

Although, I'd argue that there is some convenience in having a death machine right there in your kitchen waiting for the moment you finally get the nerve to do it. I'd argue that's more convenient than a fast-food drive-thru. You don't even have to leave your house to stick your head in the oven.

You don't even have to change out of your bathrobe.

You don't even have to take your kid to preschool where it was Letter N Day and she was ready to show off her acorn collection. You don't have to remember to do anything but breathe in and breathe out.

That's about as convenient as it gets.

What's inconvenient is: Living in a world where no one wants to talk to you about your dead mother because it makes them uncomfortable.

What's inconvenient is: Not having a mother at middle school graduation. Not having a mother when I tried to figure out how to shave under my arms. Not having a mother when I got my period. My dad was helpful; but he's a feminist, not an actual woman.

I always knew that one day, it would be inconvenient as hell not having a mother at high school graduation. The last few weeks of senior year were filled with all the girls in my homeroom talking about buying dresses and shoes and all I could think about was how small those things seemed.

I sat in homeroom thinking Shoes. Dresses. Disposable bullshit.

I sat in homeroom thinking Where am I really going, anyway?

Though my yearbook photographer duties were over because the year's book was done, I still carried my camera with me everywhere. I took candid shots of those girls talking about their dresses and shoes. I took pictures of my teachers trying to teach near-empty classrooms. I took pictures of the people who thought they were my friends, but who I'd never let all the way in.

I didn't let anyone sign my yearbook. I decided: Why fake it?

Everything tasted like radiation

Ellie hadn't been to public school with me since we finished the eighth grade, and in the four years since, she'd said, "Homeschooling is faster because there's no repeating everything all the time," about eleven trillion times to me. Maybe it was true. Maybe not. Seemed to me homeschooling was just another way to keep all those kids in the commune from seeing the real world.

I didn't like the real world, but I was glad I knew about it.

Darla O'Brien didn't like the real world either, so she stuck her head in an oven.

My dad loved the real world. He ate it up. Literally. He weighed two hundred and forty pounds now. Not a bad weight unless you were five foot four and 120 pounds when you started out.

Dad had never replaced the oven. Not even with an electric one. Our kitchen had never had an oven since Letter N Day. Just a freezer full of food that could be cooked by the microwave.

Everything tasted like radiation.

Ellie wouldn't come to my house if we were cooking because she believed microwaves gave you cancer. She never could understand why we didn't have a huge stove like they had on the commune—a stove that could pickle and blanch and reduce fruit into jam for the winter.

"It's not like that could happen twice, right?" she'd said once. By that, she meant Darla sticking her head in the oven.

I'd answered, "No. No, I guess that couldn't happen twice."

But it could. Right? There were still two people left in my house. I was one of them. Whenever I thought about what Ellie had said, my guts churned. Sometimes I got diarrhea from it. Sometimes I threw up. It wasn't as easy as it can't happen twice. Anyone who knew anything about what Darla did knew it sometimes did happen twice because it's often hereditary. But Ellie just said things without thinking. That was hereditary too.

Excerpted from Glory O'Brien's History of the Future by A. S King. Copyright © 2014 by A. S King. Excerpted by permission of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.