Like he cared about a lot of stupid settlers and Indians and soldiers who hung around out here before he was even born. Hell, before his prehistoric grandparents had been born.

Who gave a shit about Crazy Horse and Sitting Bullshit. He cared about the X-Men and the box scores.

The way Coop looked at it, the fact that the closest town to the farm was called Deadwood said it all.

He didn’t care about cowboys and horses and buffalo. He cared about baseball and video games. He wasn’t going to see a single game in Yankee Stadium all summer.

He might as well be dead, too.

He spotted a bunch of what looked like mutant deer clomping across the high grass, and a lot of trees and stupid hills that were really green. Why did they call them black when they were green? Because he was in South crappy Dakota where they didn’t know dick about squat.

What he didn’t see were buildings, people, streets, sidewalk vendors. What he didn’t see was home.

His grandmother shifted in her seat to look back at him. “Do you see the elk, Cooper?”

“I guess.”

“We’ll be getting to the Chance spread soon,” she told him. “It was nice of them to have us all over for supper. You’re going to like Lil. She’s nearly your age.”

He knew the rules. “Yes, ma’am.” As if he’d pal around with some girl. Some dumb farm girl who probably smelled like horse. And looked like one.

He bent his head and went back to Tetris so his grandmother would leave him alone. She looked sort of like his mother. If his mother was old and didn’t get her hair done blond and wavy, and didn’t wear makeup. But he could see his mother in this strange old woman with the lines around her blue eyes.