“If it's a big company, then this loss—” she waved her hand at the yard where the white was already thinning out,“—isn't enough to wipe them out. If it's a family farm, then the cotton probably isn't their only income.”
Cage turned the cotton ball over in his hand, as if he were still inspecting it, but his thoughts had pulled elsewhere. He knew the disasters he’d encountered might have been odd or unique. But it didn't matter if the disaster was big or small. It mattered how hard the disaster hit you.
He jerked and dropped the cotton ball as something smacked against the window.
6
“What misfuckery is that?” Joule asked, leaning forward from the back of the car, her hand clutching the fabric of Cage’s seat as she pulled herself forward to look.
She’d survived last night’s nasty windstorm and she was letting Sarah drive again. She was growing as a person. But it sucked monkey balls, because now she wished she were at the wheel and could see more clearly.
A line of people in work clothes and boots held signs and shook angry fists in the distance. “Is that for us?”
It couldn't be, she thought. She watched the side of her brother's face as he, too, frowned.
“It can't be.” Deveron spoke as though he’d plucked it from her brain. “We're building a solar farm. I mean, who even cares?”
But Joule noticed that Sarah was slowing the car.
“Oh, it's for us,” her roommate confirmed as she scanned the crowd. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she muttered, “You have got to be shitting me.”
Joule wanted to push and ask how Sarah knew, but decided Sarah would reveal it in her own good time.
The car slowed more as they got closer. The protesters were now pushing in and crossing the road. The car in front of them came to a stop and Joule felt her own forward momentum abruptly end. The people surrounded the lead car, but Joule turned around to look out the back. Several more angry pedestrians had come in behind them. With the protesters blocking the road in front, Sarah’s car was fenced in.
Joule wasn't really one for panic. It was true, she'd survived a lot of things the others around her had not. Still, these were just people, not killer animals—and she didn't even know yet what they were angry about. But as the protesters crowded the cars, she was able to read a few of the signs.
“Solar = noise pollution, heat pollution, water pollution.”
She frowned. That wasn't right. The whole point of the solar farm was to reduce pollution. Her head turned the other way and she saw a sign that said, “Take your solar farm and stick it where the sun don't shine.”
That didn't even make sense. She read the third one she saw out loud to the car. “Solar equals cancer? But how?”
Sarah sighed and leaned back, banging her head against the headrest a few times in irritation. One hand gripped the steering wheel, the other reached up to her hair, and she explained. “The oil and coal companies give them information that’s only partly true. So these people have heard about the gases that are inside the solar panels.”
“Right,” Joule agreed, though she dragged the word out. “But those are literally trapped inside the panels. Unless they're cracking them open and sucking it down, there's no cancer to be had. In fact, I don't think we're even sure if the gas inside the panels would cause cancer if you did suck it down. It's just not really on the ‘approved foods’ list.”
“You and I both know that,” Sarah said as she waved her hand in front of her, palm up, to gesture to the people who stood in the road in front of the car. “But they don't.”
Joule tried to lean back and let the tension leach away. There was a little truth in all of it. The accusation of heat pollution existed because putting in a solar panel did raise the temperature near the panels. An array as big as theirs could raise the field temp a few degrees.
But that was why half of their team members were environmentalists. She couldn't help herself, and she opened her mouth again. “Do none of them understand that I spent the last three weeks being shot down by you two, because I can't use a paint that a hamster might ultimately ingest about a gram of?”
“Again,” Sarah sighed harshly into the car, “You know, and I know—”
But she didn't finish the sentence. The passenger side door of the car in front of them flew open and Melinda Gonzalez hopped out. Apparently, the lead environmental tester had had enough and wasn’t ready to be late to her job. Protesters be damned.
“You need to let us through.” Her voice was firm and borderline angry. Joule heard her say she was one of the management team. Apparently, Melinda Gonzalez also had a bitch switch, because the kind teacher Joule had seen before was gone. “You have two choices. You can get out of my way or I can call the police.”
Joule was pretty sure she heard the large man who was getting in Melinda’s face grumble, “It's public property. We have a right to be here.”
As Joule watched, her hand clenching the door latch, ready to hop out and defend the woman, Melinda didn’t flinch.
Gonzales was taking none of this shit. “One, public property or not, you're obstructing a roadway. That's illegal. And two, it's not public property. The Helio Systems property line is about five hundred yards back that way, asshole.”
Ooh, Joule thought, that was a nice punctuation.
But the man leaned forward almost into Melinda's face, definitely aiming to use his size to intimidate. Even Joule towered over Melinda, but Gonzalez was already leaning forward, using his move against him. Though the conversation seemed to be happening between two people,
