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  “I could trip him if you want me to,” Britt said. “Or poke him in the eye with the bayonet that Dad didn’t need.”

  I didn’t say anything. I knew she was trying to be helpful, but she was still a twit.

  I had just finished packing up the nurse’s tent into Sadie’s pickup and was crouched behind it changing. I had my hoop skirt halfway over my head when, wouldn’t you know it,

  Kevin came limping up.

  “Nurse!” he yelled. “Nurse! I’ve been shot!”

  My hoop had become twisted around my boobs and seemed to be stuck there. I could barely breathe.

  “Oomph!” I managed to stammer. “Yikes!”

  “Are you okay?” Kevin asked. “Can I help?”

  “I thought you were dying?” I managed to respond, gasping for breath. I was equal parts mortified that he had caught me in the middle of changing and delighted that he had shown up.

  “I was joking,” he said. “But you, on the other hand. You ...”

  “Laugh and I’ll kill you,” I said. I had managed to get the hoop over one of my breasts but it seemed to be wedged in between the two of them in a most awkward position.

  “Here,” Kevin said. “If I just lift up this side then maybe your boop, I mean your hoop, will just make it over the other one.”

  Just then Dad and Britt came traipsing around the corner. There I was, halfway undressed, Kevin’s hands brushing my boobs, and Dad and Britt show up.

  “Oh,” Dad said. “Is this the guy you’re dating?”

  God! Why me? Why do I have to be cursed with a family of such mule heads?

  “Good work on the battlefield this afternoon, Private Malloy,” my father said, clueless as always.

  “Thank you, sir,” Kevin answered, saluting him with his free hand. His other hand had a wristband on and somehow it had become caught on the hoop right below my left boob. He couldn’t seem to free it. It looked as though he was feeling me up. Not a drive-by but a full-fledged feel-up. With Dad and Britt standing there, staring. Britt’s mouth was open wide. At least, thank God, for once she was speechless.

  “What’s all the fuss about,” Auntie Sadie said as she came around the pickup and joined the growing crowd of gawking onlookers.

  This was beyond embarrassing. I was blushing so hard my eye shadow had turned red.

  Finally Kevin managed to extract his hand from the hoop/ boob and my skirt came tumbling off. I made a beeline into the pickup and somehow managed to get my clothes on, all by myself, without any additional wardrobe malfunctions.

  When I emerged, Kevin was still there waiting for me.

  “That was fun,” he said.

  “Yeah, right.” I rolled my eyes.

  “I came to see if you wanted a ride home?” he asked. “Without the hoop on, you might even fit in my car. I’d hate to have to tow you.”

  I laughed.

  “Let me ask my Dad,” I said.

  24

  “SO,” I BEGAN. “Why do you do this?”

  I had gotten over the humiliation of the hoop hysteria and was trying to get a grip on my situation. I could hardly believe my luck! I was riding in a car with a boy! Not just any boy. The Kevin Malloy boy!

  “Why do I do what?” Kevin asked, smiling. “Give cute girls rides home?”

  “No,” I said, trying to remain blush-free. “Do the Civil War thing. Be a reenactor?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s something about being part of the past that’s pretty sweet. You know what I mean? So much simpler. So much less screwed up.”

  “Are you saying the Civil War wasn’t screwed up?”

  “No, no, not at all. Totally screwed up. But I’m talking about the past in general. It’s like when we have our reenactment camps. We just sit around talking. Build a fire. Cook our food outside. There’s no technology. No cell phones. No iPads. None of that crap. I really like that. Can I tell you something funny that happened the other day?”

  What a stupid question. He could tell me anything that happened any day. I was hooked. I was like a meth head, addicted after one puff. I could listen to Kevin talk forever.

  “Go for it,” I said.

  “I will. So I help my father out in the hardware store, right? You know the one on Prospect Street?”

  “I do.”

  “Anyway, I do deliveries and stuff. I was bringing a load of lumber to this work site and this guy says he’ll text me if he needed some more. I told him I didn’t text.”

  “‘You don’t text?’ the guy asks. I mean his mouth drops open and he takes a step backwards. It was as if I had told him I had an infectious disease or something.”

  I nodded my head.

  Kevin continued. “‘Forgive me for prying,’ the guy goes, ‘but is it arthritis? My grandmother has it. It’s a bitch.’ He goes on to tell me this sob story about how his grandmother can’t seem to get her fingers to move at all anymore and how she has Velcro on her shoes because she can’t do laces.

  “‘Wow’ I go. ‘I’m sorry. Must be tough.’

  “‘It is,’ the guy says. ‘How do you do deliveries and all?”

  “‘What do you mean?’ I go. ‘With Velcro or laces?’

  Kevin stopped his story for a moment.

  “Look,” he said, pointing to the side of the road, and slowing the car down. There were seven deer grazing in a farmer’s field.

  “Cool,” I murmured, immersed in the story and relishing the wind in my face and the fact that I was riding in the car with KEVIN MALLOY!

  “Way cool,” he said. “Anyway, I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me. It’s amazing. People immediately assume that because I don’t text I must have some debilitating disease, some physical abnormality, some life-threatening emergency, some critical condition they could catch. The idea of choosing not to text blows people’s minds. They think I’m a freak or something. I’ve seen people wash their hands after I’ve told them. Well, not really, but it’s like they’re scared of contracting the dreaded no-texting germ.”

  “Stop the car right now!” I shouted, hunching closer to the passenger door. I opened the window and gasped for breath. “Pull over. I’ve got to get out! Now!”

  Kevin laughed. “Seriously,” he said. “Is it that weird?”

  “Super weird,” I said. “But weird in a good way. A really good way.”

  Kevin smiled and his face lit up. It wasn’t just his mouth that smiled, it was his whole face—his eyes, his eyebrows, his forehead, his cheeks, his ears. Even what was left of the bump on the top of his head smiled. His face was just one big, gigantic smile. It was the cutest thing I had ever seen.

  “Anyway,” he said. “That’s what I like about reenactments. Talking. No texting. Just talking. I’m bummed that it’s the last one of the year. I’ll miss it. I’ll miss doing our camp chores and cleaning our guns and playing music and talking. I’ll even miss hanging out with the old farts. Like your father. Who’s actually pretty cool, by the way.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What do you talk about?” I asked.

  “With your father? All about you. I know everything about you. Everything.”

  “Please!” I said, desperately hoping it wasn’t true. Or hoping it was true. I couldn’t decide which. “Seriously, what do you talk about?”

  “A lot about what it was like to be alive back then. Back in the old days. How different it was. How much more people were . . . I don’t know, it sounds sort of stupid, but in touch with nature. Part of nature. I mean, soldiering during the Civil War, you were outside all of the time. Living off the land. Hiking around.”

  “I think they called it ‘forced marching,’” I said.

  “Hiking, marching, whatever. It’s still walking in the woods. They were always doing all sorts of sweet stuff.”

  “Like killing people. Or getting killed.”

  Kevin laughed.

  “I know, I know, I’m romanticizing the whole thing. I get it. And don’t get me wrong, I’m all fo
r modern stuff in most ways. But it’s just that we seem to have gone totally overboard. Screwing things up so much. Like the environment. Climate change and all that crap. And have you heard about their plan to blow up Mount Tom? My friend Marc Potvin’s father works for American and he was telling me all about it. Plus, it’s been in the newspaper and all. Can you believe it? What a bummer. The Civil War was crazy. But all of this seems even crazier.”

  It was all I could do to nod my head.

  We were silent for a few moments.

  “Why do you do it?” Kevin asked.

  “Why do I do what?” I said, regaining my composure. “Accept rides home from cute guys?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Being a Civil War nurse and all.”

  “My father’s been force-marching my sister and me to these things for years. Believe me, I’ve seen more battles than the real soldiers ever did. And now my aunt’s friend who does the fake nursing thing just had a baby, so I’m filling in for her.”

  There was no way I was going to reveal the truth about my real reason for being there the last two times—that I was totally infatuated.

  “Anyway,” I added. “It’s something to do.”

  “Something to do? What, like crystal meth? Like grinding? Like cutting the flags off of trees on Mount Tom?”

  “I don’t do crystal meth,” I said. “And I don’t grind. At least I never have. Actually, it sounds kind of intriguing. The grinding and all. Not the crystal meth.”

  Kevin laughed again.

  “Speaking of which,” Kevin said. “They’re having this cotillion in a few weeks. It’s a way to close out the reenactment season.”

  “This what?”

  “Cotillion. A Civil War dance.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “A Civil War dance?”

  “You know, they play old-time music. It’s like a square dance or something. The guys dress in uniform and the girls wear hoop skirts. I know it sounds pretty lame and all but it might be fun.”

  “With or without grinding?”

  Once more Kevin laughed. I loved his laugh. He laughed the way he smiled, with his whole head.

  “Well, it’s not at the high school, so I guess anything is possible. Anyway, I’d love to see you grind in that hoop skirt.”

  I laughed. Laughed and blushed.

  “Saturday the 12th,” Kevin continued. “At the town hall in Madison.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  “Are you going?” Kevin asked.

  “It depends,” I said. “Are you?”

  I could not believe I was actually having this conversation. Where was a flosser and comb when I needed them? I was desperate for something to calm my nerves.

  “Only if there are hot nurses in hoop skirts to grind with,” Kevin said. “But you have to promise to leave the peg leg at home. Too dangerous!”

  “Damn,” I said. “I was almost ready to say yes.”

  We had pulled into the driveway of my house. Britt was sitting on the front step, texting away, waiting for Kevin and me to show up so she could witness the action firsthand.

  “By the way,” Kevin said. “You said you didn’t do crystal meth, right?”

  “Duh!” I said.

  “And you don’t grind but you could be convinced.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But what about the third thing?” Kevin asked.

  “What third thing?”

  “The cutting down flags thing?’

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “Would you do that? Would you cut down flags on Mount Tom?”

  “Would you?” I asked.

  “I asked you first.”

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said, giving him a sly smile. “I’ll see you at school.”

  25

  “SO . . . ,” BRITT SAID.

  “So what?” I snapped, looking away so she wouldn’t see the color on my face.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Get a life, Britt.”

  “Did he ask you out?” she asked.

  “Shut up!”

  “Are you going to tell me or am I going to have to hit up the text chain?”

  “What is the text chain?” I asked.

  Britt rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t you know anything? A text chain is when I text Cassidy who will text Monica who is Kevin’s sister Rebecca’s best friend. Monica will text Rebecca and she’ll force Kevin to tell her everything. Believe me, she has her ways. Everything. And then it will all work its way back up to me.”

  “Full of lies and misinformation,” I said.

  “Exactly!”

  “Texting is evil, Britt. Don’t you know that?”

  “Are you going to tell me, or am I going to have to hit up the text chain? Your choice, Cyndie.”

  “God, I am so stupid!” I said in a ditzy voice, slapping my hand against the side of my head.

  “What’d you do now?” Britt asked.

  “It’s not what I did now, it’s what I did then. When you were two, Mom and Dad wanted to sell you. To the highest bidder. Or to the lowest. They didn’t give a crap about the money, they just wanted to get rid of you. I was like, ‘No, no not my little sister!’ And they said, ‘But look at her! She’s a monster and it’s just gonna get worse!’ What a mistake I made. We should have sold you way back then. Just like they wanted to. Sold you and gotten rid of you forever. Life would be so much easier!”

  I walked up the steps and gave her hair a yank.

  “Dad!” Britt yelled. “Cyndie just hit me. Really hard. Like a dozen times!”

  Dad poked his head around the corner as I flew on past him.

  “What’s gotten into her?” he asked Britt.

  “She has a ...”

  “I do not!” I yelled down the stairs. Perhaps a little less convincingly this time.

  26

  WE WERE BACK IN OUR MINI-MINE, our hideout, on Mount Tom.

  It was going to take a whole lot more than a few intimidating signs or threats from the principal to keep us off our mountain.

  In the folk song “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie, there is a wonderful verse that most people don’t know a thing about:

  As I went walking I saw a sign there

  And on the sign it said: “No trespassing.”

  But on the other side it didn’t say nothing

  That side was made for you and me.

  Ashley and I had definitely gone to that side.

  We had been extra careful to stash our bikes where they couldn’t be seen. Now that we were outlaws, fugitives from justice, criminals on the run, we felt a whole new level of excitement, with a definite dose of paranoia, as we hiked up the trail. We talked more softly, sometimes even in whispers. We listened more intently, trying to read the voices of Lady Gaga and Jay-Z and the Black Crows and all of our other animal allies for word of intruders. We continually looked on both sides of our trail for any sign that the real trespassers had been here since the last flagging.

  When we came to our sacred grove we spent a little more time than usual giving She and Sugar Daddy and Bradley Beech and Sadie’s Twin extra special long and hard hugs. We caressed their bark with a new intensity. A new tenderness. A new sense of urgency.

  We were, after all, flag-cutting, tree-hugging, trespassing environmentalists. Yeah!

  I had spent the whole walk up recounting to Ashley word for word my conversation with Kevin in the car. When I finished, Ashley made me tell it all over again.

  “I was so pleased with myself!” I said. “I didn’t say ‘s’up’ once!”

  “Let me get this straight,” Ashley said for the fifth time. We were sitting in the mine in our usual positions on our usual cushions. I was holding a candle with one hand, watching the wax drip onto my palm, embracing the heat and the pain, and massaging Ashley’s foot with the other. “Colonel Kevin . . .”

  “Private Kevin,” I said.

  “Private Kevin asks you out and you say �
�Damn, I was almost ready to say yes?’”

  “He didn’t ask me out.”

  “Yes he did.”

  “No he didn’t.”

  “Cynthia. He said he’s only going to the dance if there are hot nurses in hoop skirts to grind with! That is so an ask!” When Ashley was being super-serious, she called me by my full name, Cynthia. It was actually kind of cute, in a motherly sort of way.

  “He asked if I was going. He didn’t ask me out.”

  “Oh my God, how thick are you? I know we don’t have experience with this kind of thing, but you gotta be kidding me. ‘I was almost ready to say yes?’ ‘Almost ready’?”

  “It was a joke! I was joking! Anyway, the more important thing was him asking about cutting down the flags.”

  “Are you serious? More important than getting asked out? Nothing is more important. Not even saving Mount Tom.”

  “Stop it, Ashley,” I said. “Anyway, do you think I did the right thing?”

  “No. I don’t think you did the right thing! Not at all!”

  “You don’t?”

  “No I don’t. You should have said: ‘Yes, I’d love to go to the dance with you.’ Lame as a Civil War pavilion is.”

  “Cotillion.”

  “Whatever. We got asked out by a former Number Two untouchable who has now miraculously, spectacularly, unbelievably risen in rank to not only a Number Four possibility but to a whole brand new previously unthinkable category, a whole new addition to our rating system, the first Number Five of our lives, an actual date. We don’t say no to that, Cyndie. We just don’t!”

  I loved how Ashley said “we” and “our lives.” It was so reassuring.

  “Ashley, I’m not asking if I did the right thing about the civilian . . .”

  “Cotillion.”

  “Whatever . . .”

  “Which you did not.”

  “I’m asking if I did the right thing when he asked me about the flags. I mean, I didn’t say anything.”