The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

looks as if it may have been washed. “Does Clemens know you left out the trees?” Unlike Joy Marie, Clemens isn’t intimidated by Dr Firestone’s threats. Clemens would argue with God, never mind a man whose tie lights up.

Rather than answer Waneeda’s question, Joy Marie says, “What I was thinking was that we should do a serious recruitment. We could set up a table in the main hall … and do an announcement at the next assembly … and even go around the homerooms…”

Waneeda’s expression, though slightly diluted because of the candy in her mouth, delicately balances disbelief and disdain. Joy Marie is too shy to make announcements or talk to homerooms. When forced to speak in front of a class, she turns the colour of tomato soup and talks so softly that even she can’t hear what she’s saying. “You’re going to send Clemens out to convince people to join?” Which would be like using wild bears and packs of hungry wolves to convince people to picnic in the woods. “Are you nuts?”

“I didn’t mean Clemens.” Joy Marie smoothes out the paper she’s half fixed to the wall. “I was kind of thinking of you.” Waneeda may be self-conscious about her looks, but she is less shy than an angry bull.

“Yeah, right,” snorts Waneeda. “As soon as I give up my part-time job as Peace Envoy for the UN.”

“I’m serious.” Joy Marie cuts another length of tape. “Why not?”

“Why not?” Waneeda widens her eyes. “Well, just for openers, I don’t even belong to your dumb club.”

“But you could join.” Needless to say, this is something Joy Marie has suggested before.

“Yeah, right,” snorts Waneeda.

“No, really,” argues Joy Marie. “I know you don’t believe me, but it’s really very inspirational.”

Waneeda laughs. The only thing the Environmental Club has ever inspired is ridicule. “You mean besides causing public outrage.”

“That only happened once,” says Joy Marie. “And anyway, the point is that it’d be good for you to join.”

Waneeda sighs.

Joy Marie is always coming up with things that would be good for Waneeda. Yoga. Swimming. Green vegetables. Jewellery-making. Scrap-booking. Gardening. You’d think she was a personal lifestyle guru rather than a best friend.

“So would be being adopted by Bill Gates,” says Waneeda. “But that’s not going to happen either.”

Joy Marie doesn’t laugh. “That’s not funny; it’s defensive,” she says, leading the way down the hall. “It wouldn’t hurt you to get involved in some kind of extracurricular activity, you know. You need to get some outside interests.”

As if Waneeda has any interests at all. She sighs again.

Joy Marie stops outside the girls’ bathrooms. “And a little work wouldn’t kill you, either.” As a general rule, the only part of Waneeda that’s ever seen to work is her mouth.

“What do you call this?” Waneeda waves the flyers over her head. “Chopped liver?”

“You know what I mean.” Joy Marie readies the tape dispenser for another assault. “Maybe if you really involved yourself you’d have some fun.”

Waneeda is about to amend the truth slightly by saying that she already has plenty of fun when something brightly orange whacks into her arm and her stack of papers falls to the ground.

“Hey! Why don’t you watch where you’re going, Princess Pumpkin?” screams Waneeda.

The other girl barely turns around. “Are you talking to me?”

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

“Waneeda, shhh,” warns Joy Marie. “Don’t start any trouble.”

“What do I care?” snaps Waneeda. “I hope her eyelashes fall off in her lunch. She is such a stuck-up witch.”

Chapter Three And now it’s Maya Baraberra’s turn to be in Sicilee’s way

Meanwhile, in the virtually empty first-floor girls’ room, Maya Baraberra and Alice Shimon hug each other with the enthusiasm of people who have been tragically separated by a long war. (It has, in fact, been less than two weeks since they last saw each other, and it was distance that separated them, not heavy bombing.) Alice’s ethnic scarf gets caught on one of Maya’s crystal earrings, and Maya’s handmade backpack, heavily decorated with an intriguing assortment of iconic badges from EZLN and Che Guevara to Homer Simpson and the Sex Pistols, bangs against the sink.

“Oh, God, I am so glad to see you!” shrieks Alice, disentangling. “It was like I’d been abducted by aliens and was living with creatures with two heads who beeped. I missed you so much.”

“Me too. I can’t tell you how much I missed you. I mean, truly, Al, there’s nothing like a week with your relatives to make you appreciate your friends.” Maya swings her backpack off her shoulder with a sigh. “You wouldn’t believe how soul-suckingly horrendous it was. There were times when I felt like I’d been sent to a penal colony and would never see home again.”

“Oh, I believe you.” Alice slides her own backpack down her arm and sets it on the edge of the sink. “Trust me, the Shimons are a world unto themselves.” She makes the face of someone who understands what suffering is. “And it’s definitely not a better world.”

“They can’t be any worse than the Baraberras. Seriously, you would not believe the junk I had heaped on me in the name of peace on Earth this year. Really and truly.” Words fail her for nearly an entire second. “Everything they give you is made by workers who are virtual slaves. And even if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t want it because it’s, like, so uncool.”

Their eyes now on the wall of mirrors behind the taps, Maya and Alice remove their make-up bags from their packs and set them in the sinks.

“How did they like the stuff you gave them?” asks Alice. “Mine hated my gifts. You should’ve seen them. You’d think I’d wrapped up roadkill or something.” She reaches for her lipgloss. “Like my Gran? I gave her a box of those eco balls? So not only would she be environmentally friendly for a change, but she wouldn’t have to spend a fortune using detergent any more? She thought they were shuttlecocks! You know, for badminton? ‘Alice,’ she says, ‘I’m too old for games like that.’ I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

“I know… I know… They just do not have a clue. If it doesn’t exist in their world, then it doesn’t exist. Which pretty much limits reality to going to work, shopping, and watching TV.” Maya leans into the mirror, eyeing her reflection in a critical, semi-professional way. “I swear, if I’d had to listen to my cousin Petra drone on about her adventures as a cheerleader in the wilds of Vermont for one more minute I think I would have run outside screaming and buried myself in a snowdrift.”

“Ditto.” Alice pouts at her reflection. “I’m not saying that it’s not nice to see them – we do share at least part of a gene pool, and they can be really sweet and everything – but they are so limited.” She puts on a thin, whining voice. “Why are you wearing that? Why did you get your nose pierced? Why are you reading about that? What do you have against this? How can you drink that tea? It smells like boiled flowers!”

“Same thing here.” Maya applies more kohl. “They act like I’m some kind of freak because I care about stuff. My Uncle Morty said that I sounded like one of those fanatical environmentalists! You know, like Clemens the Lemon? I said, ‘Excuse me, but do I look like a nerd?’”

“Exactly,” agrees Alice. “You just have to show a little concern or think a little differently and they get all warped.”

“Two hundred and thirty-six plastic bags,” says Maya. “My grandmother has two hundred and thirty-six plastic bags under the kitchen sink. I counted them.”

Alice whistles. “Jumping Jehoshaphat. That’s got to be some kind of record.”

Maya pulls roughly at clumps of her hair. The effect of her haircut is supposed to be funky and windblown, not flat and blown over. “That’s what I mean, you know? They all act like there’s nothing wrong with the world. It’s like Gran doesn’t even know that we have an environment, never mind that it’s going to be buried in plastic thanks to people like her.”