by April Henry
He shrugged one shoulder, trying hard not to look pleased with himself. “I was here first.”
The barista handed Coyote back one of his mugs, which Coyote then handed to me. “Twelve-ounce nonfat latte with a double shot, right?”
“Right.” I forced an even bigger smile onto my face. “Hey, it’s such a nice day—can we sit outside?” I didn’t want anyone to overhear us.
“Sure.” Coyote picked up his cup of tea. We went outside and sat at one of the two small, round tables on the sidewalk. He petted a yellow Labrador retriever tied to a parking sign.
“So how’s work going?” I asked, casting about for a neutral topic. I wasn’t sure how to get started.
“It’s real busy now.” He spread his grease-stained fingers out and regarded them. The nail on his right thumb was bruised. “Everyone’s getting ready for summer.”
“Do you like working there?”
“It’s pretty good. George is easy to work for. And I like working with my hands.” He took a sip of tea. “How are things going at school?”
“Okay.” Since the arrest, I had gotten a D on one quiz and a C-minus on the other. “In English, we’re reading Othello.”
“That’s the one where Othello thinks his wife is cheating on him, right?” I must have looked surprised, because Coyote said, “Just because I got my GED doesn’t mean I don’t like to read.”
“Yeah, Iago sets her up so she looks guilty.” That made me think of Richter. The coffee turned to acid in my stomach. I tried to ignore it and changed the subject. “Thanks for bringing the extra cup for me. Were you no longer willing to underwrite my profligate use of natural resources?”
He grinned. “Oh, you’re already damned to hell.” He took a sip of his tea, and when he looked up again, his face was serious. “Besides, if we don’t start doing things differently, it will be too late. That’s why I’m part of ”—he hesitated—“that group.”
I took a deep breath. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Can I be part of it, too?”
“Do you really know what you’re asking? It’s not a commitment you can make lightly.”
Even though we were the only ones on the sidewalk, I lowered my voice. “You mean because you guys sometimes do things that are against the law, like freeing the minks? Well, I think there’s a higher law.”
He looked up from his tea, and I forced my eyes not to waver from his green gaze. “It’s fine to talk about higher law, but some of the stuff we do”—he lowered his voice even further—“means we might end up going to jail. And if you get caught, being a MEDic means no plea bargains, no deals, no selling out your friends.”
I didn’t drop my gaze. “You heard what Matt said. My parents brought me up to believe in fighting for what’s important.”
“Sorry, we just have to be cautious,” Coyote said. “Not everyone supports what we do like your parents. They get it. Even if they are a little too old and a little too mainstream to be MEDics, they still get it.”
Normally I would have smiled at the idea that anyone thought my parents were mainstream. Instead, I just took another sip of my bitter coffee.
Coyote stared at his tea for a long time. And then he said, “Let me talk to Cedar. We might be able to use you.”
I nodded and pretended to smile. But inside, I was dying.
CHAPTER NINE
“So why do you want to join us?” Cedar asked. His face was unsmiling, all angles and planes.
I was sitting with nine MEDics around a long picnic bench in a rundown park in North Portland. The sun was out, but we were the only ones at this end of the park. At the far end, some guys played basketball. They had tried to sell us dope when we walked by.
Even though I was with the MEDics, it was clear that I wasn’t part of the group. The only good thing was that Coyote was next to me. I wondered if he felt how my whole body trembled. Of the other people at the table, Hawk, Liberty and Meadow seemed openly hostile. Blue, on the other hand, gave me a thumbs-up when we first met in the parking lot. Even Jack Rabbit and Seed had smiled at me, although a little furtively. It was harder to tell what Grizz was thinking. And with Cedar, it was impossible. I wondered if he ever smiled.
I noticed Cedar hadn’t used the word MED. Probably playing it safe. Before we sat down, he had asked Liberty to frisk me. She hadn’t held anything back, either, her red dreads brushing against me as she ran her hands firmly down my legs and then up again, under my long denim skirt. The park was the kind of place where even frisking someone didn’t draw any attention.
I took a deep breath. If I could convince Cedar, then the others would fall in line. “If we don’t act now, it will be too late to save the Earth. It’s going to take more than recycling newspapers and reusing plastic bags. I want to be part of a group that’s actually doing something real.” Although my voice was confident, under the table my legs wouldn’t stop shaking. I prayed that no one else noticed.
“This isn’t a social club, you know,” Liberty said. Her lips thinned down to a line. “It’s a serious group. It’s not all filled with—with cheerleaders.” She spit out the word.
I got a quick vision of her in whatever high school she went to, dissed by the popular kids. Liberty must be way on the outer edge if she thought anyone would mistake me for a cheerleader. I gave her my best cold stare. “You heard what my parents said. I’ve been around protests all my life.”
“This is more than protests.” Meadow shook her head. “And this isn’t like joining a book club or the Girl Scouts.”
“Hey, I’m just as serious about this as you are,” I objected. Serious as a heart attack.
“Probably more serious. She’s not rebelling against her parents,” Coyote said. “She’s not just doing this to get a rise out of somebody.”
His words had seemed aimed at Meadow, but it was Liberty whose cheeks turned the color of her hair. “She can’t just say she wants to be a member and waltz right in,” she said.
I sighed loudly. I was tired of people telling me what I couldn’t do. “Fine. What do I need to do?”
Grizz shifted in his seat and said, “Look, Ellie, okay, you have to prove yourself? Same as the rest of us?”
It was hard to tell behind his huge beard, but his expression seemed friendly. Looking at him, I started to feel like I might actually be able to carry this thing off. “How do I do that?”
Hawk said, “You have to pick a target, do an action by yourself and get away without being caught.” With his big, bulging eyes set in his bony face, he reminded me of some kind of insect. “You have to prove you are committed.”
By myself ? I had thought if I had to do anything, it would be as part of the group, not acting on my own. I bit the inside of my cheek. It’s for Matt, I reminded myself.
“If that’s what I need to do, I’ll do it.” I tried to keep my voice steady.
“Are you sure?” Blue asked from the far side of the table. Her blue eyes were gentle. “Because it’s fine to be a supporter. Not everyone can get involved at the same level.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “This is something I believe in. If we don’t act now, the Earth will die.”
Cedar looked at me thoughtfully for a long moment, then nodded his approval. And almost as an aside he added, “Oh, and you’ll need to bring us proof.”
“To be honest, Cedar kind of scares me,” I whispered to Coyote. We were sitting in the back of a nearly empty TriMet bus, going home after the meeting. “Does he ever smile?”
Coyote shot me a sideways grin. “And risk damaging his reputation?” Then he turned serious. “Cedar has been at this longer than any of us, and he has more to lose. About five years ago, he served two years in jail for an action. They offered him a deal if he would give up the others—and he wouldn’t. But staying involved in MED means that he risks more than any of the rest of us. That’s why he wants to make sure anyone who wants to join is committed.”
Before the meeting had broken up, Cedar had explained t
o me that I had to pick a target, plan an action, take a photograph of myself there and then bring it back as proof. The photograph would not only get me in—it would also give the group leverage over me. It would prove that I was already guilty of a crime before I even joined MED.
“Okay, let me give you some advice,” Coyote said. “Don’t pick something in your neighborhood, and don’t buy the supplies there, either. It probably sounds like overkill, but these are the kinds of things that have tripped people up in the past.”
“But what should I hit?” Saying “hit” made me feel like an actor in a bad movie. This couldn’t be real.
“Get out the yellow pages and take your pick. Golf courses, butcher shops, animal research facilities, SUV dealerships. Except you should start small. Bigger actions require more people and more planning.”
“What have other MEDics hit?”
“Well, a lot of people have picked McDonald’s because they generate so much trash and are destroying rain forests to plant soybeans to feed their chickens.”
“That sounds good.” My parents had raised me to hate McDonald’s, so I didn’t even have a moral issue with the idea. I imagined myself lobbing a firebomb through a McDonald’s window one night and running like hell.
Coyote turned practical. “But the problem is that a lot of them are open half the night, or have prep or cleanup staff there. You might want to target something quieter.”
The bus stopped and let off an old man who had been sitting by the driver. Now we were the only passengers left. Still, I waited until we were rumbling down the street again before I asked my next question. “What was your first target?”
He looked sheepish. “A Mickey D’s, actually. Glued the locks. And nearly got caught by the prep cook.”
“Glued the locks?” I thought MED had been asking me to do something more dramatic than squirting glue in a lock.
“Look, even if all you do is glue the locks closed, it still accomplishes a lot.” Coyote sounded a little defensive.
“How?”
“One, it makes them realize how vulnerable they are. Two, they can’t do any business as long as no one can get in. Three, they’ll have to call a locksmith, and those aren’t cheap. And it’s quick and easy. It takes less than one minute to glue the locks if you do it right. So with only one person, one minute and less than ten dollars’ worth of supplies, you can disrupt the whole apparatus.”
“One minute?” I echoed. That didn’t sound that bad. I reached past him to ring the bell for my stop, bringing my face dangerously close to his. Suddenly, I wanted to kiss him, which was the stupidest thing. How could I want to kiss someone I was planning on selling out to the FBI? I sat back in my seat and tried to compose myself.
Coyote half turned, so that he was even closer to me than before. “You know, when you asked about joining us, at first I thought it was a bad idea.”
“Why?” I struggled to keep my expression neutral.
“You’re younger than the rest of us. I thought maybe it was more your parents’ idea than yours. But now I know it was because you wanted it. And I’m glad. I wouldn’t want to have to keep secrets from you, Ellie.” He leaned even closer, and I caught my breath.
“Thirty-fifth Avenue,” the bus driver called out. I saw him staring at us in the rearview mirror. I hadn’t even realized the bus had stopped.
“Oops, this is me,” I said hurriedly. I got up and grabbed my backpack. “I’ll call you as soon as it’s over.”
As I walked up my driveway, I saw Matt and Laurel through the kitchen window. They were both laughing at something. My eyes filled with angry tears. The only reason they were safe and sound was because of what I was doing. And to do it, I was going to have to betray Coyote and his friends.
CHAPTER TEN
The Saturday before my action was scheduled, I was supposed to be writing a report on how European colonization was still affecting countries today. But instead I just stared out the window, wondering how I could get myself out of the mess my parents had made.
I jumped when my cell phone began to vibrate across my desk. It was Marijean.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Hearing her voice made me feel guilty. Marijean and I had been friends so long that we knew each other inside and out. Which was exactly why I had been avoiding her.
“Working on that paper for history.”
“Do you want to come over and work on it here?”
“No, I should stay here and concentrate. I didn’t do that great on the last test, and stupid Tamson said if I didn’t get an A on this paper, I might get a C for the whole class.” I had never gotten a C in anything before.
“A C?” Marijean echoed, stunned. She was a B or C or sometimes even a D student, not because she wasn’t smart, but because she didn’t care that much. But she knew that I cared. “Ellie, what’s wrong with you? Is it your dad? Is it Coyote?”
“I don’t know.” It was all of them, but of course I couldn’t explain. “Maybe I have spring fever. I’m just kind of not myself these days.”
The pause on the other end of the phone was so long I thought for a second that the call might have been dropped. Then she said, “Are you mad at me?”
“No!” I tried to reassure her. “It’s just that I’ve had a lot of things on my mind. And you’re right. I’m worried about my dad, and I’m not sure where things are going with Coyote. I like him a lot, but I think he just sees me as a friend. He’s really nice to me—but he’s really nice to everyone.”
“Well, don’t forget your other friends,” Marijean said softly. “I’m always here if you want to talk.”
She was clearly hurt, but I told myself I was doing her a favor keeping her in the dark. I would go back to being Marijean’s best friend as soon as this whole thing was over.
After we hung up, I gave up on my paper. Maybe I would work on it later. Besides, what difference would a C really make? A C was the least of my troubles. So I got on the bus and went across the river to the Bins. If I kept myself busy, maybe I wouldn’t spend as much time worrying.
The Bins was called that because it was full of bins, and each of them was full of unorganized and unwashed goods. The place had a fake-strawberry smell, some weird fragrance/ disinfectant that couldn’t quite overcome the cumulatively nauseating stench of thousands of used items. The worst were the preworn shoes.
But the upside was that everything—coats, sweaters, socks, pillowcases, scarves—cost just ninety-nine cents a pound.
I had just picked up an interesting-looking square of blue-and-yellow waterproof fabric—it might have once been a tablecloth, although a foot-wide circle had inexplicably been cut out of the middle—when I saw Blue enter the store. She walked over to the nearest bin and picked up a bolt of faded red velvet. She had half unrolled it and was running her hands over it when she noticed me. A smile lit up her face. Picking up the bolt, she walked over.
I couldn’t help but smile back. And it was a relief, in a way, to see her. With Blue, I only had to pretend halfway.
“Looking for something special?” Blue asked, with a meaningful lift to her voice. Coyote had briefed me on the fine points on what to wear to an action. You wore dark clothes, but not head-to-toe black, because that was too obvious. You bought shoes that were two or three sizes too big and stuffed the toes with newspaper, so the cops wouldn’t be able to trace you through any footprints you left behind. You wore a sweatshirt or sweater on top of another top in a completely different color and took the top layer off as soon as you were done. That way any potential witness would give a misleading description of who the police should be on the lookout for.
“Actually, I make stuff,” I said. “Like this sweater.” It had begun life as an unadorned teal-blue cardigan, but now it had appliquéd four-petaled felt flowers—grass green, sky blue and bright fuchsia. The stems were embroidered with fuzzy purple yarn.
“Nice,” she said. “I make stuff, too.”
She was wea
ring the same clothes she had in my parents’ living room, black Cahartt overalls and a plain olive-green T-shirt. I could not imagine Blue wearing red velvet anything.
“Furniture, not clothes,” she said, reading my look. “It’s how I make my living, actually. I get on my bike every morning and ride up and down the streets of Portland, looking for reject furniture people have put out on the curb for the garbageman. I know all the trash routes in a twenty-mile radius.”
“What do you do once you find something?” I asked. “Sand it and paint it?”
“That’s only the beginning. Have you got a minute? Because I live near here and I could show you.”
Before we left, I bought the tablecloth, two sweaters, a pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt for a dollar ninety-eight. Blue looked at the dark sweatshirt and jeans and gave me a knowing smile. Her own fabric set her back nearly twelve bucks, which was lot at the Bins. Once we were outside, she unlocked her bicycle and rolled it home next to me, while I carried both of our purchases.
“So have you decided on your action?” Blue asked once we reached an empty stretch of sidewalk where no one could overhear us.
“Yeah. The Federal Predator Control Office.”
“Why did you pick that place?”
“Because something in Oregon should still be left wild.” I had read on the Internet that Federal wildlife agents shot, trapped or poisoned more than 1.6 million animals a year—all because they were considered a threat to livestock, crops or travel. Another, more basic reason was that the Federal Predator Control Office was on a quiet street and no one would be in the building in the middle of the night.
Blue nodded thoughtfully. Her expression lightened as she stopped in front of a tiny house with a detached ramshackle garage that looked like an afterthought. “We’re home. The house was built in 1911, but the garage came along about ten years later, when they figured out cars weren’t a fad.”
She took a ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked the huge, rusty padlock. Instead of a roll-up door, the garage had two doors that swung out like a giant cupboard. Inside were more than a dozen pieces of furniture, including a battered desk, a small wooden table, a dresser that had been painted hot pink decades ago and old windows with hinges still attached. There were parts of furniture, too. I saw random table and chair legs, a column and a couple of lengths of molding.
