Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

"He was tired of everyone believing they knew everything there was to know about him, as if a person never grew, a person never changed, a person was born a weird and dreamy little kid with too-red lips and stayed that way forever just to keep things simple for everyone else..."

Bone Gap is the typical small rural town. The people all know each other, and they know everything going on. They know all the rumors, such as the one about the ghost who eats leftovers at the house it haunts. Most of the rumors in Bone Gap involve the fields of corn. They say that the corn talks. Some even say that the corn walks around on its own.

Brothers Finn and Sean have lived in Bone Gap their entire lives. Their father is dead and their mother ran off to marry an orthodontist. Sean had been planning to go away to medical school and become a doctor. He gave up his dreams to take care of Finn and make sure that his younger brother graduates high school. Where Sean is responsible and serious, Finn is dreamy. He never meets anyone's eye. Everyone talks about how handsome Finn is, but also how strange he is.

Things shifted when the boys found a girl in their barn. Rosa showed up out of the blue...and disappeared the same way. During her brief stay, Sean lightened up, even laughed. Finn also had a bond with Rosa, as did everyone else in Bone Gap. It was a great blow when she left. Finn adamantly insists that she was abducted. Nobody believes him, especially because he can't describe the kidnapper's face. All he can say is that the man looked like a scarecrow. The man who kidnapped Rosa keeps confronting poor Finn, threatening to hurt him and everyone he loves if he doesn't stop looking for Rosa. Unfortunately, no one else ever sees the man.

It turns out that Rosa was abducted. A strange man took her and has been holding her in a series of strange places. Every day, the man asks the same question, "Do you love me yet?" Rosa tries to escape, to break out, find a weapon, even stabs the man. In spite of her efforts, she keeps waking up in a new place, still captive.

Meanwhile, Finn starts to spend time with a girl named Petey, the beekeeper's daughter. She is known for her bad attitude and her unusual face. Finn and Petey have lots of late night adventures riding Finn's mysterious horse (It's a very fancy horse that just showed up in their barn) through cracks and into alternate dimensions, or something equally odd. Because Finn is really pretty and Petey isn't traditionally attractive, the rest of the town thinks that he is using her. She starts to agree, but not in the same way as everyone else.

Bone Gap was such a weirdo of a book, and I was there for it. It's got that whole magical realism thing going for it. It's been a while since I've actually read it, but believe me, it was good.