by Brian Adams
“My point exactly,” Ashley said. “Think about it. What if we got everyone to march on American? What if the police brought out fire hoses and attack dogs and those of us who survived died of disease or starvation or got sold into slavery. I mean, seriously! It would be totally awesome. It would go viral on YouTube. There’d be no way they could blow up Tom after that!”
“Yeah. And you wouldn’t have to worry about your boobs anymore either.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’d be dead,” I said.
“Or a slave.”
“Either way, not exactly appealing choices!”
But I had to give her credit. It was an interesting idea. What if we got a whole bunch of us kids to march on American? There were kids who would do it. There were kids at school who cared. There were a lot who didn’t, but there had to be a bunch who would be down for it.
And so, sitting in our mini-mine with the candles flickering inside and the animals frolicking outside, we began planning the Great Mount Tom Children’s Crusade.
American had their corporate office right in the center of Greenfield, across from the Burger King, about a mile from the high school. We could make up banners and signs and slogans and get a petition and march right on up there and demand that they listen to us. We could get a bullhorn and sing and chant.
We were a bunch of kids, for crying out loud. It was our town. It was our mountain. They’d have to listen.
“I bet Kevin Malloy would come,” Ashley said. “If you were up front and center with that hot hoop skirt, a banner, and a bull horn, there’s no telling what might happen.”
That sealed the deal.
The Great Mount Tom Children’s Crusade was on.
19
WE AGREED THAT MR. COOPER was the go-to guy for support and advice on this one. We’d keep our mouths shut about cutting down the flags. It would be our little secret for now. But if we were to pull off a children’s crusade, it would be good to have at least one adult in on the action.
“Maybe we should call it a young adult crusade,” Ashley said. “I mean, seriously, look at the size of my boobs. I’m not exactly a child.”
“Oh my God, here we go again!” I sighed. “And thanks, Ash. You always make me feel so much better about myself.”
“We! I meant we! Our boobs! We’re not children!”
“Boobs or no boobs, let’s stick with the Children’s Crusade. It rolls off the tongue much better. Plus, it packs a much more powerful punch. There’s something about being a young adult that’s kind of pathetic.”
All week long in science class, Mr. Cooper had been on a tear about climate change. Humans burning fossil fuels—oil, gas, and coal—and pumping all those heat-trapping greenhouse gasses into the air and warming up the planet. His lectures were a cross between a rant and a sermon. He was combing and flossing and flossing and combing so obsessively I was getting anxious his hair would all fall out and his teeth would explode out of his gums. There he’d be, bald and toothless and still going off.
Mr. Livingston, the moronic math teacher that he was, had the stupidity to walk in on Coop in the middle of one of these tirades.
“Mr. Cooper!” Livingston said, his squirrelly face twitching away. “My students next door are extremely distracted by the volume of your voice. It is extremely difficult for young minds to concentrate when you continually shout out your opinions about controversial subjects. Do you mind, sir, turning it down a notch?”
“Turn it down?” Coop snorted, turning it up. “Turn it down? I’ll give you ‘turn it down’!” He threw back his head, closed his eyes, and howled like a coyote: “Yip yip yip yow-ow-ow-ow!”
Livingston, wild-eyed and trembling, backed away and skedaddled out of the classroom while Mr. Cooper glared at him like a wild animal.
“A D!” Coop howled, the coyote still possessing him. “That man gets a D! A D for Denier!”
No one had a clue what he was talking about.
“Most of you have Mrs. Osgood for English, correct?” Mr. Cooper asked, his voice regaining some degree of normalcy.
We all groaned, images of poopy diapers bringing on the gag reflex.
“And you’re reading The Scarlet Letter?”
More groans.
“What did the character Hester Prynne wear on her dress?”
“An A,” Ashley shouted. “A for adulteress. A for affair.”
What had gotten into Ashley? Had she actually read the book? First spouting off history facts and now a completed English assignment? I made a mental note to take her temperature and make sure she wasn’t sick or something.
“Exactly!” Coop said. “A scarlet letter of shame! A physical manifestation of sin! For all the world to see!” Mr. Cooper raised his voice even louder. His whole body trembled as he spoke.
“No A’s for Livingston. That’s way too good for him! He gets a scarlet D—D for denier! A climate change denier—the worst kind!”
Evidently Mr. Livingston was one of the folks on Coop’s shit list who still didn’t believe that humans were the cause of climate change.
“Only God can change the climate,” we had once overheard Mr. Livingston say. This did not go down well with our science guru.
Mr. Cooper turned his back to us and began yelling through the wall that separated the two classrooms.
“Do the math, Livingston!” he shouted, pounding on the wall. “No more multiplying the lies! No more subtracting the truth! Add up the facts, Livingston! The wonderful thing about science is that it’s still true even if you don’t believe it!”
With a final flourish he flung his flosser at the wall and gave it a solid kick.
Even for Coop this was way over the top. To trash another teacher in front of us? None of us could stand Mr. Livingston, but it still seemed a little harsh.
Ashley passed me a note.
“Has Coop lost it?” it read.
Mr. Cooper stopped his rant and, still trembling, walked over to my desk.
“Give it to me,” he said. Even in the middle of a mental meltdown there was nothing that escaped that man.
“Give you what?” I asked innocently.
“Give me the note. Now!” He snatched it out of my hands.
“‘Has Coop lost it?’” he read out loud to the entire class. Ashley covered her face with her hands and slumped down in her seat.
“‘Has Coop lost it?’” he repeated.
Total silence. It was so quiet you could hear crickets.
“Raise your hands if you think I’m crazy,” he said.
It was an awkward moment. We all looked around at each other anxiously.
“I’m serious. Hands up if you think I’m crazy.”
“Crazy in a good way?” Ashley asked. “Or crazy in a psycho-killer, looney-bin, crystal-meth, whacked-out, get-me-the-hell-out-of-here-right-now kind of way? I’ll be the first to put my hand up for the good kind of crazy.”
“Me too,” I said. Most of the class nodded. A few seemed to be holding back for the second option.
That seemed to break the tension. Mr. Cooper sighed, picked up the flosser and put it and the comb back in his front pocket.
“Livingston!” he yelled to the wall. “Get in here!”
The door opened and Mr. Livingston awkwardly shuffled into the front of the classroom.
“Mr. Livingston,” Coop began. “I would like to apologize for my unprofessional and disrespectful behavior. For the rest of the period, I will put a capital Q into Quiet. And while we may disagree about the facts of climate change, it was inappropriate for me to equate you with an adulterer.” Mr. Cooper put particular emphasis on the word adulterer.
It was hard to tell whether that was yet another diss or a sincere apology.
Coop held out his hand. “Please accept my heartfelt request for forgiveness.”
I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if Mr. Cooper had had one of those buzzers or zappers or mini-Tasers or fake-flower water-squirters or some other b
izarre gag thing and had socked it to Livingston yet again.
Mr. Livingston, licking his lips, his eyes nervously scanning the room, seemed to be thinking the same thing. He limply shook Mr. Cooper’s hand, mumbled something that sounded like a yes, and filed silently out of the room.
“Call me crazy,” Mr. Cooper said, turning toward us. “Believe me, I’ve been called worse, that’s for damn sure. But, for the record, allow me to tell you what real crazy is.”
Mr. Cooper’s voice went all soft and quiet—super-spooky. We had never heard him talk like this. It was barely audible, barely above a whisper.
“Real crazy is wildfires burning out of control out West. No rain in California. Torrential flooding around here.
“Real crazy is the glaciers melting and the sea levels rising.
“Real crazy is the millions, or is it billions, of people who live near the coast line, with no way out.”
Mr. Cooper’s voice began to rise. He had stopped his pacing and was standing stock still in the middle of the room, gazing upwards, his arms out to his side with his palms facing forward. He looked like one of those statues you see in front of some Catholic churches.
The class was mesmerized.
“Real crazy is storm after storm, each one worse than the one before, plowing right on through,” he continued.
“Real crazy is cranking up the earth’s thermostat, degree after degree, and burning up the very crops we need to survive.
“Real crazy is trying to get out of the hole we’re in by digging even deeper. Or in the case of Mount Tom, not digging but blowing it up. Blowing it up and polluting our rivers and making us sick so we can go ahead and burn more of the stuff that’s gotten us into this damn mess to begin with.
“You want crazy? That’s crazy! I may need a checkup from the neck up. I may be a whacked-out, wigged-out, mondobizarro, certifiable crank.” His voice became menacing. “But I am nothing, nothing compared to that!”
He sat down on the edge of his desk looking somewhat sad and disheveled, blankly staring off into space. The class was quiet. More crickets. Everyone looked at their feet, or out the window—anywhere but at Mr. Cooper.
A minute went by. Then three, or four. No one moved. No one seemed to breathe. We all sat still in awkward silence till the bell rang and then, like Livingston, we filed wordlessly out of the classroom.
20
IT’S HARD WHEN YOU’RE FIFTEEN and one of the few adults in your life that you actually like and trust is (a) a borderline lunatic, and (b) convinced that the world is plummeting toward total chaos and catastrophe.
“I don’t know,” Ashley said. “Maybe going to Coop isn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe we should just do it alone. He seems sort of . . .”
“Mentally unbalanced?” I said. “Insane in the membrane?”
“Crazier than a shithouse rat?” Ashley added.
“And that’s being kind,” I said, laughing. “I don’t know, Ash. I mean, obviously he’s a bit of a nutcase, but at least he’s on our side. Think about it. Think about what American wants to do: cut down all of the trees on Mount Tom. Our Mount Tom. And then blow the top off it. I mean, blow up the effin mountain! And once you get the coal, you burn it and fry the planet. Blow up the mountain, pollute the river, burn the coal, and fry the planet. Is that screwed up or what? Like Coop said, who is crazy here?”
Ashley and I had become obsessed with YouTubing mountaintop removal videos. It was absolutely heartbreaking. Beyond tragic. There you saw it. A beautiful mountain. And then, suddenly, kaboom! Gone!
The worst kind of magic. Now you see it. Now you don’t.
Only it was painfully real.
“God, what a clustermuck,” Ashley said, massaging her temples. “It makes my brain hurt. Will you rub my feet? I’m on the verge of a looney tune.” Ashley kicked off her shoes and thrust her legs into my lap.
We had abandoned our mini-mine for my bedroom. It was much easier to surf the ’Net that way. Our mine on Mount Tom had yet to go wireless.
“Why is this happening?” Ashley asked. “I don’t want to deal. I really don’t. I’m tired. My feet hurt. Maybe we’ve done enough already. I mean, we ripped down the flags, right? Twice. Isn’t that enough? It’s more than anything anyone else has done. A little more on the left foot. Yeah. Right there. Oh my God, that feels good.”
I pressed my thumb deep into that soft spot in the underside of her foot. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she went all limp and mushy.
“I agree with you, Ash. About not wanting to deal and all. I mean, it’s pretty much a no-brainer. Let’s see, a thinkabout with Kevin or a nightmare about climate change. Hmmm. . . Let me get back to you about that.”
“Do the other one,” Ashley said. “Oh yeah. Right there. Harder.”
I pushed my knuckles into the back of her toes. “You know,” I said. “One of your feet is bigger than the other.”
“What?” Ashley sprang up from the bed. “Oh my God, are you serious?” She sat back down, grabbed her feet and, yoga-like, held them up to her face.
“Relax, Ashley. I’m joking.”
Ashley threw a pillow at me.
“You meanie! You almost gave me a heart attack! God, Cyndie, if what’s going on with my boobs was contagious and my whole body was becoming unbalanced, I’d lose it. Seriously. I mean, blowing up Mount Tom and climate change and all that crap is bad enough, but this would have totally sent me over the edge!”
“For the five zillionth time Ashley, your boobs are not unbalanced. Your effin brain is. Yours and Mr. Cooper’s. But not your boobs.”
“Shut up and rub my feet!” Ashley ordered.
“Anyway,” I continued. “Here’s the point. There’s no going back, Ashley. You know there isn’t. We’re in it for the long haul. And it’s not just about us. Think about Sugar Daddy and Bradley Beech and Sadie’s Twin and She. Think about Lady Gaga and Jay-Z and Taylor Swift and the Black Crows. I know it sounds like the Disney Channel or some crap TV movie, but we can’t let them down, can we? Now that we know what we know we can’t exactly un-know it.”
“What? Say that again,” Ashley demanded.
“No.”
I was kind of surprised at myself. Usually it was Ashley all gung-ho full-speed-ahead damn-the-torpedoes, with me cowering in the back seat desperately trying to put the brakes on. Ashley as Belinda the Brave and me as Custard the cowardly dragon.
It was a bit of a role reversal, and I kind of liked it.
“Anyway,” I continued, “balanced or unbalanced, certifiable or not, I think we go to Coop. He’s pretty much all we’ve got.”
Ashley sighed. A long, painful, drawn-out, why-is-the-world-the-way-that-it-is sigh. “You’re right,” she said. “Too late to turn back. Speaking of turning, how about a little to the left. Oh yeah. That’s it. Right there. Don’t stop.”
Hmmm, I thought. Rub her feet and I could get Ashley to do anything. With any luck, maybe next time one of those cannons would knock the socks off of Private Kevin.
I cracked my knuckles, flexed my fingers, and practiced on Ashley some more.
21
School assemblies were a good thing.
One: they got us out of class. It was always joy and rapture not to have to sit through high school hell.
Two: I got to hang with my gang. Actually, it wasn’t really a gang at all. It was just Ashley. It’s not that I didn’t have other friends but the Ashley BFF thing had been ratcheted up a notch since the tree-flag escapades. There was a new bond between us, even stronger than before, forged with scissors on Mount Tom. We were, after all, secret agents out to save the world.
Three: we got to witness the drama of high school life unfold right before our very eyes in the auditorium. We watched in anticipation as the Number Ones, Twos, Threes, and Fours strutted their stuff. It was thrilling. Who would sit with whom? Who would wear what? Who was in? Who was out? Who would play the class clown, yelling and leaping and smacking people’s rear
s and making a general ass of himself? Who would be sulking in the back corner, shamed and scarred and seething with rage and anger over some slight or rude comment?
Ashley kept up a running monologue, giving color commentary to every single move every single person made. It was hard to get a word in edgewise.
“Tracy Warner definitely has the hots for Mike Fleming,” Ashley said. “Look at the way she stares at him. Somebody give that girl a bib. She’s like a drooling machine.
“And Beth Erviti. I mean, seriously, who does their hair like that? She has to bend over to get through the effin doorway. Someone has got to tell that girl it’s not the eighties anymore.”
In seventh grade Ashley watched an MTV special on hairstyles of the 1980s and ever since then had it in for girls with big hair. It was a pet peeve of hers. No matter what their other outstanding attributes might have been, if their hair was big then it was a definite no-go. You could be the Virgin Mary for God’s sake, but if you had big hair Ashley would go off on you.
After finally accepting what a braid spaz I was, she had recently gone into Morgantown and had her hair cut short. Very cute, in a bob style with one side slightly angled and the other pretty steep. She was almost as obsessed with her hair as she was with her boobs. She was constantly surfing the ’Net on different ways to style it. Which products brought a healthy sheen, bounce, and flair. She even used the mirror in our mini-mine to primp and preen appropriately before reemerging into the world.
“Ashley, I don’t think the trees will actually care if your hair is a little grubby,” I told her.
“Don’t be treeist,” Ashley replied. “You see how they’re always ruffling their branches and dropping leaves. She is more obsessed than I am. She doesn’t have a single twig out of place. There is no way I’m going to walk by her not looking my best. Chic and sexy—that’s my mantra.”
I could never quite figure out what to do with my hair. Growing up momless with a clueless dad and an aunt who was not exactly a fashion icon was not overly helpful in the hairstyle department. I had worn it long most of my life, with Ashley spending hours braiding and unbraiding it. Lately she had been after me to cut it short.