KABOOM Page 25

  Mr. Cooper looked like he was ready to cry. It was super-awkward.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Cooper,” Ashley said. “We’ll meet somewhere else. We’ll still do our thing. It’s not like you did anything anyway.”

  “Ashley” I said. “Don’t make this worse.”

  “You must hate me!” Mr. Cooper said, his voice low and trembling.

  “We don’t hate you,” I said. “We could never hate you.”

  “‘Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed!’” Coop said. “‘It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.’”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “It’s what Jesus said about Judas,” Frank said. “That’s a little over the top, Mr. Cooper. I don’t think what you did to us is quite that bad. I wouldn’t floss—I mean, fret too much over it.”

  “Anyway, we get it,” Ashley said. “You had to do what you had to do. And, seriously, what kind of a job could you possibly get other than in this shithole?”

  “Ashley!” I scolded.

  “I just meant he’s so old and all.”

  “Thanks,” Mr. Cooper said. To our great relief, he had brought out his flosser again. The in-between green-tooth thingies were creeping me out. “You’ve made me feel so much better.”

  54

  “LOOK AT THIS GIRL,” Ashley said. We were back in my room, supposedly writing a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency about how horrible mountaintop removal was. Ashley had insisted on taking a break from saving Tom and was flipping through the pages of Teen Vogue, dissing all the anorexic models, laughing at their hairstyles. She still wasn’t over the breakup with Marc, but at least she was laughing again.

  Given the disaster that was the last KABOOM meeting combined with Ashley’s heartbreak, I still hadn’t broached the idea that the mine just might be a historic site. But now it seemed time to tell her. Probably way past time.

  “It’s like that day you stuck a spoon in the light socket in second grade,” Ashley continued. “The Frankenstein’s bride look, remember? Even Mr. Cooper on a bad hair day doesn’t look this wack. Could you imagine a photo shoot with your hair in this clustermuck? I’d sue the magazine!”

  “Seriously, Ashley,” I said. “Enough of the monster ’dos. I’ve been thinking. Kevin and my father were looking into possible Civil War historic sites on the mountain and it just may be that our mine is part of one. Can you believe it? If that’s the case, then we may be on to something big, Ashley. Something really big! I mean, we might be able to use historic preservation as a way to stop American! And don’t go biting my head off over this, but maybe we should bring KABOOMers to our mine and have a meeting there. Think how dramatic that would be? They’d all flip! I know we made a pact never to tell anyone about it, but maybe now’s the time. It feels right to me.”

  Ashley ignored me.

  “Wait, wait, how about her?” Ashley flipped to a particularly frightening image. “Is this like the Halloween issue or what? Scary, that’s what it is. I mean, total zombie. Just look at her.”

  I grabbed the magazine and threw it under the bed.

  “Stop, Ash! Are you even listening to me? We need to figure out what to do. We may not have that much time. American has been quiet for way too long. There have been articles in the paper and they did that assembly thingy but other than that they’ve been eerily silent. They’re probably trying to keep it all hush-hush and then, bam, bring the hammer down. Just like that. I know they’re up to something, Ashley. There’s no way a bunch of ripped-down flags are going to stop a big company project like that. It just isn’t. They’re going to be back. I can feel it. Sooner rather than later.”

  “Whoa, whoa, slow down. If you’re saying saving Mount Tom is more important than trashing the teen vogueies, then I’m out of here!”

  This time I ignored her.

  “What do you think?” I asked. “About telling everyone and then meeting in the mine? It would get people pumped. We swore it would be our secret forever but . . .”

  Ashley looked away.

  “What?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”

  Ashley sat up, swung her legs onto the side of the bed, began to say something but looked down and stopped herself.

  “I get it,” I said. “I know how much it means to you. To both of us. The mine is our place. Our secret place. I know what you’re thinking. But saving Tom is bigger than the two of us, Ashley. As hard as it is, we’re going to have to give it up. I should have told you about the permitting thing a while ago. I’m sorry. It was just that I was afraid you’d want to tell everyone and then, you know, the mine wouldn’t be ours anymore. And that sucks. It really sucks. But I think that the time has come to . . .”

  “I took Marc there,” Ashley said, still not looking at me.

  “You what?”

  “I took Marc there. Ugh! A few days before we broke up.”

  “You took him ...?”

  “Yeah. To the mine. We did it there.”

  “You took Marc? To our mine? Without asking me?”

  Ashley didn’t answer. She had begun to cry.

  “And you did it there?”

  I was furious!

  “You had no right!” I yelled. “You had no right to bring him there without asking me. That was our mine! That was our secret and we made a pact in the seventh grade and we swore that come hell or high water we would never tell anyone about it. Never! I didn’t even tell Kevin about it when he brought up the whole historic preservation thing. And you brought Marc there? Him? And you did it there?”

  Ashley fell back into my bed, her tears soaking the sheets.

  “Now it’s not our place,” I said, my voice buckling. “And it never will be again!”

  I wished I was over at Ashley’s. I wished I was in her bedroom so I could stomp out and slam her door and run home and go to my bedroom and slam my door and be in my place where no one could come in. And if she called I wouldn’t answer the phone. And if she came over I wouldn’t let her in.

  “You’re crying?” I said. “I should be the one crying. That was our sacred place on our sacred mountain and you threw it all away. You’ve ruined everything!”

  Ashley put a pillow on her head in a fruitless attempt to muffle her sobs.

  “And now that you’ve broken up with him he’ll probably go out and tell all of his friends about how he did it with you up there and they’ll go up and spray graffiti and trash it with beer bottles and before you know it they’ll turn it into an effin crystal meth lab! And if it was a historic site they’ll screw it all up so bad that it will be useless to us. Useless! Marc betrayed you once. He’ll do it again!”

  I started to cry even louder than Ashley.

  Shit, shit, and triple shit.

  Britt opened my bedroom door.

  “What’s up, ladies?” Britt asked. “Boy trouble?”

  “Get out!” I yelled, taking the pillow off of Ashley’s head and throwing it at Britt.

  “Jeez!” Britt said “Excuse me for breathing.” She turned and made a hasty retreat.

  Everything was going to shit. All of the bad stuff that was happening came crashing down on me at once. Miller had kicked our group out of school. Coop had turned Judas. Taylor had dumped Britt. Marc had chosen the mascot over KABOOM. Ashley had dumped Marc. And now this.

  I thought about what Sadie and Dad had said about Mom. About how mean people could be. About how unfair it all was. Maybe they were right. Maybe it was all just too much for me. Maybe I should throw in the towel and just give up.

  “It doesn’t even matter anyway,” I continued, my voice breaking. “They’re just going in there with their death machines and they’re going to cut down all of the trees and they’re going to blow the top off the mountain, and it’s all going to be SHIT! I don’t even care about it anymore. None of it matters!”

  Ashley was having trouble breathing she was crying so hard.

  I’d seen her cry before. I’d seen
her cry more times than I could count. Once she had climbed way up high on Bradley Beech and a limb broke and she fell and dislocated her shoulder and cried so hard she threw up.

  But I’d never seen her cry like this.

  “If you’re going to throw up, go to the bathroom,” I said. “Don’t barf my bed.”

  “Woof, woof,” Ashley mumbled through her tears.

  “Barf, not bark, you idiot!”

  “I was going to tell you before,” she said, tears still streaming.

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “Why did you do it?”

  “I don’t know. I just wanted to share it with him. God, I wish I hadn’t. The jerk.”

  “I want to share it with Kevin and I haven’t!”

  “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”

  Ashley caught her breath, composed herself and scooted closer to me.

  I wanted to criss-cross applesauce her. I wanted to kick her out of my room. I wanted to make her go home and cry herself to sleep in her own bed.

  But it’s awfully hard to do that when your best friend in the whole universe is lying in your bed and holding your hand, crying her eyes out, and apologizing over and over again.

  “You really did it with him there?” I asked.

  Ashley perked up.

  “We did. It was fun. A little creepy. A little kinky. But really fun. Afterwards my hair looked like zombie girl’s, but other than that. . . And here’s the tragedy. Just when he finally figured out where my you-know-what is I’ve gone and dumped him.”

  “Humph,” I said, still mad as hell.

  Ashley had finally toned it down to sniffles.

  “I am so sorry for not asking you. I really am. But we were going out and we were looking for a place to fool around and it just sort of happened. I’m sorry.”

  “Humph!” I said again.

  Ashley reached over to my bedside table and pulled out two Kleenexes. She handed one of them to me.

  “You know,” Ashley continued, “everything you just said was totally right. Everything except for one thing.”

  “I’ve never said anything wrong in my life,” I replied.

  “Well, there’s always a first time. And this was it.”

  “Okay. Tell me.”

  “You said it doesn’t matter. You said they’re just going to go in with their death machines and cut down all of the trees and blow the top off of Tom and turn it all to shit.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What’s your point?”

  “You’re wrong. They aren’t going to do it. It’s not going to happen, Cyndie. And do you know why?”

  “No. Tell me why.”

  “Because of you. You’re going to stop them. You’re going to think of something, just like you’ve done with this whole historic preservation thing. I knew you would. Everyone in KABOOM knew you would. That’s why everyone keeps showing up to meetings. That’s why everyone’s so stoked. That is so awesome about our mine maybe being a Civil War site! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before! I mean, I always just assumed it was Hillbilly Tom’s mine. Those kinds of places are a dime a dozen around here. But if it isn’t . . .

  “You know, Cyndie, the tree cutters and the mountaintop blower-uppers may be incredibly powerful. They may have all the equipment. They may have all the money. But we’ve got a secret weapon that they don’t have.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “We’ve got you!” Ashley said.

  It’s awfully hard to stay mad at your best friend in the whole universe, even though they screwed up royally, when they go and say stuff like that. Even if it is a crock of crap.

  I tried my best to humph again but all that came out was a sigh.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” Ashley asked.

  I took a deep breath and held it. Difficult as it was, I got a sudden jolt that this wasn’t just about me. I could picture Widow Combs and Mom and Elise from Kayford’s Mountain and all those who came before me and all those who would come after holding their breaths as well. As imperfect as we all were, we were fighting the good fight. And there could be no letting up.

  I let my breath out, scooted closer to Ashley, and gave her a forgiving hug.

  “Actually,” I said, “you’re wrong. We’re going to stop them, Ashley. Not me. We.”

  “We are,” Ashley said, squeezing my hand.

  We lay there holding hands, our heads touching.

  “Did your hair really look like zombie girl’s?” I asked.

  “Worse!” Ashley giggled. “Even worse.”

  55

  I WAS NEATLY FOLDED into Kevin’s lap on my living room couch while we waited for Britt and Dad to come home from an ice cream run. I had ordered chocolate chip cookie dough. Kevin, for some godforsaken reason, was getting boring old vanilla.

  What was wrong with that boy?

  The four of us were spending an awesome evening watching a really stupid movie.

  I loved how perfectly I fit into Kevin’s lap. I was scrunched up with my head tucked into his shoulder and my knees folded into his legs. With Britt and Dad gone we were all over the map. I had one hand inching a few degrees south of his belt buckle. He had one hand drifting north of my inner thigh while his other hand slid east to west in delightful circling motions under my top.

  I was hoping Dad’s car would break down. Or maybe the ice cream store would get robbed and Britt and Dad would have to be interrogated as witnesses. Or at the very least, the two of them would be abducted by aliens and whisked off to another planet to get prodded and probed and poked for at least another hour or two. Anything to delay their coming home. Anything to allow Kevin to continue doing exactly what he was doing.

  And then, suddenly, Kevin stopped kissing me. He looked into my eyes.

  “You know what?” he said, this time circling my lips with his fingers. His voice was trembling.

  “What?” I asked, twirling his hair. I loved to twirl his hair. He had been all set to get it cut the day before but I had convinced him to leave it long for at least one more week. Longer was so much more twirlable.

  “I really, really, really like you,” he said.

  “I am so, so, so glad.”

  “And you know what else?”

  “Tell me,” I said, twirling away.

  “That’s as high as it goes.”

  “High as what goes?”

  “Reallies on the likeability scale. Three of them. It doesn’t go any higher than that.”

  “So you can’t really, really, really, really like me?”

  “Nope. Can’t do it. Against the rules. Three reallies is the max.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair,” I said, faking a frown. Kevin put his fingers on my lips and pushed them up into a smile.

  “I’m not so sure,” Kevin said. “Maybe it is fair. Maybe it’s even better than fair! This is, like, uncharted territory for me, but I’m kind of thinking that if you do one more really cute thing, or even look at me one more time in that way that you do, then we may have to switch it up.”

  “Switch it up?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

  Kevin kissed me. One kiss on each of my eyes, on each of my cheeks, one on my chin, and then a long, slow yummy mouth kiss.

  Once more he pulled away and looked at me.

  “Switch it up,” he whispered. “Begin a brand new scale. You know, upgrade. Move on to something beyond like.”

  “Beyond like,” I murmured. I could barely breathe.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Beyond like.”

  I took his face in my hands and kissed him hard.

  Kevin sat up. “That’s it!” he said. “That’s what I was talking about. Now you’ve gone and done it! There’s no turning back!”

  “Gone and done what?”

  “That one more really cute thing. Just like I said. Do you know what that means?” He took both my hands in his and looked right into my eyes. I held my breath.

  “Tell me,” I whispered.

  “That means that I am totally
and completely . . .”

  The door opened and Britt came crashing in.

  “I scream! You scream! We all scream for ice cream!” she sang. “Never fear, ice cream is here!” She flung herself over the top of the couch, plopped down next to us, and slung her legs onto mine, which were still draped over Kevin’s.

  “You didn’t watch any more of the movie did you?” she asked. “It’s like the worst thing ever, but I kind of like it.” Britt stopped and stared at the two of us.

  “What?” she asked. “What’s going on? What did I miss?”

  I nestled my head back onto Kevin’s shoulder, reached around him, and held him as tight as I possibly could.

  •

  “Wow!” Ashley said. “He was going to say it! He was going to come right out and say it!”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding me? He was! He definitely was! What else could it possibly have been?”

  I had given Ashley the blow-by-blow of last night’s episode, and she was right. At least, I hoped she was.

  Kevin had almost said it! He was that close! That close!

  I could have killed that half-wit twit of a Britt!

  Sisters! Achh!

  “What would you have said?” Ashley asked. “He was going to drop the L-bomb. You know he was! What were you going to say?”

  What was I going to say? I probably wouldn’t have been able to move my tongue at all. It would have just flopped there, hanging out and rolling around dripping pools of saliva like someone in the middle of a seizure, for goodness sake. Maybe, just maybe, I might have spit out some such incoherent spaz gobbledygook that would have left poor Kevin wondering what part of Planet Ditz I came from.

  “Plumph!” I would have sputtered. Or maybe “Blurph!” Or something equally insane.

  Either that or I would have just passed out.

  It wasn’t that I hadn’t been thinking about this forever.

  I had liked Kevin from the get go. And then really liked him. And then really, really, really liked him.