Torched (7 page)

“If that’s what I need to do, I’ll do it.” I tried to keep my voice steady.

“Are you sure?” Blue asked from the far side of the table. Her blue eyes were gentle. “Because it’s fine to be a supporter. Not everyone can get involved at the same level.”

“I’m sure,” I said. “This is something I believe in. If we don’t act now, the Earth will die.”

Cedar looked at me thoughtfully for a long moment, then nodded his approval. And almost as an aside he added, “Oh, and you’ll need to bring us proof.”

 

“To be honest, Cedar kind of scares me,” I whispered to Coyote. We were sitting in the back of a nearly empty TriMet bus, going home after the meeting. “Does he ever smile?”

Coyote shot me a sideways grin. “And risk damaging his reputation?” Then he turned serious. “Cedar has been at this longer than any of us, and he has more to lose. About five years ago, he served two years in jail for an action. They offered him a deal if he would give up the others—and he wouldn’t. But staying involved in MED means that he risks more than any of the rest of us. That’s why he wants to make sure anyone who wants to join is committed.”

Before the meeting had broken up, Cedar had explained to me that I had to pick a target, plan an action, take a photograph of myself there and then bring it back as proof. The photograph would not only get me in—it would also give the group leverage over me. It would prove that I was already guilty of a crime before I even joined MED.

“Okay, let me give you some advice,” Coyote said. “Don’t pick something in your neighborhood, and don’t buy the supplies there, either. It probably sounds like overkill, but these are the kinds of things that have tripped people up in the past.”

“But what should I hit?” Saying “hit” made me feel like an actor in a bad movie. This couldn’t be real.

“Get out the yellow pages and take your pick. Golf courses, butcher shops, animal research facilities, SUV dealerships. Except you should start small. Bigger actions require more people and more planning.”

“What have other MEDics hit?”

“Well, a lot of people have picked McDonald’s because they generate so much trash and are destroying rain forests to plant soybeans to feed their chickens.”

“That sounds good.” My parents had raised me to hate McDonald’s, so I didn’t even have a moral issue with the idea. I imagined myself lobbing a firebomb through a McDonald’s window one night and running like hell.

Coyote turned practical. “But the problem is that a lot of them are open half the night, or have prep or cleanup staff there. You might want to target something quieter.”

The bus stopped and let off an old man who had been sitting by the driver. Now we were the only passengers left. Still, I waited until we were rumbling down the street again before I asked my next question. “What was
your
first target?”

He looked sheepish. “A Mickey D’s, actually. Glued the locks. And nearly got caught by the prep cook.”

“Glued the locks?” I thought MED had been asking me to do something more dramatic than squirting glue in a lock.

“Look, even if all you do is glue the locks closed, it still accomplishes a lot.” Coyote sounded a little defensive.

“How?”

“One, it makes them realize how vulnerable they are. Two, they can’t do any business as long as no one can get in. Three, they’ll have to call a locksmith, and those aren’t cheap. And it’s quick and easy. It takes less than one minute to glue the locks if you do it right. So with only one person, one minute and less than ten dollars’ worth of supplies, you can disrupt the whole apparatus.”

“One minute?” I echoed. That didn’t sound that bad. I reached past him to ring the bell for my stop, bringing my face dangerously close to his. Suddenly, I wanted to kiss him, which was the stupidest thing. How could I want to kiss someone I was planning on selling out to the FBI? I sat back in my seat and tried to compose myself.

Coyote half turned, so that he was even closer to me than before. “You know, when you asked about joining us, at first I thought it was a bad idea.”

“Why?” I struggled to keep my expression neutral.

“You’re younger than the rest of us. I thought maybe it was more your parents’ idea than yours. But now I know it was because
you
wanted it. And I’m glad. I wouldn’t want to have to keep secrets from you, Ellie.” He leaned even closer, and I caught my breath.

“Thirty-fifth Avenue,” the bus driver called out. I saw him staring at us in the rearview mirror. I hadn’t even realized the bus had stopped.

“Oops, this is me,” I said hurriedly. I got up and grabbed my backpack. “I’ll call you as soon as it’s over.”

As I walked up my driveway, I saw Matt and Laurel through the kitchen window. They were both laughing at something. My eyes filled with angry tears. The only reason they were safe and sound was because of what I was doing. And to do it, I was going to have to betray Coyote and his friends.

The Saturday before my action was scheduled, I was supposed to be writing a report on how European colonization was still affecting countries today. But instead I just stared out the window, wondering how I could get myself out of the mess my parents had made.

I jumped when my cell phone began to vibrate across my desk. It was Marijean.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Hearing her voice made me feel guilty. Marijean and I had been friends so long that we knew each other inside and out. Which was exactly why I had been avoiding her.

“Working on that paper for history.”

“Do you want to come over and work on it here?”

“No, I should stay here and concentrate. I didn’t do that great on the last test, and stupid Tamson said if I didn’t get an A on this paper, I might get a C for the whole class.” I had never gotten a C in anything before.

“A C?” Marijean echoed, stunned. She was a B or C or sometimes even a D student, not because she wasn’t smart, but because she didn’t care that much. But she knew that I cared. “Ellie, what’s wrong with you? Is it your dad? Is it Coyote?”

“I don’t know.” It was all of them, but of course I couldn’t explain. “Maybe I have spring fever. I’m just kind of not myself these days.”

The pause on the other end of the phone was so long I thought for a second that the call might have been dropped. Then she said, “Are you mad at me?”

“No!” I tried to reassure her. “It’s just that I’ve had a lot of things on my mind. And you’re right. I’m worried about my dad, and I’m not sure where things are going with Coyote. I like him a lot, but I think he just sees me as a friend. He’s really nice to me—but he’s really nice to everyone.”

“Well, don’t forget your other friends,” Marijean said softly. “I’m always here if you want to talk.”

She was clearly hurt, but I told myself I was doing her a favor keeping her in the dark. I would go back to being Marijean’s best friend as soon as this whole thing was over.

After we hung up, I gave up on my paper. Maybe I would work on it later. Besides, what difference would a C really make? A C was the least of my troubles. So I got on the bus and went across the river to the Bins. If I kept myself busy, maybe I wouldn’t spend as much time worrying.

The Bins was called that because it was full of bins, and each of
them
was full of unorganized and unwashed goods. The place had a fake-strawberry smell, some weird fragrance/ disinfectant that couldn’t quite overcome the cumulatively nauseating stench of thousands of used items. The worst were the preworn shoes.

But the upside was that everything—coats, sweaters, socks, pillowcases, scarves—cost just ninety-nine cents a pound.

I had just picked up an interesting-looking square of blue-and-yellow waterproof fabric—it might have once been a tablecloth, although a foot-wide circle had inexplicably been cut out of the middle—when I saw Blue enter the store. She walked over to the nearest bin and picked up a bolt of faded red velvet. She had half unrolled it and was running her hands over it when she noticed me. A smile lit up her face. Picking up the bolt, she walked over.

I couldn’t help but smile back. And it was a relief, in a way, to see her. With Blue, I only had to pretend halfway.

“Looking for something special?” Blue asked, with a meaningful lift to her voice. Coyote had briefed me on the fine points on what to wear to an action. You wore dark clothes, but not head-to-toe black, because that was too obvious. You bought shoes that were two or three sizes too big and stuffed the toes with newspaper, so the cops wouldn’t be able to trace you through any footprints you left behind. You wore a sweatshirt or sweater on top of another top in a completely different color and took the top layer off as soon as you were done. That way any potential witness would give a misleading description of who the police should be on the lookout for.

“Actually, I make stuff,” I said. “Like this sweater.” It had begun life as an unadorned teal-blue cardigan, but now it had appliquéd four-petaled felt flowers—grass green, sky blue and bright fuchsia. The stems were embroidered with fuzzy purple yarn.

“Nice,” she said. “I make stuff, too.”

She was wearing the same clothes she had in my parents’ living room, black Cahartt overalls and a plain olive-green T-shirt. I could not imagine Blue wearing red velvet anything.

“Furniture, not clothes,” she said, reading my look. “It’s how I make my living, actually. I get on my bike every morning and ride up and down the streets of Portland, looking for reject furniture people have put out on the curb for the garbageman. I know all the trash routes in a twenty-mile radius.”

“What do you do once you find something?” I asked. “Sand it and paint it?”

“That’s only the beginning. Have you got a minute? Because I live near here and I could show you.”

Before we left, I bought the tablecloth, two sweaters, a pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt for a dollar ninety-eight. Blue looked at the dark sweatshirt and jeans and gave me a knowing smile. Her own fabric set her back nearly twelve bucks, which was lot at the Bins. Once we were outside, she unlocked her bicycle and rolled it home next to me, while I carried both of our purchases.

“So have you decided on your action?” Blue asked once we reached an empty stretch of sidewalk where no one could overhear us.

“Yeah. The Federal Predator Control Office.”

“Why did you pick that place?”

“Because
something
in Oregon should still be left wild.” I had read on the Internet that Federal wildlife agents shot, trapped or poisoned more than 1.6 million animals a year—all because they were considered a threat to livestock, crops or travel. Another, more basic reason was that the Federal Predator Control Office was on a quiet street and no one would be in the building in the middle of the night.

Blue nodded thoughtfully. Her expression lightened as she stopped in front of a tiny house with a detached ramshackle garage that looked like an afterthought. “We’re home. The house was built in 1911, but the garage came along about ten years later, when they figured out cars weren’t a fad.”

She took a ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked the huge, rusty padlock. Instead of a roll-up door, the garage had two doors that swung out like a giant cupboard. Inside were more than a dozen pieces of furniture, including a battered desk, a small wooden table, a dresser that had been painted hot pink decades ago and old windows with hinges still attached. There were parts of furniture, too. I saw random table and chair legs, a column and a couple of lengths of molding.

“This is pretty cool,” I said, leaning down to look at a cherub’s head.

“I like castaways,” she said. She pulled out an old upholstered chair with claw feet, arms turned out like wings and a back that spread like a fan. It looked like animals had been eating and/or living in it. And it smelled like they had been peeing on it, too. Blue didn’t seem fazed. “I’m going to tear this down to the wood and springs and reupholster it with this fabric.”

“Wow,” I said as she took the bolt of velvet from my arms. “This makes what I do with clothes look like nothing. How do you know how to do all those things?”

She shrugged. “I just figured it out. After all, if I make a mistake, I’m not out very much. And I never try to make it look new. That would be boring. Like, I’m going to turn that window into a series of picture frames, but I’ll leave the hinges on. It’s like a reminder of what something used to be.”

I nodded. I could already see the window through her eyes.

“It takes garbage out of the landfill and gives people something that they like. I’m hoping that people will look at my stuff and realize that you don’t need to throw everything away. It’s surprising what you see if you just keep your eyes open.” From a shelf, Blue pulled down an open shoe box filled with plastic bags. “Want to see some of my finds?”

She put the box on an old wooden table and began spreading out her treasures: a detailed Art Deco hinge, vintage typewriter keys, pale-pink and baby-blue doorknobs and a colorful bag of broken glass.

“What’s that for?” I asked. The glass was a jumble of colors—mostly green, but also red, yellow and blue.

“I’m going to make a mosaic for a tabletop.”

“Didn’t you cut yourself picking it up?”

She shrugged. “Not too badly. Sometimes you have to be willing to put your own safety at risk for the greater good.” Her expression was serious. Clearly, Blue wasn’t just talking about a mosaic tabletop. I made myself meet her gaze. Much as I was starting to like Blue, I had to be fake with her, too, so she wouldn’t doubt my sincerity. After a long second, I asked, “How do you carry some of the heavy stuff home on your bike?”

“Oh, I’ve gotten pretty good at balancing stuff. But I’ve also got an old car. That orange Volvo parked on the street. Yesterday I brought home that dresser strapped on top.”