now. Celebrity is, indeed, forgiven a lot.
“Well, you know…” Maya shrugs. “I kind of stopped watching so much TV, so I did this instead.” She gives them all a big smile. “You know what they say: use less … reuse … recycle.”
“Maybe we should all give up TV.” Finn laughs. “These are totally amazing.”
“Man, this rules so bad.” Jason’s eyes move back and forth as though he’s committing the pieces to memory. “Has Zin seen it? He’s got to give you an A for this.”
Maya looks at her watch. “He’s supposed to be here at three – to judge the Junk Art competition.”
“Well, that’s not long.” Jason leans over her shoulder, also looking at her watch. “Why don’t I hang out with you? Give you a hand here?” There are a few small children still glueing bits and bobs on painted boxes and tying plastic bottles together with coloured string. “I want to see his face.”
“That’s OK. I’m here,” says Alice.
“Don’t you want to look around?” asks Jason. “You’ve been stuck here all day.”
Alice blinks. It’s never before occurred to her to think of Jason as being especially thoughtful. “Well, I…” She glances at Maya. Maya has an oh-my-gosh expression on her face. “Yeah,” says Alice quickly. “That’s cool. I’ll see you guys later.”
After the others leave, Jason says, “I guess that wasn’t very subtle, was it?”
“What?” Maya starts walking through the junior artists, picking up discarded containers and scraps and putting them back in the bins. “Practically telling Alice to go away?”
Jason grimaces. “I wanted to get you alone. You know, so I could apologize for the way I’ve been acting.”
Maya retrieves a handful of old CDs from the grass. “You mean being rude and obnoxious and torturing me? You want to apologize for that?”
“Yeah.” He kicks a cork towards her foot. “You know, because… I know it’s going to sound crazy, but I think I was jealous.”
“
“Lightfoot.” Jason is scouring the grass for more corks and he is mumbling. “I thought, you know… I thought you had the hots for him.”
“Me?” It is a testament to how much things can change in a short period of time that Maya isn’t acting at all. “You thought
“Yeah, well, you know… He is pretty good looking.”
“Do you think so?” asks Maya.
It is another testament to how much things can change in a short period of time that although, at this very moment, Cody Lightfoot is walking past them, smiling that smile that not so long ago would have turned her toenails to glue, Maya doesn’t even see him.
Acknowledgements
As the characters in my novel discover, it is sometimes easy to feel very alone when you decide to “go Green”. You look around and everybody’s eating hamburgers and filling their plastic shopping bags with things that aren’t very friendly to the environment. They may love their dogs and cats – give them names and personalities and dress them up for major holidays – but they don’t spend much time worrying about the life of your average battery chicken. They may accept the fact of climate change, but they don’t think a lot about trying to at least slow it down.
When I did the research for this novel, however, I realized that there are a lot of concerned and aware people and groups, eager to share information with the world – and even more eager to try and save it. And I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for being out there. Thank you.
In addition, I thought I’d like to mention some of the many books, films and websites I found that helped me the most.
Books:
Websites: www.vegansociety.com; www.vegsoc.org; www.peta.org.uk; www.revbilly.com (web home of the dynamic – and very funny – Reverend Billy and The Church of Life After Shopping) and www.seashepherd.org (official site for the dedicated Captain Paul Watson and crews of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society).
Documentaries:
