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  “Oh my God, Kevin!” I said. “We’re collecting signatures for the petition. It is not a date.”

  “Good,” Kevin said. “It would be weird having our first date be at the dump.”

  “As if a first date at a Civil War dance isn’t weird enough,” I said, laughing.

  “Exactly,” Kevin said. “Anyway, it would be way too awkward going out with you without your entire extended family showing up to supervise.”

  “Shut up!” I said, punching him in the arm.

  The dump opened at ten and we got there shortly after. Becky, who knew a lot about these things from her activist parents, had called Scott Adams, the town dumpmaster, and gotten permission for us to collect signatures.

  It was hot. Bone-wringing hot. My armpits were already drenched from the stifling humidity. Not exactly the most attractive thing in the world.

  The heat, the humidity, the sticky, gooey pavement, and the smell of incoming dump made for a less-than-romantic atmosphere, but standing next to Kevin collecting signatures was a wondrous thing.

  Kevin was remarkable. He had a way about him that drew people in. He was like a dump magnet. Charming, but not annoyingly so. And he was great with the old folks, complimenting them on their hair or their ability to haul out their own trash.

  “Step right up!” he’d yell when another carful pulled in. “Save Mount Tom. Save the world. Smell Ashley’s hair!”

  It was going great. Sure, there were grumbles here and there and we got ignored by more than a few, but there were also boatloads of people signing the petition. Even the miners. They were pissed because mountaintop removal was taking the miner out of mining. The blasters, the scooper-uppers, the trucker-awayers would all be from out of town. There weren’t going to be nearly the jobs there would be if there were a traditional mine on the mountain.

  “Thanks for doing this,” they’d say.

  “Great job.”

  “Good for you.”

  One toothless old lady came tottering up, dragging her trash bag behind her, and shouted to us, “That’s right, kids. It’s good to see someone getting off their asses and raising hell! Let them bastards have it! Sons of bitches!” Then she hocked a loogie, a big, ol’ juicy one, right behind us, and shuffled away.

  “Just think,” Ashley said. “That’ll be us in seventy years.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said.

  Other than the shit smell, the morning was coming up peaches and cream. Frank had gotten into a long discussion with some old geezer about God’s desire to save His creation, and you would have thought he was preaching the Sermon on the Mount. A bunch of other folks had clustered around to listen. Becky was nothing short of inspirational in her Save the Mountain pitch, plus she had the flirt gene and drew the old folks in like flies on garbage. Ash was grinning from ear to ear while continuing to flick her hair in the hopes of sending the twenty-five-flower-and-plant-scented wafts Marc’s way. Kevin and I stuck together and were reeling the dump-goers in big time. Before we knew it, we had almost fourteen pages filled with signatures. Way over a hundred people.

  Good times couldn’t last forever. Just when we were thinking about packing it in, trouble showed up in a muscle pickup truck.

  Surprise, surprise: Bert Stanmere and Michael Mead.

  “And I thought dirty diapers stank!” Ashley muttered.

  “Shhh . . .” I whispered. “Let’s just go. The dump closes in a few minutes anyway.”

  “Hey!” Bert shouted, walking towards us. “Look who’s here. It’s my favorite dykes. The tree-hugging homos!”

  “Hey!” Ashley shouted back. “I had almost forgotten the two of you lived here. Now I know where that lovely smell of shit comes from. Welcome home!”

  Bert snarled and spat—spot-on, smack-dab in the very same place as the crusty old lady’s.

  “Stop, Ashley!” I whispered, this time a little more urgently. “Please. Let’s just go.”

  Becky and Frank had already left and Kevin and Marc were behind the recycling bins, helping some old folks empty out their car. We were left to fend for ourselves.

  “Whatcha doing, girlies?” Bert asked, making a grab for the petition. Ashley was too quick and hid it behind her back.

  “Nothing that concerns you,” she said. “It’s paper. With words. You’d have to be able to read to understand.”

  “Don’t fuck with me!” Bert said, spitting again.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” Ashley said, with an exaggerated grimace. “Anyone who would do it with you would have to be clinically insane. Or is there some dump rat here that you get it on with?” Ashley made little rat-like noises, stuck out her front teeth, and moved her hips in a humping motion.

  “Bitch!” Bert yelled, reaching out to grab her arm.

  Ashley twisted away and slapped him across his face. Not just a dinky, mild, tentative slap, but a full-fledged slap-whap that twisted his head and sent him reeling a couple of steps backward. A Civil War–cannonshot slap.

  Kevin and Marc stopped what they were doing and came hustling over. The dumpmaster also joined us.

  “Dump closes in two minutes,” he said, glaring at Bert and Michael. The look he gave them made it seem as though he had made their acquaintance previously. “I suggest you finish your business and get on out of here.”

  Bert stood still, rubbing his face, and squinting his eyes at Ashley.

  Ashley took a step towards him but I grabbed her arm and held her back.

  “Thanks, kids,” the dumpmaster said. “You done good. Anytime you want to come back, feel free. My dump is yours!”

  “Thank you,” I said. “We really appreciate it. You’ve been awesome.”

  “We’ll be back, too!” Bert said, still rubbing his face. “You better believe it, bitch. We will be back!”

  I took hold of Ashley and steered her away before she could go for his jugular.

  •

  “You guys want to grab something to eat?” Kevin asked.

  “Duh!” we all said.

  Ashley, Marc, Kevin, and I were headed back to town from the dump. Kevin was driving and I was riding shotgun. Even with the windows wide open, the residual dump smell, combined with Ashley’s twenty-five plant essences, was still a tad overwhelming.

  We parked in front of Casey’s Diner, the go-to breakfast joint in town with a blueberry waffle thingamabob to die for and milkshakes the size of my thighs.

  “Ashley,” I said, as we had all sat down and ordered. “I love you. I really and truly do.”

  “I love you, too,” she said.

  “I honestly think that you’ll be my best friend forever. I cannot imagine life without you.”

  “Right back at you,” she said.

  “But damn it if there aren’t times when you could really learn to keep your mouth shut!”

  “What?” she said. “And let those assholes run all over us? No effin way! I’m standing my ground!”

  “I know you are,” I said, stabbing a fork full of waffle and blueberries and popping it into Kevin’s open mouth. We hadn’t even gone on an official date and I was already feeding him! “And we have your back. You know we do. I’m just saying you don’t have to go off on them the way that you do.”

  “That bastard Bert started it!”

  “Tell the part about humping the rat again,” Kevin said.

  I poked Kevin with my fork.

  “Stop it!” I said. “Don’t encourage her!”

  “I think she did the right thing,” Marc said. “I mean, those guys needed a smackdown.”

  Ashley beamed.

  “Let me channel Frank for a moment with the ‘What Would Jesus Do’ thing,” I said. “After all, we’re trying to take the moral high ground here, right? What with saving the mountain and all? Wouldn’t turning the other cheek have been more appropriate?”

  “I’ll turn his other cheek any day!” Ashley said. “Slap it down! Boom! He won’t need to shave for weeks!”

  “Bastard!” Marc sai
d, fist-bumping her.

  “Asshole,” Kevin said, reaching over and wiping a blueberry blob off of my chin. “Not you. Him.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “All I’m saying is that we need to . . .”

  “I know, I know,” Ashley said. “Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. I get it, Cyndie, I really do. It’s just that I get so damn mad sometimes!”

  “I know you do,” I said forking another waffle bite into Kevin’s mouth. He was like a baby bird. As soon as I’d pop one piece in he’d open his mouth wide and start panting for another one.

  “Do you actually chew or do you just inhale?” I asked.

  “Mumph!” he mumbled.

  “Anyway,” I continued. “If we’re going to do this Children’s Crusade thing we can’t have you going off all the time. We just can’t. Think if all the black kids had done that down in Alabama in 1963. John F. Kennedy wouldn’t have turned the other cheek, he would have just turned away. Let them get what they got. Hosed and bitten and beaten and busted. Things would have turned out a lot differently. And not in a good way.”

  “But we need people to get mad,” Marc said. “There’s so much to be mad about. I mean, the damn coal company wants to come in and blow up the mountain.” This spoken by the boy whose father worked for American and was the high school miner. Amazing!

  “Our mountain,” Kevin added, looking at me.

  God, he was cute!

  “People need to get off their asses and into the streets,” Marc continued, sounding a lot like Piggy. “Mad works.”

  “I think Cyndie’s point is that there’s mad and then there’s mad,” Kevin said. “Ashley you were awesome today. You really were. Of course, if you needed backup I could easily have taken him down.” Kevin rolled up his sleeve and flexed his biceps. “Boulders,” he said. “Rock-solid. Feel them!”

  I rolled my eyes

  “But Cyndie’s right,” he continued. “We’re on stage now. Up front and center. People are going to be watching our every move. We screw this up and the whole thing goes down. We blow our tops, they’ll blow off Tom’s. We’re just going to have to chill.”

  “I’ll chill after I pee,” Ashley said, turning to me. “Are you coming?” We headed off to the girl’s room.

  “Oh my God!” Ashley said from the stall next to mine. “Did you see how he rushed to my defense? Did you see that?”

  “I did,” I said.

  “Do you think he likes me?”

  “I do. I really do. Do you still think he’s a spy?”

  “I couldn’t care less! And Kevin! Oh my God. He can’t keep his eyes off of you! And you’re actually feeding him! That is so hot! Can you believe this is happening to us?”

  “Pinch me again.”

  Ashley laughed.

  “Maybe I’ll ask Marc if he wants to walk me home after lunch,” she said. “Is that too weird? Is that too forward?”

  “No,” I said. “Not at all. One bit of advice, though.”

  “What?” Ashley said. “Tell me.”

  “One smackdown is enough for the day. Unless absolutely necessary, keep your hands to yourself.”

  “What? That’s no fun! I can think of a certain place I’d love to be putting my hands!”

  “Ashley!”

  “Just kidding!” Ashley said. “Not!”

  41

  “YOU SURE THIS WASN’T A DATE?” Kevin asked as he drove me home. Ashley and Marc had left us and walked. “I mean, we did go out to lunch and all.”

  “We did,” I said.

  “And, you know, I picked you up and now I’m dropping you off.”

  “You are.”

  “And we’ve been doing a lot of stuff together. You know, between the Civil War battles, the hoop-skirt take-off, hanging out between classes, KABOOM meetings, and now this whole dump and lunch thing.” With the car windows wide open, Kevin’s hair was blowing into his face and he kept having to flick it out of his eyes. Again, I noticed those girly-girl eyelashes, long and curly, the ones that Ashley and I could only dream of having. Lavish lashes you’d spend big bucks on in a spa trying to replicate.

  “Dump and a diner!” I said. “I gotta admit, Kevin, it doesn’t get much more romantic than that!”

  Kevin laughed.

  “Anyway, why are you so obsessed with whether or not it’s a date?” I asked.

  We had pulled into my driveway and parked the car. Kevin drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

  “I’m not obsessed. I’m just . . .” He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, continuing to drum away. Once more he flicked his hair out of his eyes. “You know when I kissed you after the flying rammer thing? Do you remember that?”

  Did I remember the kiss? Was he kidding? It would be lodged in the mainframe of my brain’s hall of fame for eternity!

  “I have a rather vague memory of it,” I answered.

  “Well, I’d really like to do that again. For real this time, without an audience. Just the two of us. And if we’re just friends, then I can’t. I mean, we’re not just friends. Well, we are, but, if it’s a date, then . . .”

  Kevin did the deep breath thing again and then turned and looked right at me. Not just looked but really looked. It wasn’t the way you look at someone you know and they’re interesting and all but they’re not that interesting and you’ve got other things on your mind like school or your zit goatee or what’s for dinner and you’re listening to them but not really looking. He looked at me and it made me feel like I was the most important thing in the whole world, more important than school or dinner or the Civil War or even Mount Tom. No one had ever looked at me that way before.

  I looked at him and I didn’t blush. At least I think I didn’t. I looked right back at him and I thought: Wow. So this is what it feels like! So this is what all of the songs and books and movies are all about. The first look. The first real look!

  “So,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “Let me get this straight. If it’s a date, we get to kiss? If it’s not, we don’t?”

  “Exactly,” Kevin said. “Call me old-fashioned but that’s the way I feel. Is that weird?”

  “Super-weird,” I said. “It makes lame sound tame.”

  “Thanks,” Kevin said.

  “You’re welcome. I mean, seriously Kevin, think about it. You’ve put me in a bit of a pickle here, haven’t you? We could call it a date, we get to kiss, but I spend the rest of my life living with the fact that my first date was at the town dump. I’d be scarred for life. That’s a really tough burden to carry, you know. Or, we don’t call it a date, we don’t kiss, and I spend the rest of the weekend flogging myself with my peg leg cursing my stupidity, my body bruised and bloodied and battered and totally unattractive, so when I see you at school on Monday you run away shrieking and screaming and want nothing to do with me ever again and I spend my entire life sad and lonely and heartbroken, a shattered, cold, cold remnant of the totally hot sex goddess I once was.”

  “Crap!” Kevin said. “I hadn’t thought of that. This really is a tough one.”

  “It is. It totally is.”

  “Maybe if we get your father, your sister, your auntie, and Coop out here, we could sit down and figure this whole thing out together.”

  “Can Ashley and Marc come too?” I asked.

  “Absolutely!” Kevin said, laughing. “The more the merrier!”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s sort of asking a lot of them. I mean, it could take hours to round them all up. And God only knows what Ashley and Marc are up to. Maybe, just maybe, we could work this out ourselves.”

  “Wait!” Kevin said stopping his drumming and reaching out to grab my hand. “I’ve got it!”

  “What?” I said, feeling his fingers encircling mine, hardly believing this was happening.

  “Compromise!” Kevin said, squeezing my hand. “We can call this something other than a ‘date’ and I’ll bend on the first-kiss rule.”

  “A take-out?” I said, squeezing back.


  “Too fast-foody.”

  “A courtship?

  “Too back-in-the-day.”

  “A thingamabob!” I said, grabbing his other hand in mind.

  “Super-strange!” Kevin cried. “But perfect! I could definitely see kissing you after a thingamabob!”

  “Damn!” I said, letting go of his hands.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “What do I do about the dump thing? I’m still stuck on that one. I’m sorry, Kevin, but I just can’t have my first thingamabob be at the town dump. Call me old-fashioned but I just can’t!” I was hoping I wasn’t dragging out this long tease for too long. We were almost there. I could practically taste his lips on mine.

  Kevin bent forward and closed his eyes. I reached over and pulled a strand of hair out of his face and rearranged it behind his ears.

  Suddenly he bolted upright.

  “I’ve got it!” he cried, once more grabbing my hands and squeezing tight.

  “Tell me!” I said, squeezing back, even tighter this time.

  “It’s not a dump!”

  “It’s not?”

  “No!”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s a recycling station! An environmental transfer site!”

  “Fantastic!” I said. “My first thingamabob at the recycling station! I am totally down with that!”

  “Kissable?” Kevin asked. He had taken off his seat belt and scooted closer to me.

  “Totally kissable!” I answered. Kevin turned and took me into his arms.

  42

  “HOW’D IT GO WITH MARC?” I asked Ashley. It was later that night and she was over at my house.

  “Oh my God!” she said.

  “Oh my God good?”

  “Oh my God!” Ashley said again.

  “I’m dying here Ashley. Tell me. Tell me!”

  “I am in like. I am in total like!”

  “What happened?”

  “Well,” Ashley said. “It started off a little awkward. I was demonstrating the smackdown move I made on that bastard Bert, but I accidentally let poor Marc have it across his face. I meant to hold back but, spaz that I am, that didn’t exactly happen.”