The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

suddenly drops or a freak tornado hits Clifton Springs? The girls have positioned themselves close to the base of the tree as guards, but Clemens knows that, if he leaves the tree even for a few minutes, when he returns Waneeda, Sicilee and Maya will have been taken away and there’ll be no getting back up. Making his great act of rebellion no more than an empty gesture.

And then he sees a tall, lean figure, coatless and bagless, nonchalantly strolling across the school grounds.

Clemens leans down through the leaves. “Here comes Cody!” he hisses. Clemens is so used to being a minority of one that it didn’t even occur to him that as soon as Cody heard about what was happening he’d walk out of the building and join him. Thank God. And Cody always has some scheme or angle. He always has a plan. “Here comes Cody!” The cavalry is on its way.

The girls have been standing close together, tense and angry and uncertain, not knowing what to expect and not knowing what to do should anyone try to move them away. But at the sight of Cody they immediately relax. Like Clemens, they think that Cody is here to help.

Sicilee claps her hands. “I knew he’d show up. He’ll make them understand.”

“Dr Firestone listens to him,” says Maya.

“Dr Firestone likes Cody,” says Waneeda.

Cody gives them one of his loose, hey-man waves as he ambles across the lawn, and they all wave back.

But he doesn’t so much as glance towards the trucks, where the principal and the foreman are smiling slightly over their coffees.

“Doesn’t he have to talk to them to make them understand?” Waneeda asks as Cody fails to make the crucial change of direction. “How come he’s coming over here?”

“Maybe he wants to talk to Clemens and us first,” suggests Maya. “You know, so he knows where we’re coming from.”

Waneeda frowns. “Shouldn’t he know that already?”

Which is, of course, a good point.

The reason Cody doesn’t go directly to Dr Firestone to dazzle him with his logic and persuasive eloquence is because he and the principal have already spoken, in some detail and at some length. After Clemens took to the tree and the girls gathered at the base, Dr Firestone had Cody pulled from his homeroom to speak to him on the phone. “Clemens is your friend,” said Dr Firestone. “See if you can’t talk some sense into him. The last thing I want to do is have to bring the police into this. Tell him that. Make him understand that I’m thinking only of him. This kind of thing isn’t going to look good on his record, you know.” Dr Firestone would hate to see Clemens’ future ruined over something as childish as climbing a tree. Cody Lightfoot is not someone whose view of the world is ever obscured by anyone else. His interest in the Environmental Club has always been as much about what it could do for him as what he could do for it. And so, as he approaches the huddle by the tree, what he’s thinking about is the other thing Dr Firestone would hate to see happen besides the destruction of Clemens Reis’ future. “You’ve put so much time and effort into the Earth Day preparations, Cody,” added the principal. “It’d be a real shame if that was jeopardized because of a stunt like this.”

As he nears them, Sicilee, Waneeda and Maya surge forward to meet him, all talking at once.

Can you believe that they’re doing this…? They lied through their teeth… They’re, like, totally going back on their word… Thank God you’re here… You have to help Clemens… You have to make Firestone listen to reason…

“Whoa, whoa, whoa…” Cody laughs, good-humoured and affable even in a crisis. “I know all about it.”

“Who told you?” asks Waneeda. “Has the rest of the club heard too?”

Although two questions have been asked, Cody answers neither. “You know what they say,” says Cody. “Good news travels fast, but bad news travels faster.”

“People are always sitting in trees in California, right?” asks Maya. “What do we do next?”

“I think you should talk to Firestone,” says Sicilee. “See if you can’t get him to call a truce.”

Cody shakes his head. “The man I want a word with is our brother in the tree.”

“But Sicilee’s right,” protests Maya. “If you talk to Dr Firestone first—”

“We’re counting on you to make him change his mind,” interrupts Waneeda. “He listens to you.”

Cody raises his hands like a speaker trying to still the applause. “What we all have to do here is be reasonable and calm.” He lowers his voice and winks in such a way that each of them thinks he’s winking at her. “We wouldn’t want Clem to fall out of that tree.” And then he pushes through them until he is standing directly under the branch where Clemens sits like a very large squirrel. “Hey, my man!” Cody gazes up. “What’re you doing up there?”

Clemens stops smiling. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“You’re missing first period, that’s what you’re doing.” Cody laughs so Clemens will know that he’s joking. “And you’re annoying the hell out of Dr Firestone and those dudes with the trucks.”

“Good.” Clemens doesn’t join in the laughter. “Because they’re absolutely annoying the hell out of me.”

Cody nods, but it is not, of course, a gesture of agreement. “Thing is, bro,” he says slowly, almost drawling, “that I think you kind of have to look at it from their point of view, you know? The reality is that they’re not against you, dude. They’re just doing what they do.”

Clemens’ eyes narrow. “Which means?”

“Which means they’re not persecuting you or your trees. They’re just doing their jobs.”

“They’re just doing their jobs?” repeats Clemens. Now he does laugh. “So I take it you didn’t come out here to join me, is that right?”

“No can do.” Cody makes a helpless gesture, not a million miles away from the one made by Dr Firestone not so very long ago. “I’m not saying that I think you’re wrong or anything, Clem. You’re right in the footsteps of a noble tradition. Civil disobedience is part of our history, right? It’s one of the things that’s made us a symbol of hope for the downtrodden and the oppressed. That whole no-taxation-without-representation scene… The suffragettes… Martin Luther King… But it’s not always the coolest thing to do. And I think this is one of those times when you have to go with the flow, not swim against the current.”

Although Cody isn’t looking at them, Waneeda, Maya and Sicilee are all looking at him. Sicilee and Maya, who have hoisted Cody on a pedestal of dreams, are clearly shocked to watch him not simply fall off, but jump. Even Waneeda, whose feelings for Clemens have made her critical of Cody, looks surprised and somewhat shocked.

“Excuse me.” Waneeda taps him on the shoulder. “Are you saying that you think we should just give up? After all the work Clemens put into this?”

Cody doesn’t turn around. “Don’t think of it as giving up,” he says to Clemens. “Think of it as recognizing that this is one of those times that you just can’t win.”

“Wait a minute.” Maya moves closer. “What happened to protecting the Earth being the most important thing anyone can do? What happened to that?”

Cody still doesn’t turn around. “You can always fight another day,” he shouts up through the leaves. “But you’ve got to pick battles you know you can win.”

“Excuse me,” says Sicilee. “Maybe I misunderstood you, but I could swear I heard you say that principles are more important than opinions.”

Even the fact that Sicilee is standing on his foot doesn’t make Cody glance over at her. “I mean, let’s be practical here, Clem,” he goes on. “You have no food, no water, no shelter, no toilet… So you have to come down from there eventually. Probably sooner rather than later. And then it’s going to be boom, boom, chop, chop, adiós ancient vegetation.”

Maya grabs him by the arm. “But that’s no reason for us just to give up right away,” she insists. “The least we can do is put up a fight.”

Cody finally looks over at her. “I like your spirit,” he says, sounding remarkably like an adult telling a child that he really likes the necklace they’ve made out of pasta tubes coloured with poster paints. “I really do. Just like I admire Clemens’ spirit. But you’re missing the dock here and going straight into the marsh.”

Only yesterday Maya would have said that Cody Lightfoot could never irk or annoy her. She would have been wrong, of course.

“Why can’t you just speak English?” she snaps. “What’s ‘going straight into the marsh’ supposed to mean?”