Here in the Real World by Sara Pennypacker

Jolene accuses him of living in Magic Fairness Land because he wants everything to be fair she lives in the real world. Ware hopes he can get a do-over if he cleans the rubble out of the tub so he will be more like the kind of child he thinks his parents want. Jolene’s experience with her aunt shows this doesn’t always work but sometimes it does. Jolene, whose aunt once went to this church, tells Ware that the tub in the church is a do-over tub that will change a person instantly. She will allow Ware to stay only in the ruins of the sanctuary although Ware complains, “That’s not fair.” Each day after his mother drops him off at the rec center, he simply goes to the lot next door where he and Jolene make peace and began to reclaim the lot – Ware to turn the church into a medieval castle and Jolene to dig new gardening space. Jolene is growing papayas in cans to raise money. The first day at the Rec Center when the eleven-year-olds are running, Ware drops behind, climbs a tree, and discovers an abandoned church yard next door with a partially demolished church, a parking lot, and a yard that is being claimed by a belligerent gardener. Ware likes to stand on the outside and observe his mother wants him to have ‘meaningful social interaction’. Staying with his grandmother in Florida while his parents work double shifts to buy their rental house, he anticipates time alone, observing things, building a medieval castle on his grandmother’s kitchen table, Then Big Deal, his grandmother, falls and requires a double hip replacement and Ware is back home with his parents facing a summer in the city recreation program.

Here in the Real World by Sara Pennypacker