KABOOM Read online

  Piggy: That was his real name. Seriously—Piggy! Can you imagine naming your kid that? His father raised hogs and thought it a name to be proud of. And I thought my dad was weird. We both kind of preferred that Piggy wouldn’t show, but he was all goth and punk, and he’d be sure to be there for anything that “stuck it to the man.” Anyway, what were we gonna do? No crazies allowed? That would mean Ashley and I would have to bow out.

  There were a bunch of other kids who we knew were interested but they had jobs after school. A meeting on a Thursday afternoon just wasn’t going to work for them.

  “Thank God we’re unemployed,” Ashley said.

  The burning issue that Ashley and I had spent an hour on the phone the night before discussing was the boy question mark. As in Kevin Malloy and Marc Potvin.

  “Ashley,” I said. “Get real. Marc is the high school mascot, for crying out loud. You can’t be Mister Miner and show up at an anti–mountaintop removal thing. It’s just not gonna fly. They’d like fire him or something.”

  “Yeah, but maybe Kevin will show, and Marc’s his best bud. They do everything together.”

  “Who said Kevin’s showing?”

  “He has the total hots for you. If you’re there, he’ll be there.”

  “Please. We haven’t even gone out.”

  “That’s the point. He wants to seal the deal early. Work his way into your heart. And the quickest way into a girl’s heart is through the top of the mountain!”

  “Ashley!” I said. “That makes as much sense as a goat wearing a bra!”

  “Mark my words. He’ll be there!”

  •

  It was Thursday at 2:40 and Ashley and I were ready.

  Or not.

  We’d see soon enough.

  Auntie Sadie had stopped by my house before school and dropped off three enormous party-sized bags of Cheetos and some sort of bizarre dip thing that looked suspiciously like composted goat droppings dipped in mayonnaise. I dumped it down the drain as soon as she left.

  “Food,” Auntie Sadie had said. “The number-one rule for successful meetings.” That seemed like her number-one rule for everything.

  “I don’t suppose,” Sadie said, adjusting her bra in my mirror, “you would want me to . . .”

  “No thanks,” I said. Just as I had expected. She was trying to weasel her way into our meeting so she could sneak a peak at Mr. Cooper. Not on my watch.

  By 2:45, those we thought would show had all sauntered on in. Becky the hippie, Jason the friend, Sam the fish, Piggy the punk, and Frank with God as his co-pilot.

  Three other kids also came. Tammy and Rich were two juniors who had been going out since the second grade and were big-time outdoorsy and totally into nature. Sharon was this girl who volunteered for an animal rehabilitation center, fixing up wildlife that had been hit by cars or abandoned by their mothers or had flown into windows or gotten tangled up in power lines.

  That made ten of us. Ashley and I were thrilled.

  And then, trouble.

  We were just about ready to get the meeting rolling when in walked the two biggest redneck yahoos in the whole school. Bert Stanmere and his clone, Michael Mead. The same ones we had pissed off in the parking lot. The same ones who had almost run us over when we were walking to school. The two of them had a combined IQ lower than the state speed limit. There was dumb. There was dumber. And then there were Bert and Michael. The very bottom of the barrel of idiots.

  “Shit,” Ashley muttered under her breath.

  And then, to make matters even worse, if that was at all possible, in walked Jon Buntington. He was the ex-friend turned meth head who had been banished to Nebraska to get his act together and had just returned to school. Rumor had it he needed to do community service work for all the trouble he had been in. Maybe this was it.

  He looked even scarier than Bert and Michael. Bigger. Stronger. With a Mohawk haircut and a wicked scar on his cheek like he had been exiled from Survivor.

  “Double shit,” I whispered back to Ashley.

  The only good news was that Bert and Michael were sitting closest to the door, so to leave the meeting you had to walk right past them. Otherwise the eight other kids who had come would have fled without ever glancing back. Followed quickly by Ashley and me.

  Mr. Cooper had already checked in on us and then gone home for the day. We were on our own.

  I began.

  “So,” I said. “I’m super-excited that you all are here. As you know, American Coal Company has plans to log the top of Mount Tom and then blow it up to get at the coal. It’s called mountaintop removal.”

  “Yeah!” Bert yelled. “Go American!”

  Michael laughed and then farted really loudly. They high-fived each other.

  “There are lots of reasons why mountaintop removal is really bad news,” I continued, doing my best not to look at them. “Ashley and I decided to form a club to save Mount Tom. We have some ideas and we’d love to hear from all of you on things we can do.”

  Michael farted again.

  “I’ve got an idea!” Bert called out.

  “And what is that?” Ashley asked in a mocking kind of way. I could tell she was seething.

  “Why don’t the two of you mind your own damn business?” Bert said. “You don’t know shit about this. The only thing you’re ever going to know is how to slide down that stripper’s pole just like all the other girls, shaking your booty and begging for tips, giving a little head on the side.” Bert made blowjob motions with his hand and mouth while Michael laughed hysterically.

  “Let the miners do what they do best and stay the fuck out of it,” he continued.

  “Is that fuck with just a ‘k’?” Ashley asked, her voice rising a notch.

  Bert stood up.

  “Listen, bitch,” he said.

  “No,” Ashley replied, standing up and taking a step toward him. “You listen, asshole.”

  The meeting was definitely not going as planned.

  Ashley was strong as an ox. Believe me, I knew. Once, when I cracked my head in our mini-mine and was feeling rather woozy, she carried me halfway down the mountain. And once, when some drunken pervert grabbed her while we were on a school field trip to the state capital, she grabbed him back and knocked him flat on his ass.

  She was a force to be reckoned with, but she had to face the facts. She was no match for these two thugs. If push came to shove, things were going to get ugly pretty quick. The rest of us were holding our breath, paralyzed with fear, glued to our seats. My inner Custard was rearing its ugly dragon head and I was totally immobilized. No one else seemed to be exactly frothing at the bit to get into it with those two.

  Damn, I thought to myself. Why did I put the kibosh on Auntie Sadie coming? She would certainly be useful in a situation like this. All she’d have to do would be to go all cyclops on those two and they’d be history.

  But there was Ashley, nose to nose with that bastard Bert. I had visions of her mangled on the floor, beaten to a pulp. I’d be laying flowers on her grave. Best-friendless.

  Rescuers come in unlikely places.

  Jon Buntington pushed back his chair, cracked his knuckles, took off his baseball cap, and stood up next to Ashley. Somehow, I got my wobbly knees to cooperate and did the same. So did the eight others.

  It was turning into a Hallmark Family TV After-school Special.

  “Why don’t you two go back to your still and let the girls do their thing,” Jon said.

  “Yeah,” Ashley said, taking another step towards them.

  “Why don’t you back off and smoke some more meth,” Bert said.

  Jon took a deep breath. The stint in Nebraska had changed him. I don’t know what his uncle had him doing out there, hoisting hay bales or tipping over cows or something, ’cause he was one big dude.

  “Leave,” Jon said, fingering the scar on his face. His voice was soft but menacing. “Leave now!”

  “Yeah,” Ashley said, taking yet another step towards the
two. “Now!”

  Just then the door opened and who should parade on in but Kevin Malloy and Marc Potvin.

  “Hey!” Kevin said, looking at me and smiling. “Sorry we’re late. Did we miss anything?”

  Bert and Michael looked at each other, spit on the floor, and left the room. Michael let go one more enormous fart. They both laughed.

  “That’s Fuck You with a c and a k!” Ashley called out, slamming the door after them.

  We all sat back down.

  “Well,” I said. “That was interesting. Shall we begin again?”

  33

  “WOW!” I SAID.

  “Double-wow!” Ashley agreed, taking my arm in hers. We were walking home after the first KABOOM meeting.

  “I can’t believe they showed up!”

  “I know!” I said. “They are horrible and I hate them! We need a new category for boys like those. The absolute zeroes! Reserved for the ones even Satan gets annoyed with.”

  “Jeez, Cyndie, I wasn’t talking about them! I was talking about them! Kevin and Marc!”

  “Oh. Right. Them!”

  Kevin and Marc! The dynamic duo! The heartthrob boys! In the flesh at our very meeting! I asked Ashley to pinch me one more time to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Who would have thought?

  “Do you actually think they really and truly care about the issue, or do they just want to get into our pants?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?” Ashley asked. “It’s all good!”

  Ashley was ecstatic that Marc had showed. The way she was practically frothing at the mouth, I was amazed she had been able to get a single coherent word out during the meeting. Marc, the school mascot, Mister Miner Man himself, taking a stand against mountaintop removal! Wow, wow, and wow again!

  Ashley and I were pretty darn pleased with ourselves. Not to brag, but we had done a fab job running the meeting. Everybody had said so. After the boys in the ’hood had been banished, things had gone as smooth as the bark on Bradley Beech.

  Kids were psyched. They thought our Children’s Crusade was totally awesome. And they had tons more sweet ideas.

  The only one who was a little weird was Piggy.

  “I say we wait for the logging truck to show up, puncture the tires, smash the windshield, and then put sugar in the gas tank. That’ll stop ’em. Assholes.”

  “Water,” Jon Buntington said. Those were the first words he had spoken since shutting down the terrible twosome.

  “Water? Water what?” Piggy asked.

  “Water. It works better than sugar.”

  “I suggest,” I said, “that we begin with the legal.”

  Ashley looked at me and grinned.

  “Screw the legal,” Piggy said. “We got to stick it to the man!”

  Piggy had told everyone we had to “stick it to the man” about seven hundred times. He was clearly in love with that phrase. Piggy seemed to be itching for a fight, but at least it was our fight. I was glad he was on our side. He and Jon Buntington.

  “Somebody’s already done the illegal,” Kevin said to Piggy, looking right at me. “And you never know, there might be time for more of that later. But for now, I agree with Cyndie. After all, she wears a hoop skirt. She knows these things.”

  I loved it! Kevin and I actually knew each other well enough to have inside jokes!

  Other than Ashley, no one else got it but I laughed and laughed.

  Anyway, here was our action plan:

  Number One: Get signatures on a petition against blowing up Mount Tom. The more the better. We decided to collect signatures outside Fas Chek (the local supermarket) and the town dump. Those were the two places everyone went to. If you stood there long enough you could meet and greet every single person in Greenfield. Whenever anyone was running for office or collecting money or doing anything at all, you could find them outside Fas Chek or the dump on a Saturday.

  Number Two: Write letters. To the mayor, our state representatives, our U.S. congressmen, the Environmental Protection Agency.

  Ashley and I didn’t have a clue about any of this. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as an Environmental Protection Agency. But Becky sure seemed to.

  “Wouldn’t e-mails be easier?” I asked her.

  “No e-mails,” Becky said. “They delete them. Handwritten letters they have to open.”

  “Nobody sends letters,” Ashley said. “I don’t even know where to buy a stamp.”

  “That’s the point,” Becky said. “They get an e-mail and it ends up in the trash can. They get a letter and they’re like, ‘Whoa, what the heck is this?’ And then they actually read it.”

  “That’s genius,” Kevin said.

  “How do you know all this?” I asked.

  “My uncle used to work for a congressman in Washington, D.C.,” Becky said.

  “Really?” I said. “That’s awesome! Is he still there?”

  “No,” Becky replied. “He got convicted of fraud and embezzlement.”

  “The congressman?”

  “And my uncle.”

  “Well,” I said. “It still seems like a good idea.”

  “Fraud and embezzlement?” Kevin asked.

  “No,” I said, laughing. “Sending letters.”

  Number Three: Get the churches involved. Frank was all over this one.

  “Pastors are well respected and listened to,” Frank said. “If we get them on board it can only be helpful.”

  “Yeah,” Kevin said. “Having God on our side can’t exactly hurt.”

  “Maybe we could get Him to sign the petition,” Ashley suggested.

  “Who?” Frank asked.

  “God.” Ashley said

  “Wow,” Kevin said. “That would be awesome. Frank, how connected are you? Do you think you could hook us up with that one?”

  Even Frank laughed.

  Number Four: Look into permits. To blow up a mountain you needed a permit from the state—at least that’s what Kevin had said he heard. It was comforting to know that you couldn’t, on a whim, just willy-nilly go and blow a mountain sky-high. West Virginia had some sort of say over it.

  Kevin told me more about permits when we took a Cheeto break halfway through the meeting and went outside to get some air.

  “You know,” he said, “if there was any historic stuff up there we could be in luck.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Your father told me that West Virginia has a historic preservation law. You can’t just randomly go and destroy historic stuff. He thinks there might be a Civil War fortification up there or something. And some sort of cave they stored ammunition in. If there was, it could stop the project. At least for a while.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You talked to my dad?”

  “Yeah,” Kevin said.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Last night. You were at Ashley’s.”

  “You called me or him?”

  “You. I told you: I don’t text. Anyway you weren’t there, so I talked to him.”

  “And you talked about this?”

  “Well, we talked about you too.”

  “You what? What’d you say?”

  “I asked for a list of all your ex-boyfriends so I could get inside information on . . .”

  “Shut up!” I punched him in the arm.

  “I’m kidding,” Kevin said. “All I did was ask for your measurements.”

  “My what?”

  “Your measurements. So I can buy you a new hoop skirt. The last one suffered some serious damage after you attacked me with the peg leg. I can’t be going to any cotillion with a girl who has a bent hoop in her skirt.”

  I laughed and punched him again as we headed back into the room to resume the meeting.

  Action Plan Number Five: The Great Mount Tom Children’s Crusade.

  Ashley and I had done the research on this one. We had prepared a mini-presentation for the group.

  “In 1963,” Ashley began, “at the height of the civil rights mov
ement, hundreds of African American schoolkids marched to the mayor’s office in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, to talk to him about the evils of segregation and how it could be ended. As if that was really going to happen. Peaceful, law-abiding kids got blasted with high-pressure fire hoses, attacked by vicious police dogs, clubbed by cops, and dragged off to jail. Fortunately, this pissed off a whole lot of people. Even the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, shit the bed on that one. Martin Luther King Jr. said that getting kids involved was one of the wisest moves he ever made. It helped pave the way for the mammoth 1963 March on Washington and the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Both were huge deals.

  “In other words,” Ashley said, summarizing this pivotal historical event for the group, “it rocked.”

  “Awesome,” Piggy said. “Clubbed, hosed, bitten, and busted. I am totally down for that.”

  “Does our police department even own a dog?” Becky asked.

  “Does our fire department even own a hose?” Kevin asked.

  “Here’s the point,” I said, ignoring their questions. “If we did something like that, we could ‘subpoena the conscience of the nation to the judgment seat of morality.’”

  “Wow,” Kevin said. “Did you just make that up?”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “And I also made up the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. How about Martin Luther King Jr.?”

  “And what the heck does it mean?” Sam asked.

  “I think,” Becky said, “it means that us kids can make a whole lot of difference.”

  “Yeah,” Ashley added. “Maybe the whole country won’t be watching, but the mining company sure will.”

  “And there’s something about kids doing stuff that pulls on people’s heart strings,” I said. “If adults do it, they’re like, ‘Yeah, whatever.’ If kids do it, they’re like, ‘Hmmm . . . now look at that.’”

  “Count me in,” Kevin said.

  “Me too!” Marc added.

  The rest of the group nodded.

  So there we had it: five awesome ways to save Mount Tom.

  Petitions, permits, pastors, letters, and the Children’s Crusade.

  Five awesome ways, two awesome guys, and two very scary morons.