Torched (14 page)

Coyote’s answer was a long time in coming. “Yes.”

So there is someone else.
An ache expanded in my chest. Even though I didn’t know which girl it was—Liberty, Meadow, even Blue—I found myself hating them all. I couldn’t tell exactly where Coyote was looking, just that he was looking away from me.
He probably knows that you like him. He knows that you like him, and he pities you for being so stupid.

“Okay, your turn,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. Like this really was a game.

“Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him anything that was true. Especially not how much it had hurt me to hear his answer.

“I dare you to stand on the edge of the platform.”

“All right.” Anger rushed into me, anger that I had laid my heart bare with my stupid question. If he wanted to test my courage, then let him.

I stood up, pushed down my sleeping bag and without hesitation took one step, then two. There was no tug at my back, and I wasn’t even sure if my harness was still connected. I couldn’t see the edge, but it didn’t matter.

Suddenly Coyote’s hands were on my waist. He was standing right behind me. “Hey, hey, be careful,” he whispered into the hair above my ear. “Are you even looking where you are going?”

“I chose dare,” I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling, “not truth.”

“Then sit down, because you’re done with your dare. And it’s your turn again.” Coyote tugged my back until we were both sitting on top of the sleeping bags. “And I’ll tell you my answer. It’s dare.”

I told myself I didn’t care if Coyote’s heart belonged to someone else. Suddenly I needed him to want me, even if it was only for one night.

“I dare you to kiss me.”

I heard how my voice trembled and knew he heard it, too. He didn’t say anything. He gazed at me for a long time, his eyes shadowed by the darkness. Suddenly, I wished I could take back my words, stuff them back into my mouth.

Coyote reached out his hand. His cool fingers traced from the tip of my chin to underneath my ear, before loosely gathering the hair at the nape of my neck. He leaned forward. I closed my eyes and felt his lips touch mine, surprisingly warm and soft.

And then we were as quiet as the night that surrounded us.

Later, in the darkest hours, before we finally pulled the open sleeping bags over us, I asked Coyote, “What about the girl you said you liked in MED?”

The thought of her had never left the back of my mind, even when Coyote kissed my lips, my ear, my neck, even when his fingers ran down the length of my spine. Which girl was it? It was probably Liberty, and that thought alone drove me crazy.

Coyote let out a startled laugh. “I meant you,” he said. “Didn’t you know that, Ellie? When I first saw you in your parents’ living room, I knew. Why do you think I sat by you at dinner?”

“But what about Liberty? She sat so close to you that night.”

“Liberty’s one of those people who thinks if she can’t have something, no one else can, either. I told her months ago that I didn’t feel like that toward her. The weird thing is, I’m pretty sure that by always rubbing up against me, she’s just trying to get Hawk to notice her. Liberty always has a secondary agenda.”

“Oh,” I said weakly.

He pushed himself up on one elbow and kissed the tip of my nose. “That’s what I like about you,” he whispered. “You’re real.”

You’re real.
His words made me shiver.

“Are you cold?” he said. “Let’s see if we can warm you up.”

 

Eventually, I must have slept, although when I jerked awake later, I didn’t feel rested. A faint, watery light was already filtering through the forest. Moving slowly, I eased myself out of the shelter of Coyote’s arm. We had slept with an unzipped sleeping bag over us, our two camping pads laid next to each other. My eyes never left his face as I inched away. His lips drew together, then relaxed and opened. He looked young, innocent.

Coyote’s words—“You’re real”—still echoed in my head. How long would I be forced to live high aboveground before someone did or said something that the FBI could take action on? At that moment, I wished they had put me in a sit with anyone else
but
Coyote—Cedar, Hawk or even Liberty. Each was intimidating, but they were most likely to give the evidence the FBI wanted. But Coyote? Even if he said something about violence, which I couldn’t imagine him doing in the first place, I didn’t know if I could bring myself to turn him in.

To distract myself, I picked up my binoculars and scanned the forest. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, maybe the other MEDics, or the first few loggers coming to work. But all I saw was the green of the trees and a couple of yellow, hulking pieces of equipment, silent now.

Suddenly, in a section of the forest that was still untouched, a flash of reddish-brown caught my eye. I swung my binoculars back.

What had I seen?

At first I thought it was someone’s head. Then I caught a clear glimpse. Just for a moment. As soon as I saw it, it was gone, obscured by green branches.

But I knew what it was.

A lynx.

And in its mouth, caught up by its nape, it had carried a squirming lighter-colored ball of fluff. A lynx kitten.

“Coyote, I saw one!”

He groaned.

I repeated, “I saw one. A lynx. I saw a lynx!”

Coyote sat up and pushed the hair out of his eyes. “Really?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I was looking through the binoculars when I saw one walking along a branch.” The words tumbled out. Seeing the lynxes had taken me out of myself, out of the worry and speculation that had made it hard to sleep. “And it was carrying a baby in its mouth. A kit.”

His eyes widened. They were so large and green that he almost looked like an animal himself. “Did you get a photo?”

“No. It was just for a second, and then it was gone.”

“Show me where you saw it.” He pushed himself up his knees.

I knelt down beside him and pointed as best I could. The part of the forest where I had seen the lynx and her kit was untouched, a sea of dark green. He got his own pair of binoculars and began to scan methodically, back and forth. “Are you sure it was a lynx?” he asked, never taking his eyes away.

I nodded. “I checked it out on the Internet before I came up here, and I’m sure this was one. Its back legs were longer than the front, and it had the tall tufts of hair on its ears. And it was carrying a kit by the scruff of its neck, like a cat with a kitten.” Suddenly, I didn’t care that this whole thing was a game, that I was only here under false pretenses to get evidence on MED. There
were
lynx in the Oregon forest, lynx where there hadn’t been any for thirty years. And I had seen two of them.

“Get the camera, would you?” he asked. “If we can get a photograph, we can stop the logging today.”

I handed him the camera, picked up my own binoculars and joined in the search. Coyote didn’t say anything as he swept his camera lens back and forth, but every now and then he would take one hand away and absentmindedly rub my back or touch my shoulder. His fingers felt like they trailed sparks.

What was I going to do about Coyote? About us? Of course I wanted to continue what we had started last night, but in the cold light of day it seemed impossible. Doing that meant more than lying. Worse, it meant putting Coyote at risk.

A half hour later, we were interrupted by a sound like distant thunder. We turned to see a big tree bounce off the ground about a mile away. The loggers were at it again.

Coyote gave up and got to his feet. “Lynx are nocturnal, so they’re probably asleep,” he said as he stretched to get the kinks out of his back.

“But if they’re nocturnal, what are the chances we’re going to get a picture of them?” I asked.

“Now that we know the general area, I’ll call Blue and get her to set traps so we can get some physical proof. The lynx may leave its denning area to hunt, but it will have to come back. And when it does, one of the traps should attract her attention. With luck, she’ll rub up against it and leave some fur behind.”

“And once we have the fur, we can prove the lynx is there,” I said. “And then we can shut PacCoast down.”

Coyote smiled. “Exactly.” He picked up the cell phone. “First, I’m going to call Cedar.” When Cedar answered, the words poured out of Coyote about the lynx and the kit and the need for a trap. But it seemed that Cedar had news of his own. After listening for a while, Coyote said, “Okay,” and clicked off.

“Cedar says now that we know the lynx is really here, we have to take immediate action. He wants us all at the logging site tonight at midnight. We’re going to disable the machines.”

“You mean firebomb them?”

Coyote shook his head. “If the wind blew a spark wrong, we could burn down the whole forest. But there are other ways—sugar or sand in the gas tanks or slashing the tires.”

“But if we leave the sits and disable the machines, isn’t that dangerous? They could arrest us. They could even chop down our trees while we’re gone.” Unconsciously, I patted the rough bark of the Old Man, then pulled my hand away.
You’re not a real MEDic, remember? You’re only doing this to save Matt.
Wasn’t my father more important than any lynx? But the answers weren’t as clear as when I had said yes to the FBI. It was getting harder and harder to keep track of who I was and why I was doing the things I did.

Coyote leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “Cedar says we don’t have much choice. I think he’s right. We’re saving this one tree while watching a forest across the valley fall to the saw.”

This seemed like an opening. I decided to test the waters. But I didn’t press the button on my watch to record our conversation.

“Maybe Cedar wants to change tactics,” I said cautiously. “When I was looking on the Internet for info on the lynx, I also found some stuff about MED. Some sites say that MED is going to turn violent because change isn’t happening fast enough.”

“Are you worried about that?” Coyote raised one eyebrow. “You shouldn’t be. It’s just people blowing off steam because they get caught up in the moment.”

Relief surged through me. Maybe I
should
have recorded the conversation, just to get Coyote off the hook. “People like Hawk?”

“Hawk, Grizz. And Liberty. Maybe a couple more. But it’s just talk.”

“Do you know that for sure?”

Coyote sighed and looked away. “Pretty sure. It’s a long way from talking to hurting someone. I can’t imagine they would really spill blood.”

“But what if it’s not just talk? What if it’s true that sometimes the only way to get attention is through violence? Not to just hurt the machines, but to hurt the people who are doing the bad things?”

Even with his new beard, I saw how Coyote’s jaw clenched. “If I ever thought they were serious, I would leave the group and join another one, or form my own. We have to be true to our principles.”

This was it. It was time to push aside my own desires so that I could save Matt. Coyote wouldn’t understand, but to get the evidence the FBI wanted, I had to make sure I was part of the group that might consider violence. Besides, the sooner Coyote separated himself from me, the better—for his sake.

“Have you ever thought,” I said carefully, “that maybe they’re right?”

The rest of the day passed very slowly. At first, Coyote tried to argue with me. Then he just fell silent. The only time he spoke was to call Blue. He told her about the lynx and asked her to set traps, but his joy at what I had seen had clearly faded. He didn’t seem angry at me, exactly. It was deeper than that. It was as if whatever was between us had died. Tears filled up my head, pressing at the backs of my eyes, but I didn’t let them come. I felt like I was splitting in two.

After night fell, we shouldered our packs and Coyote showed me how to rappel down, feeding the rope through the belay device. He went first, lowering himself from the sit and shouting up when he reached the ground.

Rappelling down was much faster than the slow, painful climb up. I kicked off from the trunk, the rope sliding through my fingers. There was a long stretch where my feet touched nothing at all. Yards down, my feet found the trunk and pushed me off again. I was weightless. It reminded me of the men who had walked on the moon, with their long, bounding leaps.

Coyote was waiting for me at the base of the tree. Without a word, he turned and walked away. I followed his silhouette and the bobbing light from his headlamp. We hiked for a long time in silence. Finally Coyote sighed and said, “I don’t know about this. This feels different than the Hummer dealership. For one thing, this will probably mean war to Stonix. And it’s not like they don’t know exactly where we are. If we manage to get back into the trees, they’ll have us arrested for vandalism as soon as we touch the ground again. We’ll lose any points we’ve made as peaceful protesters.”

“But what else can we do?” I asked. “The forest is being cut down. And I saw a lynx today, Coyote. A lynx and her kit, when there hasn’t been one in Oregon in thirty years. If we don’t do something right now to stop the logging, there will probably never be another lynx in Oregon again. Ever.”

Just then we heard the sounds of someone approaching, carelessly stepping on every dead branch. We both froze. But the small circle of light bobbing toward us turned out to be Jack Rabbit. He surprised me with a hug. “You’re lucky you’re so far from the logging,” he said. “I’m going deaf, dude. The trees scream when the loggers kill them.”

“Are they gone for the night?” Coyote asked.

“I watched them all leave around six,” Jack Rabbit said as we came to the muddy clearing where the machines slept. “Nobody here but us MEDics.”

I felt tiny as we approached the feller buncher, two bulldozers and three hulking yellow machines I couldn’t identify. Grizz leaned against a tire nearly as tall as he was. Liberty and Meadow were standing next to the feller buncher, arguing in whispers about the veganness of various food items. Liberty claimed that Heinz ketchup contained cow’s blood, while Meadow countered that Guinness beer contained lard and fish scales.