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

Ellie's mother, Jasmine Blue Heffner, believed that the microwave oven was no different from an atomic bomb because it was invented by defense contractors during World War II.

I figured by the time Ellie applied to colleges, she'd either be smarter than me from learning so much faster in homeschool, or she'd be so brainwashed by Jasmine Blue that she would score badly on her SAT because she believed a microwave oven was the same as an atomic bomb.

Ellie might have defended homeschooling to me, but deep down she knew what she was missing. From the day she stopped getting on the yellow school bus with me she started complaining about the commune. It was as if school was her one real-world connection, and cutting it off made her feel like a bird in a cage.

She asked about what other girls were wearing to school. She asked about makeup. She asked about boys, TV shows, social media sites, dances, sports games.

Mostly, she asked about sex, even though we'd just turned fourteen.

"Did you have health class today?" she'd asked.

"Yeah."

"Did you get the rubber demonstration yet?"

"Today we learned about meth," I'd said.

I told her that real sex ed wasn't until eleventh grade and she looked disappointed. "I think that's too late to learn about sex."

"Yeah. By then, we know everything already," I'd said.

We knew enough. I had the Internet at home. (Ellie did not have the Internet. Jasmine Blue believed the Internet was an atomic bomb full of porn and lies. In that order.) By fifth grade, we'd Googled it. First we Googled penis. We looked for images. That was the day we found the butter penis. A penis carved from butter—anatomically correct. We made jokes about it. What good is that if it melts? Bet it tastes better than the real thing. We wondered why anyone would sculpt a penis out of butter. But then we found penis cakes, penis candy molds and penis lollipops, and we figured adults were gross.

That's as far as it went in fifth grade. Adults are gross. Nothing more to it.

We made a promise that day. We promised to tell each other the minute we had sex. Both of us doubted in fifth grade that it would ever happen, but if it did, we swore we would tell each other and talk about it.

In middle school, before homeschooling, Ellie became an expert, as if she was preparing for the most important event of her life. She got her friends to buy her the latest women's magazines and she'd talk about orgasms and balls and how to please your man. She would sometimes give the magazines to me to keep for her. I had a box of her contraband under my bed. Mostly magazines and eye shadow. A condom that a random boy gave to her. A weekend section of the newspaper with a page of exotic dancers, with names like Leather Love, Lacey Snow, Shy-Anne, who would perform at the local lap dancing bars. I looked through the magazines sometimes, too. In front of Ellie I pretended I wasn't interested. But I was.

In front of everyone else, I pretended I didn't care about all the stuff girls start to care about in middle school—the right clothes, shoes, mascara, hair products, sex—but I did. I was interested in the why. Why? Why do we care so much about this?

I wasn't sure why I cared about not caring. Or why I didn't care about not caring.

I figured it had something to do with what everyone else was avoiding talking about, which was Darla. Maybe had Darla still been around, she'd have given me a direction. Or something.

Jasmine Blue's homeschool sex education was contained in a simple mantra. If you do it too early, you'll regret it. I watched as each mention made Ellie more curious and more rebellious and more determined to have sex just because she wanted to test Jasmine's theory.

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.