The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

There are two girls standing together near the entrance to the first-floor restroom. Sicilee doesn’t actually look at them. But, of course, she doesn’t have to. She knows instinctively – by their hair (which has obviously never seen the inside of a decent salon) and their bodies (scrawny and pudgy, respectively) and their clothes (beyond hopeless) – that they are geeks from the netherworld. Which puts them way beneath her notice. Because they happen to be in her way, Sicilee pushes past them, hitting the larger of the two (the pudgy one) with her bright orange backpack and knocking a stack of papers out of her hands.

“Hey!” snaps the girl. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going, Princess Pumpkin?”

Her companion quickly jumps back, banging her head against the wall.

Sicilee glances over her shoulder, like a movie star forced to acknowledge a ragged beggar because the beggar is hanging on to her ankle. “Are you talking to me?”

“Yeah,” says Waneeda. “I am talking to you. Look what you did!”

“Well, maybe if you weren’t such a heffalump, you wouldn’t be in my way,” Sicilee drawls. And, still smiling, she yanks open the door.

Chapter Two Why Waneeda and Joy Marie were in Sicilee’s way

There was no exhausting round of parties or events in the world of Waneeda Huddlesfield and Joy Marie Lutz this holiday season. They spent the Christmas vacation much as they spend most of their free time: Joy Marie studied, read, practised her violin and completed the special project on the Magna Carta she’s been doing for extra history credits; Waneeda played video games, watched television and ate.

And now, as Sicilee searches for somewhere to repair the damage wreaked by nature and Kristin searches for Loretta and Ash, Waneeda and Joy Marie move slowly through the hallways on the first floor. Joy Marie, her hair in a single perfect braid and dressed in a grey skirt and plain white blouse, is carrying a dispenser of tape, and a box of drawing pins clacks in the pocket of her grey sweater. Waneeda, her relentlessly unruly hair pulled back into a tight bun, her sweatpants and baggy pullover looking as though they are wearing her more than she is wearing them, is carrying a stack of flyers and chewing her last gumdrop. They move slowly, partly because Waneeda doesn’t really “do” quickly, and partly because they have been at the school for over an hour, going up and down the corridors taping flyers to the walls and pinning them to bulletin boards, so that even Joy Marie’s enthusiasm is starting to wane. The flyers say:

Joy Marie is here this morning because she is the co-ounder, vice-president and (due to a lack of volunteers) secretary of the Clifton Springs High School Environmental Club, which has the distinction of being the most unpopular club in the history of the school. Not that this lack of popularity bothers Joy Marie. She doesn’t do things because she wants to be liked; she does things because she is driven to achieve. Mr and Mrs Lutz expect a lot of her.

In comparison, no one expects much of Waneeda, and they are rarely disappointed. Indeed, it’s fair to say that Waneeda could be the girl for whom the words “I can’t”, “But I’m tired” and “Do I have to?” were invented. Waneeda is here this morning only because Joy Marie slept over last night and was, therefore, in a position to make her come.

“Are we done yet?” Waneeda moans as they finally complete their circuit of the first floor. “I have to sit down. My blood sugar’s really low.”

Joy Marie gives her a so-what-else-is-new? look. Waneeda’s blood sugar is always in imminent danger of collapse. “Almost. I just want to put a couple by the restrooms.”

Waneeda sighs, but dutifully follows. Waneeda is not so much driven as pulled.

She shifts restlessly from one foot to the other as she holds yet another flyer up against yet another wall. “I don’t know why you bother,” complains Waneeda. “Everybody who’s in the club knows about the meeting. And nobody new’s ever going to join.”

“You don’t know that,” says Joy Marie. Joy Marie’s nature is basically a positive one.

Waneeda’s is not. “Yes, I do know that,” she insists. “Everybody thinks your club is the pits.” Even the über-hip kids who wear vintage clothes and drink Fairtrade coffee have stayed away from the Environmental Club the way you’d avoid a house where someone died of the plague. “They’d rather pick up litter on the highway with a toothpick than join.”

“We still have to keep trying,” argues Joy Marie. “They could change their minds. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know. These things take time.”

“I thought time was the thing you don’t have.” Waneeda fumbles in her pockets, hoping to find at least an overlooked stick of gum. “I thought the end was nigh.”

“Well…” Joy Marie’s single braid bounces as she marches on. “You know what they say, Waneeda… It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

And it is certainly very dark at the moment. The club’s official enrolment (larger than the number of people who actually show up for meetings) has always hovered at the minimum needed for school support and funding, but that, unfortunately, is not its biggest problem. Its biggest problem is a greying and portly man who, besides being famous for his amusing and colourful ties, commands a great deal of authority and respect in the community. Although he likes to be seen to be politically correct, Dr Firestone, the principal of Clifton Springs High School, has never fully appreciated the club’s efforts to alert the student body to the many dangers facing the planet. The hundreds of plastic bags they dumped outside the main entrance… The posters of tortured animals they plastered through the corridors… Their picket protesting the sale of soda and water on campus… All of these things annoyed Dr Firestone, but it was last year’s infamous Earth Day Speech (in which Clemens Reis, co-founder and president of the club, suggested that his fellow students and their teachers were all complacent kamikaze consumers) that caused the principal to become openly critical. He said that the club, in general, and Clemens, in particular, lacked the delicacy and subtlety of the nuclear bomb.

This past November, things took a turn for the worse when Clemens began his current campaign to save the 500-year-old trees at the side of the tennis courts from being cut down to make way for the new sports centre. Clemens has written letters to the council, to the school, to the administration, to the school board, to the developers and to the local papers. More than one. Although these letters have proved no more effective than sticking a plaster over a crack in a dam, they did manage to alienate Dr Firestone even more. “Are you aware, Mr Reis, that you’re like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills and thinking they’re giants?” boomed Dr Firestone, running into Clemens in the corridor. “I suggest you stop wasting the club’s resources and address some real issues, not the fate of a couple of trees.” Clemens said he’d see what he could do.

And then, just before Christmas, Clemens took the mike at the end of the morning announcements, saying that he wanted to send holiday greetings from the Environmental Club to the rest of the school. What he did, in fact (as the few people who actually listened could tell you), was launch into a passionate plea on behalf of the ancient oaks and the inestimable value of the natural world. “If you eradicate a species or chop down a tree, it’s gone for ever,” he told them. “If you destroy everything, you’ll eventually end up with nothing.” If there was some eloquence as well as truth in Clemens’ speech, Dr Firestone failed to see it. Dr Firestone said it was a diatribe and summoned Clemens to his office for “a little chat”. Dr Firestone was decked out for the holidays in a Christmas-tree tie with tiny, flashing lights on it. Clemens was wearing a T-shirt he’d made himself that featured a photograph of the threatened trees and the legend: Where were you five hundred years ago? Where will they be next spring? Dr Firestone did most of the chatting. “You’re turning what should be an ordinary high school club into a gang of junior eco-terrorists, Mr Reis,” he accused. “You’ll be setting fire to SUVs and breaking into animal labs next.” Dr Firestone made it clear that if the club didn’t improve both its image and its membership, the school would have no choice but to shut them down at the end of January.

“Anyway, we do have till the end of the month.” Joy Marie snaps off a piece of tape and slaps it into position. “And it doesn’t say anything about trees on the announcement.”

Waneeda blows fluff from the Tootsie Roll she found deep in the pocket of her sweat pants. The Tootsie Roll