Alice in Wonderland High

by Rachel Shane

  “The last farm in a hundred-mile radius, actually,” Chess added.

  “But now it’s a housing complex,” I whispered, understanding.

  “It’s a devastating loss.” Whitney tossed a metal shovel onto the ground with a tinny thud. “You know how much land the farm has left?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, afraid of the answer.

  “None,” Chess said. “The township confiscated it all, kept changing zoning laws and permit regulations and raising taxes until the farm owners couldn’t fight anymore.”

  “What happened to the farmers?”

  Chess lifted a leafy plant from the trunk that obscured his face in shadow. “They fled the area. Couldn’t afford to live here anymore.” He paused. “We think,” he added as an afterthought.

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “Not what I want to do. Which is destroy this place. That would really get the message across.” Kingston brandished a pair of gardening shears like a weapon.

  “We’re making a statement. Showing the town what they lost, what this used to be,” Chess said.

  “What it still could be if they tear down the houses and turn it back into a farm.” With her gloves on, Whitney picked up one of the potted plants and a bag of soil and carried them over to the front of the house.

  I chose a tray of purple azaleas and headed after her. “You’re just like your mother,” I teased.

  Whitney rolled her eyes.

  “You are revising, aren’t you?”

  She set the plant down on the front steps and pulled a screwdriver from her pocket. She jimmied the front lock until it popped open. “Chaining yourself to a tree is cliché and you’ll get arrested. This will get noticed. It has to. There’s a family moving in tomorrow.” Keeping the door propped open with her foot, she reached for the potted plant.

  I transferred my weight from foot to foot. Maybe I’d been wrong to want to be involved. This family would probably be super excited to come to their new home tomorrow, only to find it vandalized when they got there? That wasn’t doing good for the environment; that was breaking and entering.

  She poked her head out the door. “You’re not second-guessing yourself, are you?”

  “No.” I picked up the azaleas and followed Whitney inside.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But it’s not a random family. It’s the owners of this new development. And we’re not going to mess things up. The family will still move in; they’ll just have to bypass a few plants to do it.” She headed to the kitchen where she opened the bag of soil and dumped one quarter of its contents into the sink. “Think of it more like . . . decoration than destruction.” She removed the pink flower from its pot and replanted it into the soil. After patting it down, she ran the faucet and looked up at me. “There are more sinks and bathtubs.”

  I lugged the flowers to the bathroom. After I finished the sink there, I hustled back to the car for more supplies. A lizard scurried across my path. I yelped, jumping back a step. Kingston snickered at me. I squared my shoulders and kept going. Chess unloaded large planks of plywood from the trunk and carried them toward the house, one by one.

  “What are those for?” I asked, passing him on my way back to Whitney.

  “Planting flowers in sinks is annoying, but its not going to make anyone stop building stuff over farms.” Chess grinned in a way no emoji could replicate. “We’re barricading the door.”

  My stomach practiced for an Olympic-gymnastics tryout. This was getting harder to condone, but still, what they were doing wasn’t too damaging. I kept reminding myself of that.

  Kingston bent down and inspected one of the flowerpots. “Not much, sir,” he said, saluting it. He glanced back, squinting at us, then leaned into the flower conspiratorially. “Your secret’s safe, don’t worry.” He patted the petals and straightened up, getting back to work as if nothing odd had occurred.

  After Whitney and I finished inside the house, we deposited two large pots on the porch guarding the door. She secured them down with some kind of sticky substance she glopped on the bottom. Using the battery-operated fan, she lay on her stomach and blew air into the small crease where the pot met the porch. A few minutes passed and she tested the strength of the bond by yanking the pot this way and that. Satisfied that even a tornado couldn’t budge it, she moved on to the next plant.

  “Krazy Glue?”

  She capped the bottle. “That’s for amateurs. This one’s my own concoction.”

  I thought back to the AP chemistry notes I’d found in her room. In eighth grade, she took first prize at the science fair for her chemistry experiment but had never entered another competition. Maybe she hadn’t quit after all, just stopped advertising her talents, stopped drawing attention.

  Meanwhile, Chess and Kingston looped ropes through the holes at either end of the planks and secured them with Boy-Scout knots onto the drainpipes. The planks stretched across the front of the house like window-washing lifts. They loaded them with plants, slapping on the same glue Whitney had used on the porch.

  Kingston stopped every now and then, bracing his hands on his knees and gasping for breath. I wanted to tease him because he had teased me, but I wasn’t that sadistic. Whitney, however, didn’t share the same philosophy. “What? Do the planks weigh more than five pounds? Maybe you should practice with soup cans.”

  “Shut up. I’m still sore from when you both abandoned me and made me do that warehouse all by myself.”

  “Wimp. That was forever ago,” Whitney said.

  “I don’t see you lifting these heavy planks.” Kingston stretched his arms skyward and forced himself to keep going. His pace slowed, like he was trying to trudge through quicksand.

  Stepping back, my breath caught in my throat. Long assembly lines of plants covered the entire bottom half of the house in four neat rows, blocking the door so the family couldn’t get inside without removing them. A vertical forest. We weren’t destroying the house, but our statement couldn’t be ignored. A smile curled on my face as I watched my new friends in awe.

  “Hey, where’s the ladder?” Chess asked Whitney when we had finished filling the last of the planks already attached to the house. The top third of the house remained uncovered.

  “See, this is why bringing her was a bad idea.” Kingston gestured to me with his chin. Beads of sweat outlined his forehead. His skin looked pale, flu-like. “We couldn’t bring the ladder with her in the back seat.”

  I pulled the strings of my hoodie tight, trying to disappear.

  “Why didn’t you put it with the plywood in the back of the truck?” Whitney asked.

  Kingston held up his hands. “Hey, don’t go blaming me. This wouldn’t have been a problem if it had stayed where it was.”

  “I guess we could call it a night,” Whitney said. “Save some supplies.”

  No one made a move for the truck.

  I’d carried out every task they’d given me tonight, but I’d still managed to be more of a burden than a benefactor. I wilted against a large oak tree perched in front of the house, its branches covering most of the windows.

  “No way. What we did isn’t big enough. Let’s burn the place down.” Kingston pulled a lighter out of his pocket and whipped it in the air.

  “Hey, let’s not get crazy.” Whitney held up a five-finger stop sign.

  “Too late for that, Whit. We have to do something!” Kingston bent down and picked up a rock off the ground, clutching it in his fist. He wound his arm and launched the rock at the house. His home-run aim smashed a window on contact, right through the construction sticker.

  “Stop!” The panic in Whitney’s voice set me on high alert. I straightened, bumping my head on one of the lower branches.

  Kingston searched the area for another rock. I peered up at the branch above me.

  “Wait!” I lifted my leg onto the lowest branch. I reached for the one above me and pulled myself up, leaves rustling. My muscles strained until my feet found pur
chase on the next branch up.

  Kingston paused, arm frozen in mid-throw.

  “What are you doing?” Chess rushed over and grabbed my leg.

  I kicked his hand free. “If I climb this, I can get into a higher position. Go up to the roof and put plants up there.” I climbed onto another branch. “No need to smash windows.”

  “No.” His fingers encircled my leg again, and his warm hands burned through my pants. “I’m not letting you do that. It’s not safe.”

  “It could be kind of cool.” Whitney approached us. “We’ve never done that before. And it would be a bitch for them to take down. Or . . . ” She smiled wickedly. “They could leave them up and our statement stays like a warning beacon.” She hopped up and down at this idea.

  Kingston dropped the rock and clapped his hands once. “I’m all for watching the monkey climb.”

  “This is a really bad idea,” Chess said.

  “Please,” I whispered so only he could hear. “Let me show them I can be useful.”

  Chess’s jaw shifted. “Fine. Get me some rope. Alice, don’t climb yet.”

  While Whitney dashed off to get the rope, Kingston crawled onto the hood of the trunk and leaned back, his arms crossed behind his head, watching my show.

  Chess climbed to my spot on the second branch, the tree shaking in protest. “I know most of what we did today is kind of insane, but you don’t need to win the competition.”

  I pressed my lips together. He was snarking up the wrong tree.

  He wrapped his arm around my waist. I loathed the extra fabric the hoodie concealed me in. “Now if you fall, I can catch you.”

  “You’ll fall, too,” I pointed out, even though I folded into his touch.

  He brought his lips close to my ear. “Alice, you don’t have to do this. You’re in, okay?” His warm breath sent chills down my spine and tingled in my ear. I closed my eyes and savored the sensation.

  “I want to.” Gripping the branch above for support, I twisted around to meet his eyes. “I’m tired of holding everyone back. Holding myself back.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to try still? With the farmers’ market?” His chest stilled as he waited for my answer.

  I bit my lip. I didn’t want to lie to him. He seemed to be the only person I didn’t have to pretend with. “I get why you guys don’t want me to do that yet. So I’ll postpone it.” Until I could figure out a way to do it publicly, without drawing attention to them if they wouldn’t help. “I understand how it would mess up what you’re trying to do. But this isn’t just about the farmers’ market. You know that.”

  “Right, you’re sticking around because of Kingston.” He raised his eyebrows a few times.

  “He and I have so much in common, it’s like we were separated at birth.” I chuckled. “But no, the other reason I’m sticking around is . . . ” I took a deep breath. “In this tree.” I couldn’t believe I had said that! My cheeks burned. Whitney grunted as she rummaged through the car. Kingston hopped off the trunk to help her. “I’m really attracted to the plants.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I’m attracted to, too.” He pulled on the zipper of his hoodie.

  A door slammed. Whitney headed our way, rope swinging in her hand. Chess spoke in a rushed whisper. “Alice . . . you should know. We didn’t tell you everything tonight. Our goal, our purpose or whatever. You only got half the story. The other half?” He sighed and looked away. “It would probably scare you off.”

  My skin prickled. I didn’t want to ask this yet, not until they trusted me. But this was the perfect opening. “I saw something in Whitney’s room. About trying to cut the school’s power supply?”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “I don’t even know what to think.”

  Whitney hopped below us. “The rope you ordered.”

  Chess and I both pulled away, but I stole one last glance at him. I didn’t know what to think about the power-supply stuff I’d found, but I knew what I wanted to believe. That I had been right all along; this group was doing good things, just in a roundabout way.

  Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to justify my involvement.

  “We tying up Alice?” Kingston shouted from the car. “Using her for ransom?”

  Whitney clucked her tongue. “Don’t worry. I plan on having a little chat with him tonight. Right now, I’m more worried about him giving us away than you.”

  The corners of my lips twitched until they formed a smile. She finally believed I was trustworthy! They couldn’t be bad guys.

  Right?

  Chess twirled the rope around his hand like a lasso and looped it around a thick branch toward the top. He then tied both ends around my waist with sailor knots. There,” he said. “Now you won’t splatter to the ground if you fall.”

  “It would make for a killer art installation.” I lifted myself onto a higher level and then another one.

  Panting, I paused, my arm muscles working overtime. I had some tree-climbing experience, but it was the ten-foot one in my garden, not this fifty-foot monstrosity. This was climb and punishment.

  “I’m starting to get wrinkles,” Kingston hissed from below.

  I ignored him and pressed on anyway. From the way Chess cheered me on below—“Steady now, you’re doing great”—I expected him to be fully decked out in a miniskirt and pompoms.

  When I reached the top, another rope came flying up at me and I managed to catch it without falling out of the tree. Miracles do happen.

  “Hold on,” Chess yelled, “we’re tying a pot to the other end.”

  The rope tightened until it was ruler-straight from the weight of the plant. Trusting Chess’s harness would hold me, I pulled the rope until the pot made its way through the branches.

  With the pot in hand, I swiveled to focus on the roof. Two feet of empty space separated the shingles from the branch I balanced on. In order to get across, I would have to stretch my body like a bridge. It had looked much closer to the house from below. Cause of death: depth perception.

  Suddenly, something soft hit my back. I wobbled for a moment but managed to regain my balance as another soft thing hit my arm. It was sticky and left a streak of . . . frosting? “Stop throwing things at me!” I yelled. “Are you trying to make me fall?”

  “What? That’s crazy! I thought you needed a push forward,” Kingston said from below. “You froze. And it’s not like I’m throwing rocks.” He jiggled the petit-four box in his hands. Clearly, he didn’t know how stale they were.

  “Hey.” Chess snatched the box out of Kingston’s hands. “She brought those for me.”

  Kingston laughed. “She must not like you then because I tried one and—” He stuck his finger down his throat and made loud simulated-barfing noises.

  I bit my lip. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

  “No one ever does,” Kingston said.

  I turned back to the roof, trying to find my resolve again.

  “If you’re scared, I can get some more rocks,” Kingston so kindly offered.

  That fueled me forward. I took several calming breaths, then tightrope-walked toward the edge of the branch. I tossed the plant onto the roof. It landed sideways and rolled down the shingles. My teeth ground together. But the pot snagged on the gutter and rested there.

  I blew my hair out of my face.

  I surfer-balanced on the wooden arm and lowered myself inch by inch onto the teetering branch. By the time I lay on my stomach, I wasn’t sure which was shakier, my limbs or the tree’s.

  I made the mistake of looking down. Adrenaline surged in my body, pumping hot blood into my ears. My pulse raced, my muscles strained . . . and I loved it. I’d never been this high before, never seen the tops of my friends’ heads. I was tall up here.

  Smiling, I glanced up at the tip of the branch only to spot a lizard crawling along the storm drain. Heights I could handle. Reptiles, not so much. I didn’t dare breathe, just tried to aim telepathic commands toward it
. When it crawled closer anyway, I opted for actual words. “Shoo! Go away!”

  “You okay up there?”

  I forced the word “Yeah” out of my mouth instead of what I wanted to say: a rant about the lizard defending the house from alien invaders like me.

  I hugged the tree limb, finally earning myself the nickname most go-green-haters liked to shout: tree-hugger. The lizard paused in front of my fingers before deciding my arms were a bridge. It crawled onto my forearms, its tiny feet tickling me. Ignore the sensation. There is no lizard. Lizards are imaginary creatures, like unicorns. It continued down the rest of my body. A ticklish sensation radiated over my legs. My nose twitched. When the lizard reached my ankles, it danced back and forth. I lost it. My mouth opened up in a fit of giggles.

  The branch sagged from my spastic movements, bending closer to the roof. I curled my fingers as tightly as I could around the limb and shook my leg to try to get the lizard off me, not realizing the motion would throw me off balance. My weight shifted and my torso mimicked a headfirst bungee jumper.

  My scream was worthy of a horror movie.

  The lizard fell off my leg and tumbled to the ground below. But I couldn’t think about that.

  “You murdered Bill!” Kingston yelled. “Poor guy.”

  “Bill?” Whitney said.

  “You don’t like the name Bill?” He pressed a finger to his lip. “What about Artie? Nah.” Kingston’s voice turned thoughtful. “He seemed like he’d have a one-syllable name.”

  I clenched my teeth and tried my best to stay . . . alive. Gripping my ankles around the branch, I swung my arm above me, searching. My fingers clasped something cold and smooth. The rain gutter. With one final trapeze move that would surely have won me maximum points in the Presidential Fitness pull-up test, I tugged my entire upper body onto the safety of the roof, then swung my lower half up to match.

  Pausing there, I resisted the urge to kiss the solid surface.

  “Wow, good job,” Whitney called, already picking up a plant and tying a rope around it. All the fear of my near-death experience evaporated.