The Elephant of Surprise (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 4) (3 page)

"It's true, things aren't always black-and-white," I said. "But sometimes they are. And this is one of those times." I looked at Gunnar. "Let's go." He and I usually rode our bikes home from school together. Meanwhile, Min had her own car.

"Wait!" Min said, following behind us as we headed toward the bike rack. Naturally, it was located in just about the most unpleasant place on the whole campus: near the Dumpster behind the cafeteria. The whole area smelled incredibly foul, beyond sour. Even the asphalt around the Dumpster was sticky—the result of years of spills and leaks.

"Look," Min said to me, "there's something you need to know."

"No, there is
nothing
I need to know," I said. "Especially nothing about Kevin. I know what I need to know about him, which is that he's a total asshole."

"But—" Min said.

I stopped by the Dumpster. This was ironic: it was the same Dumpster where I'd once waited for Kevin, only to have him totally dog me in front of his friends. Talk about proving my point.

"Min?" I said. "Listen. I only broke up with Otto two days ago. The last thing in the world I want is to have anything to do with Kevin, now or ever. It's over. So whatever it is you have to say, don't say it."

It was at that exact moment that the heads of two people popped up out of the Dumpster next to us.

CHAPTER THREE

For a minute, I was confused. Had bullies thrown someone into the garbage? It wouldn’t have been the first time.

But no. These were two people I didn't recognize: a guy and girl—teenagers, yes, but ones who didn't go to our school. It didn't look like they'd been
thrown
into the Dumpster—even now they weren't scrambling to get out. But why would anyone have gone in there voluntarily?

"Oh!" the girl said, like they hadn't known we were there. Like they hadn't wanted to be caught.

"Hey," the guy said, not sounding busted at all, but rather like we were greeting each other at a party.

"Um, hello," I said. "Did you lose something?"

"Nope," the guy said. "
Looking
for something."

"In the Dumpster?" But even as I said this, I knew: these were Dumpster divers. I'd seen homeless people rummage around in Dumpsters and trash cans before, but I didn't think I'd ever seen actual teenagers doing it.

I looked at Min, but her face was non-judgmental blank.

"Why not?" the girl said. "They just dumped the kitchen trash from lunch." She held up some kind of wrapped sandwich, still in its plastic wrap. "A lot of it's perfectly good."

"I wouldn’t be so sure," I said. "If it came from our school lunchroom, it probably wasn't much good to begin with." I immediately felt stupid for saying this—for making a joke about how bad the food was in the school cafeteria when here were these people who were eating that same food after it had been tossed into the garbage.

But they both laughed, which I appreciated.

"You eat out of Dumpsters?" Gunnar said. He didn't sound judgmental either. It was more like he was just curious.

"Sometimes," the guy said, almost proudly—or maybe it was defiantly. "It's not like we take the half-eaten stuff that comes from the garbage cans or stuff that's been sitting in the sun. There really is a lot of stuff in here that's perfectly good—still wrapped, still cold. Schools and stuff are required by law to throw something out on a certain date. And sometimes they throw stuff out just because there's not enough room in the refrigerator."

"Are you homeless?" Gunnar said.

"Homeless by choice!" the girl said.

"Not really homeless," the guy said. "We're freegans."

"Freegans?" I said. Once again, I looked over at Min. If anyone would know what this was, she would. But her face was still blank—not non-judgmental blank now, more like she didn't know what a "freegan" was either. "What's that?" I asked the people in the Dumpster.

The guy climbed effortlessly up onto the metal rim, then hopped out. The girl followed him, almost as easily. Their backpacks bulged, no doubt with food from the Dumpster.

"I can't just tell you what a freegan is," he said. He smiled broadly. "That's something I definitely have to
show
you."

*   *   *

If I'd been alone, I wouldn't have gone with this guy—not in a million years. But since I was with Min and Gunnar, and since this guy and the girl were teenagers, my two friends and I sort of simultaneously decided, Well, why not? We didn't even talk about it—we just looked at each other and shrugged.

"Name's Wade," the guy said as he led us away.

"Venus," the girl said.

Min, Gunnar, and I gave them our names, but that's when I noticed that Wade and Venus weren't leading us out to the main road, which is where I was sort of expecting them to go, but rather to the back of the school, out by the sports fields—the track, the baseball diamond, and the football field.

Now that they were out of the Dumpster, I had a better look at both of them. Venus was tall and thin—at least as tall as Wade, maybe taller. Her clothes were all military green—one piece, like a flight suit—and her hair was mousy brown, which is maybe why she reminded me of a cattail. Or maybe it was the way she sort of swayed when she walked.

Wade was black. I didn't mention that before because I didn't want you making any assumptions—about a black guy in a Dumpster, I mean. He was wearing jeans and a jacket, but somehow (unlike Venus) they weren't dirty from the Dumpster—in fact, his white t-shirt looked spotless. He was also more solid than Venus. It was partly his body, which was a lot thicker than hers and looked to be about as hard as marble (they make black marble, right?). But it wasn't just that. He also had this serious, down-to-earth expression. His head was shaved shiny smooth, and his voice was deep and soothing. I liked that while he had testosterone to spare, there was still a gentleness to him—the kind of guy who studied ants as a kid, not tortured them with a magnifying glass.

He led us all right past the sports fields, to the big swath of vacant land behind the school. It was just a forgotten pine forest, mostly only used by the mountain bikers who'd carved dusty trails with their treads, and students taking a shortcut to school. It was only February, but there were already red ants on the ground, marching off to their anthills of twigs and needles. I couldn't imagine anything in here that Wade and Venus would want to show us. An abandoned car? Something in the grassy swamp on the far side of the woods?

"Where are you taking us?" Min asked.

"It's a surprise," Wade said, and you'd think this might have sounded scary or threatening, but it didn't, not at all.

Of course, me being me, this is when I realized that they were probably members of a cult, and they were leading us into the woods so someone else could drop burlap sacks over our heads, tie our hands and feet, and then carry us off to be brainwashed to worship turnips.

"Everyone's heard of dandelion tea and dandelion wine," Wade said, pointing to the weeds along the trail. "But did you know you can eat the entire plant? The flowers, the roots, the leaves—the leaves are a little bitter, but they're a really good source of calcium. And the seeds can be ground into flour. It's really kind of a perfect plant for foraging, because, well, they're everywhere, and there aren't any poisonous look-alikes. Everyone knows exactly what a dandelion looks like, right?"

The perfect plant for foraging? Why would anyone want to forage? But then I reminded myself that I was talking to people who ate out of Dumpsters.

"There's so much you can eat that grows around here," Venus said. She pointed. "Even nettles! You can boil the roots and the leaves, and you can also eat the leaves on a young plant raw."

"They don't sting?" I said.

"They do! But only a little. That's what makes them fun—it's like a little tickle in your mouth. I only put a few nettle leaves in a wild greens salad anyway. If you ever come over to our place, I'll make you one, 'kay?"

I smiled. "Okay."

I looked over at Min for some kind of confirmation that Wade and Venus knew what the hell they were talking about—that they weren't planning on poisoning us with their nettles and dandelions. Min nodded once, signifying that, yeah, they were telling the truth.

For twenty minutes or so, we weaved our way through the woods, picking one trail over another. To tell the truth, I was growing increasingly excited—where exactly was Wade leading us?—so much so that I completely forgot to be worried that someone might be dropping a burlap sack over my head at any moment.

We smelled our destination before we saw it: a furious stench that was even more foul than the Dumpster back at the school.

The five of us came to a chain-link fence. Beyond the fence was a massive pit, maybe half a mile across, and the bottom of the pit was completely covered with garbage.

"The garbage dump?" Min said. "This is the big surprise?" Part of me saw her point. But another part of me wanted her to shut up. He hadn't shown us anything yet.

Wade said, "Just take a good look."

So we did. A gravel road wound down around the edge of the pit so garbage trucks could reach the level of the garbage itself. Meanwhile, once it was dumped, tractors covered the trash up with dirt, but over the years plenty of the garbage had fluttered free, especially paper, a layer of which had been caught at the base of the chain link fence, getting soggy in the rain, then hardening like papier-mâché into a strip along the ground like a baseboard. A huge flock of seagulls along with the occasional crow churned over the garbage like a swarm of giant flies.

Gunnar immediately started taking pictures with his phone.

"Americans produce fifteen hundred pounds of garbage each per year." It was actually Gunnar who said this, not Wade, even as he was focusing his phone-camera. "And most of that is just packaging—boxes and bags and containers for all the other stuff we buy."

"That's absolutely right!" Wade said. He sounded positively gleeful, like Gunnar had just made his point for him. "And that doesn't include stuff we recycle—that takes a lot of energy too, just a little less of it—or sewage. Americans are five percent of the world's population, but we create forty percent of the world's garbage!"

"Incredible," I said, because it
was
incredible. By this point, I was already eating out of Wade's hand (presuming he cleaned it off after climbing out of that Dumpster!).

"But what does this have to do with anything?" Min said, and it was all I could do not to scowl at her.

"Well, we're not done yet," Wade said. "There's still one other thing I want to show you."

He and Venus turned to lead us away, and Gunnar and I immediately followed. But Min didn't move from where she stood at that fence. I looked back at her.

I could see the open skepticism on her face. Unlike me, she was still expecting someone to drop a burlap sack over her head. And I guess she did have a point: what reason did we really have to go blithely on following this strange Pied Piper and his spacey girlfriend?

I stepped closer to her, even as Wade and Venus watched us from behind. "Let's just keep an open mind, okay?" When she didn't answer, I turned to Gunnar. "What do you want to do?"

Sure enough, he said, "I wanna know where this is going," just like I knew he would.

Finally, Min sighed, and we all stepped wordlessly into line behind Wade and Venus again.

We walked through the woods for another fifteen minutes or so. Once again, we smelled our destination before we actually saw it, and this time it smelled a lot better: woodsmoke coming from somewhere within the trees ahead of us.

A second later, we stepped out into a clearing. There was a cluster of tents—well, "tents" might be too strong a word. They were more like cardboard boxes and tarps arranged in such a way to provide cover from the rain. There was one actual tent, but it was dirty and frayed, with more duct tape than actual vinyl.

In the center of the clearing, a little bonfire conjured up the smoke we'd smelled. A cluster of people, mostly old men in flannel, sat around the fire on logs and in lawn furniture that was as pathetic as the tents. Truthfully, there were quite a few empty beer cans and bottles scattered around the campfire too—and most were of at least the sixteen-ounce variety.

"Wade!" said a man with almost no hair (or teeth).

"Hey, Myron," Wade said. "How you doin'?" At the same time, he opened his backpack and started passing out the sandwiches he'd collected from the Dumpster

"What is this place?" Gunnar said.

"A homeless camp," Venus said, opening her pack too.

Once again, Gunnar started taking pictures—no one seemed to mind, and a couple of the men mugged mercilessly.

Meanwhile, Min and I watched as Wade and Venus walked around the camp—well, Wade walked and Venus sort of floated. They gave out food: more sandwiches, a big tub of shredded cheese, some salads in plastic containers, and half a bag of English muffins.

Mostly, though, they just listened as the men talked to them, flirting with Venus and showing Wade things they'd collected in the woods.

One old man took off his shirt—he was crazy skinny—and Wade bent down behind him to examine his back. Even from where I was fifteen feet across the clearing, I caught a blast of the man's terrible body odor. But Wade, who was a lot closer, didn't seem to notice. He took a good look at an injury on the man's shoulder blade—a scary black fungus of some kind—and then I heard Wade saying something about a free clinic.

Truthfully, I was touched by his concern.

But Min was still sort of scowling. And when Wade returned to us, she said, "First you show us the garbage dump. Now this. Why?"

"Let's go somewhere where we can talk," he said, leading us off into the trees, like it would be rude to talk about anyone as if they were visual aids in a presentation, even homeless people.

Out of earshot, he and Venus faced us.

"You said you wanted to know what freeganism is," Wade said. "Well, freeganism is a movement that says there's something wrong with the world when we waste so much stuff, especially when there are so many people who have nothing. Think about it. All that stuff at the dump just gets thrown away every year"—he nodded at Gunnar—"fifteen hundred pounds of garbage." He gestured back toward the homeless camp. "Meanwhile, these people don't have a shelter over their heads or even enough to eat."