KABOOM Read online

  “What’s the opposite of criss-cross applesauce?” I asked, snuggling closer.

  49

  “YOU KNOW,” Becky said. “I’m not sure mountaintop removal quite does the trick.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. It was Thursday after school and we KABOOMers were meeting again.

  “The words: mountaintop removal. They just don’t cut it. It sounds so, I don’t know, clean. Nice. Sanitized. Almost normal. Like going to the dentist or something. This won’t hurt a bit. You’ll feel a little pinch and then we’ll remove the mountaintop.”

  “Or getting a Brazilian wax,” Ashley added. “I’d like my mountaintop removed, please.”

  All the girls laughed. I’m not quite sure the boys got it.

  “Words matter,” Becky said. “It really does change how people think about things.”

  “My uncle just got back from Afghanistan,” Jon Buntington said. Everybody looked up when he talked. He so rarely spoke that when he did, everyone was all ears. “When our troops kill women and children over there they call it collateral damage. Not murder. Not even death. But collateral damage. Takes the blood right out of it.”

  “It sure does,” I said.

  “And when our troops accidentally kill one of our own they call it friendly fire. Can you believe that bullshit? There, there, ma’am, no need to cry. Your son was killed by friendly fire.”

  “That sucks,” Piggy said.

  “You said it, bro.” Jon frowned and shook his head.

  We were all amazed. Jon had never put together so many words in his life!

  “It’s like what we were talking about in English class,” Kevin said. “We had to read 1984 a few weeks ago. George Orwell. I thought I’d hate it but he’s, like, the bomb. It was all about making lies sound truthful and murder respectable. ‘War is peace, hate is love, slavery is freedom.’ That kind of stuff. Dude, they’re out to keep us in line.”

  “Orwellian coal-speak,” Becky said. “Mountaintop removal makes it seem like you can stitch it all right back together again when they’re done. No need to ask questions. It’ll all be good as new. Trust us.”

  “I’m surprised American hasn’t come up with another name for it,” Ashley said. “Something kinder and gentler. Like, I don’t know, mountaintop enhancement. Like something you’d do to your boobs.”

  “It’s like what Elise at Kayford’s Mountain was telling us,” I said. “The lies the company spews about turning a ragged, good-for-nothing mountaintop into a beautiful garden meadow. American should call it garden-top placement.”

  “Or mountaintop gardening,” Kevin said.

  Jon spoke and all listened. “My uncle said in Afghanistan when they blow up a village and burn down all the houses and bring on the shit-show, they call it pacification. They could call this gardenication.”

  We all laughed at the absurdity of it all.

  “Screw this mountaintop removal bullshit,” Piggy said. “Let’s come up with a better name for it. Something closer to the truth.”

  “I like what you called it the other day,” I said to Ashley.

  “What was that?” Ashley asked.

  “‘Bomb and bury.’”

  “That’s a good one,” Marc agreed.

  “How about ‘dig and destroy’?” Kevin said.

  Everybody starting chiming in. Phrases came fast and furious.

  “‘Wreck and ruin.’”

  “‘Burn and bulldoze.’”

  “‘Pillage and rape.’”

  “‘Chank and whack.’”

  “‘Bang up and bust.’”

  “Let’s just call it like it is,” Piggy said, wrapping things up. “No need to mince words. It’s an AFU.”

  “AFU?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Piggy said. “All Fucked Up. They don’t remove the mountaintop. They fuck it up.”

  “It’s as close to accurate as we’re probably going to get,” I said.

  So there we had it. In one short meeting we managed to put mountaintop removal to rest forever. AFU it was.

  All fucked up.

  Truer words had never been spoken.

  50

  MY DAY HAD BEGUN in the usual fog with my alarm clock blasting me out of yummy dreamland and into reality. It had turned cold overnight and my bedroom floor was freezing. Desperate to pee, struggling to make it to the bathroom before letting loose all over the floor, I went to sit on the toilet seat and voilà: Yuck! Total and complete grossness.

  “Dad!” I yelled. “How many times do I have to tell you! You’ve got to put the seat down.” I had plopped right on into the seat-less bowl and gotten Dad’s pee splatter all over me. It was the height of disgusting. No way to start the day!

  Things went downhill from there.

  Ashley and I were walking to school when Bert and Michael come hauling around the corner in their truck.

  “Hey, darlin’s,” Bert says, drooling and leering at us. “How’s about we give the twos of you a ride to paradise?”

  “Hey, assholes,” Ashley said. “How’s about I kick the twos of you in your effin balls? Oh no! Can’t do that! You don’t have any, now, do you?”

  I picked up a rock and threatened to throw it at them. They both grinned, spat in our direction, and sped away in a muffler-less roar.

  School was even worse.

  Mr. Livingston, the world’s worst math teacher, was attempting to explain in his usual crap way a fairly basic formula that could project income growth into the future.

  “This is important,” Livingston said. “Some of you gentlemen might find this incredibly useful for a business you might eventually become involved in.”

  I raised my hand.

  “Mightn’t us ladies need it to?” I asked, in as mocking a voice as I could muster, dialing up my good ol’ holler-girl West Virginia drawl. “You know, for figuring how many diapers my nine kids might need?”

  I was glad I still didn’t have that rock in my hand. I was seething.

  A few months earlier, a comment like that from Livingston would have soared right over my head, totally unnoticed. Not now. Those days were over. The mountaintop removal issue was opening my eyes to all sorts of other social injustices that flooded our holler. And once your eyes are open, there is no closing.

  Mr. Livingston made some weak, squirmish response and quickly moved on.

  But the worst had been saved for the afternoon.

  After school I went to buy tampons at Fas Chek. Not exactly my favorite thing in the world to do, particularly when Mr. Potter was at the register. Mr. Potter had been at the register forever. Mr. Potter had probably been at the register when West Virginia split from Virginia at the height of the Civil War. Mr. Potter was the reason some girls hitched rides to the next town over to buy tampons, just so they didn’t have to deal with his stinky eye.

  Even the word menstruation had exacerbated my pissy mood. I mean, come on—menstruation? Jeez, the one thing we have that guys don’t and they still have to name it after themselves?

  I hated buying tampons from Mr. Potter. I absolutely hated it. It was one of the things that distressed me the most about not having a mother. Mom would definitely have done this most embarrassing of tasks for me.

  I put it in the back of my brain to be the tampon buyer for Britt when her time came. As annoying as she was, I didn’t want her to have to go through Potter hell.

  But have blood, must buy. No matter what slime lurks behind the counter.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” Potter says, licking his lips. I’m buying tampons and the old fart calls me “sweetheart”? Yuck. Beyond yuck. Really creepy yuck.

  “I hear you’ve gone all anti-coal on us, huh?” he continued. “Leading the charge in the War on Coal now, are we?” Oh, the joy of living in a small town where everyone knew everyone’s business.

  “It’s called saving Mount Tom,” I said. “I’m not against the Number 3 Mine. That’s where my uncle and my granddaddy worked. What I am against is blowing up Mount T
om. If they ruin the mountain it could very well ruin our town, which would put you, Mister Potter, out of business.”

  “Well, well, well,” he said, not even bothering to hide his smirk. “Aren’t you a feisty little thing. Sounds like you’ve been listening a little too much to those outsiders. Those elitist college kids. Those environmentalists.” The way he spat out the word environmentalists was the same way you’d spit out the words Pittsburgh Panthers, the University of West Virginia Mountaineers’ chief football rival.

  Those were the three worst things you could be called around here: An outsider. An elitist. An environmentalist. The terrible trio. The triple whammy. To be labeled one was harsh enough. Three strikes and you were totally out.

  For some people, an outsider meant you hadn’t lived in West Virginia your whole life. And I mean your whole life! Over the summer there had been an obituary in the paper for a ninety-three-year-old West Virginia woman who had moved here from Pennsylvania when she was three, nine decades ago. The obit read “though not originally from around here, she nonetheless managed to make this holler her home.” She had moved to her holler in 1925! She had lived in the same valley for ninety effin years! Yet she was still tainted! She was still an outsider. You couldn’t even go to Charleston for the weekend and not come home to raised eyebrows.

  An elitist meant you had an education. For some people it even meant you had finished high school. “Now,” folks would say. “I might not be as educated as you are, but ...” The implication being that whatever that educated person said was suspect. Not to be believed. Probably an outright lie. Why? Because they had gone to college? Hello!

  The more schooling you had the less likely you were to know anything? Go figure!

  And then there was environmentalist. I was proud of the title, but when people labeled you as that, it was boom! The ultimate smackdown. You could be a child molester, a wife beater, a meth addict, a thief, and a down-and-out no-good—but as long as you weren’t an environmentalist there was hope. There was at least a chance for redemption. A good chunk of the population considered environmentalists worse than black widow spiders. They ate human babies for breakfast.

  “No need to worry your pretty little head about any of that stuff,” Mr. Potter continued. “Don’t be like your mama. You just be a good girl and let those coal boys do what they do best.”

  “My mama?” I was confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “Sweetie,” Potter continued, ignoring my question. “With looks like yours, you’re never going to have to worry about a thing.” Potter was leering at me, spittle forming at the corner of his mouth. He was practically fondling the box of tampons, stroking them as he put them in a bag. It was all I could do to keep my lunch down.

  I was pissed. Really pissed.

  “Mr. Potter,” I cooed. “Haven’t you heard? It’s the twenty-first century. Us holler girls can work the corner and still shut down the mountaintop removers. We can do two things at once, Mr. Potter! Isn’t that special?”

  Mr. Potter looked confused. He stopped fingering the tampon box and handed me the bag.

  “I think you best mind your own business, missy,” he said. “Stay out of the way of the big boys.”

  “I think you should shut the hell up, Mr. Potter,” I said. “And stay out of the way of me!” I shot him the most evil eye I could muster, gave him the finger, and stormed out.

  •

  “You better watch it,” I said to Kevin. I had just finished telling him, for the third time, the drama of my day. We were parked in my driveway after going to the movies. Usual guy-movie plot. Spoiler alert: everyone killed everyone else and then blew everything up in the end. Kevin, of course, thought it was awesome.

  It had done nothing to raise my opinion of humans with penises.

  “Uh oh,” he asked. “What did I do now?”

  “It has not been a good day,” I said. “One wrong word from you and I’m liable to bite your head off.”

  “Ooh-la-la,” Kevin said, reaching over and stroking my hair. “Just like the black widow spider. Except I think she does that after they get it on.” His hand slid off my hair, down to my shoulder, and began to creep further south.

  “Sometimes they eat them first!” I said, slapping away his hand and putting it back on the steering wheel.

  “Yum. That could be fun too.”

  “I’m serious!” I said. “You better watch it!”

  “I am watching,” he said, turning to me and staring at my boobs. “I can’t keep my eyes off of them.”

  “Ahhh!” I yelled, arching my head back and clenching my fists. “Guys!”

  “Uh oh,” Kevin said. “What did we do now?”

  “There are days that I wish I lived on a planet of just girls. No penises. No testosterone. Just girls.”

  “But then there’d be no me!” Kevin said, his fingers walking their way back into my hair.

  “Humph!” I said. One of the things about Kevin was that he was so damn cute. Try as I might, it could be incredibly hard to stay in a bad mood around him for long.

  But I was so right. A guyless world (well, okay, with one exception—Kevin . . . and maybe Marc for Ashley) would make life a whole lot easier in so many ways.

  “Why do guys do this stuff?” I asked.

  “Do what stuff?” Kevin asked.

  “Don’t play dumb with me,” I scolded. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  Kevin sighed. “You know, Cyndie,” he said. “Think how much better it would be if you’d just tell me what I did wrong. It would make it so much easier to apologize that way.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong!” I snarled.

  “Okay. So you’re mad at me because . . .”

  “I am not mad at you at all! Oh my God, Kevin. Haven’t you been listening to a word I said? Ugh! You can be so thick sometimes!”

  Kevin leaned into me and let out another sigh. An exaggerated one, loud and long, his breath blowing softly in my ear. “There are days when I wish I lived on a planet of just guys,” he whispered, his fingers tracing the shape of a heart on my back, the tingling in my ears spreading down to my neck and beyond. “No vaginas. No estrogen. Just guys.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said, turning back into his arms and trying not to laugh. “We’d see how long that world would last. I’d give it three days max!”

  “You know the biggest problem with that world?” he asked. “No one to go out and buy you more beer and nachos during halftime?”

  “The biggest problem with that world is that there’d be no you!” Kevin said, his fingers walking their way back into my hair, down to my shoulder, and then, gloriously, further south. This time I did not move them away.

  •

  It was close to midnight, my curfew. We had been fooling around for half an hour. I had drawn the line at my belly button. Anything above was fair game. Anything below, off-limits.

  It had been the most thrilling half hour of my life.

  I had just put my bra and my top back on and was resting my head on Kevin’s shoulder.

  “You know,” he said. “I do get it.”

  “What it are we talking about?” I asked.

  “It. The it of your day. All the screwed-up-guy-stuff it. I mean, I’ll be honest, I had never really thought about it before. How hard it must be for you. To be a girl and so beautiful.”

  Boy, could Kevin make my insides melt.

  “How you have to deal with all of the bullshit. Like what a moron Mr. Livingston is. And that dickhead Potter. He had you sliding down the pole right there in the drug store!”

  I momentarily stopped melting to refreeze at the thought.

  “I mean, I had always thought that every girl just wanted to be pretty, but around here all that seems to get you is a load of crap. So many guys must just look at you with one thing in mind. And one thing only.”

  He kissed the top of my head.

  “And not only are you so pretty but you’re so smart. And you�
��re out there ‘sticking it to the man,’ as Piggy likes to say with this whole Mount Tom thing. I mean, you’re the whole package. The real deal. And I never realized how hard that must be. It must really suck sometimes.”

  There was nothing left to melt. I was one big puddle on the car floor. I fought off the urge to rip off all of my clothes, and his, and go at it right then and there. In the front seat. In the back. In the middle of the lawn. Anywhere.

  “I’m sorry,” Kevin said.

  “You’re sorry? For what?”

  “I don’t know. For being a guy. For being a part of the whole penised race.”

  I laughed.

  “I forgive you,” I said, snuggling closer.

  “You do?” he asked.

  “I do. Penis and all.”

  I kissed him one more time and walked to my house and let myself in. I could feel him watching me. I could feel his eyes on my body. I could still feel his hands and his mouth and his glorious kisses all over me from the belly button on up.

  But I could also feel something else.

  He had called me the real deal. The whole package.

  He had got it.

  For the first time I could feel the L-word beginning to take shape. Not all four letters. Just the first. Just the L.

  But it was a hell of a capital L.

  51

  “YOU KNOW,” Auntie Sadie said. “You are all piss and vinegar. One feisty little girl.”

  “Sadie,” I said. “I’m fifteen years old. Not so little anymore. But I’ll take the piss and vinegar part as a compliment, even though I don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about.”

  Auntie Sadie put down her pitchfork, waddled on over, and enveloped me in her massive arms.

  “You’ll always be my little girl,” she said.

  “And you’ll always be my big auntie.” I held my breath and clenched my fists, in a desperate attempt not to be smothered to death by the hugeness of her hug.