Torched Read online

  “Even if you look at it from a Machiavellian standpoint, it makes sense,” Matt said, clearly continuing the conversation they’d been having in the living room. “We’re killing this world, but we depend on it to survive. If we ruin it, where will we live?” Some tomato sauce sprayed out of his mouth as he talked. I winced, but no one else seemed to notice.

  “Exactly,” Coyote said, getting up to dish up more spaghetti from one of our chipped red Mexican serving dishes. “Most adults don’t even hear what we’re saying. All they think about is what they’re going to buy next. Or they say we’re not being practical, that they only have time to worry about paying the mortgage and getting their kids off to college.”

  Liberty shook her head. “Except at the rate we’re going, their kids won’t be able to survive in this messed-up world, let alone go to college.” She was so intense that her red dreads looked like they could give off sparks.

  Coyote sat back down. “This food is really good, Ellie,” he said.

  Maybe the old saying was right. And he hadn’t even tasted the strawberry shortcake yet.

  “Thanks.” I didn’t trust myself to look at his face for very long. What if I forgot to blink? I focused on his hands instead. Coyote had long, tanned, strong-looking fingers.

  “Who wants dessert?” Laurel asked, beginning to dish it up. “If you think Ellie’s pasta is good, wait until you taste her strawberry shortcake.” She passed the first plate to Blue, who smacked her lips. She was so tiny she reminded me of a sprite or a fairy.

  “No whipped cream for me,” Liberty righteously declared. “I’m a vegan.”

  I decided to keep it to myself that the shortcake had an egg yolk in it for extra richness and passed her the plate Laurel handed me.

  After dinner was over, everyone carried their dishes into the kitchen. While the rest straggled back to the living room, Coyote said, “Need any help with washing up?”

  Is he just being polite—or is it something more? “Sure. Do you want to wash or dry?” With shaking hands, I turned on the faucet and started filling the sink with hot water.

  “Dry.” He started picking up plates that still had leftover food on them. I was proud to see there weren’t many.

  “So you guys put on plays about the environment or something?” I asked as Coyote scraped the plates into the compost bin. “Back in middle school, this band came to assembly and sang about how we needed to save water and energy.” I didn’t mention that they were really hokey. One of them wore a suit of armor made from tin cans.

  He smiled. “That was more of a joke.”

  “Oh.” Suddenly I felt like I was back in middle school. “Then what do you guys do?”

  Coyote’s expression turned totally serious. “You can’t tell, okay?”

  I set down the plate I held. “Tell about what?”

  Even though we were alone in the kitchen, Coyote leaned closer. He lowered his voice to a whisper and put his lips close to my ear. His breath stirred the hairs on my neck, making me shiver.

  “We’re Mother Earth Defenders.”

  I pulled back. I had read about them in the paper, sometimes seen them on the news. “You mean those people who sit in trees so the loggers won’t cut them down?”

  “That—and a few other things. But we try to keep a low profile when we’re not doing an action. There are a lot of people who don’t like what we’re doing and would stop us if they could.”

  Things were starting to fall into place. “A lot of my parents’ friends gave their kids weird names. But I kind of figured there were too many of you for that to be true.”

  He shrugged. “It’s safer if we don’t use our real names.”

  “Coyote’s cool, but if it was your real name, you’d probably get a lot of grief. At my high school everyone is into wearing the same clothes, having the same hairstyle, doing the same things. They want you to fit into one of their predetermined little groups, you know, the smart kids, or the jocks, or the drama geeks, or the people whose parents have a lot of money. They don’t like people who are different.”

  “So where do you fit in?” Coyote asked.

  “Me? I’m kind of in a group of one. Maybe two,” I added, thinking of Marijean. Because of a car accident, her dad used a wheelchair. Her mom left a long time ago. She knew what it was like to have parents you’re sort of embarrassed by at the school open house.

  He nodded, looking thoughtful. I didn’t tell him that growing up with my parents guaranteed you had to march to a different drummer. I had pretty much spent my whole life feeling like I didn’t fit in anyplace.

  “So where do you go to school?” I asked. He was still standing right next to me. I didn’t know if it was my imagination, but I thought I could feel the heat from his body.

  “Oh, I’ve already got my GED and live on my own. I work at the bike shop in Multnomah.”

  Coyote suddenly seemed a lot older. I couldn’t imagine already being done with school. “Really? How old are you? I mean, if you don’t mind my asking.”

  “I’ll be eighteen in August. Last year I talked my parents into letting me be an emancipated minor and take my GED.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That must be cool.” Suddenly, I wondered if Matt and Laurel would let me do that. Or if I wanted to. My parents always said you needed to go to college to expand your mind.

  Coyote gave me a half smile. “It has its moments. But I like working in Multnomah. It’s a pretty cool place.”

  Multnomah Village was a Portland neighborhood about ten blocks from our house. In the center was a little cluster of stores and restaurants where you could buy gelato or funky shoes, or pick up something at the bakery or the bookstore.

  Or you could get your bike fixed. I suddenly wished I had a bike.

  Coyote gave me a smile. “Stop by next time you’re in the area, okay? I can take a break and buy you a cup of tea.”

  I nodded. My veins felt like they were buzzing. Like they were filled with tiny bubbles instead of blood.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Boer War. Had anything ever been so aptly named?

  While Ms. Tamson, my history teacher, droned on about Sir Theophilus Shepstone annexing the Transvaal Republic in 1877, I stared out the window and thought about Coyote. Normally, I paid attention at school, but right now all I could concentrate on was finding a way to work the name Sir Theophilus Shepstone into conversation the next time I saw Coyote. I imagined the bright line of his mended tooth flashing when he laughed.

  I yawned again, barely managing to get my hand up to my mouth in time. I had been up all night, wondering and worrying. Did Coyote think I was cute? Or was he just being friendly? Did offering to buy me a cup of tea count as a date? I had been on a grand total of two dates in my life, and neither one of the guys had looked anything like Coyote. But if it wasn’t a date, what was it? And what about Liberty? Was she his girlfriend or not?

  Finally, the bell rang. I pushed my way through the halls and out the front door. Freedom!

  On the sidewalk, I met Marijean. Marijean made her own jewelry, and today she wore a necklace she had made out of beads, tiny gears from an old bike and walnut shells she had carved into twisting shapes. A lot of it was stuff you didn’t realize could be pretty or useful until she strung it on a colorful piece of telephone wire.

  I did basically the same thing, only with clothes. Laurel and Matt bought most of our clothes at Value Village, and a few years ago, I realized that my clothes didn’t have to be limited to how they looked when I found them on the rack. If I didn’t fit in, I wanted it to be because I was me, not because I was poor. So now I ripped out seams from old clothes and used the pieces of fabric to create something completely different, like a sweater put together from three different sweaters. Or I covered stains or holes with appliqués and embroidery so that the worst part of a garment became the best.

  As we started walking away from the school, Marijean took a pack of cigarettes out of her purse and lit one.

  �
�I wish you wouldn’t do that.” I moved to the other side of the sidewalk so that the wind blew the smoke away from my face.

  “I don’t know why you don’t,” Marijean said. “Your parents sure wouldn’t give you any crap for it.”

  “Actually, Matt and Laurel would mind. They think pot’s natural, but they hate cigarettes. The other day they had a bunch of new friends over and our house reeked. And half of them were our age. You can imagine how weird that was.”

  “Our age?” Marijean grinned, then pursed her lips and blew a smoke ring. “Were there any cute guys?”

  “Maybe.” I smiled and looked away.

  “Maybe?” She nudged me. “Spill!”

  “There was this one guy who calls himself Coyote. He’s got these green eyes like a cat’s and really tight curls down to his shoulders.”

  “Coyote?” Marijean raised one eyebrow, making the little silver hoop she wears there wiggle. “What kind of a name is that? Are his parents old hippies, too?”

  “Kind of.” I shrugged, remembering how he had asked me not to tell about the MEDics. It was kind of weird keeping something from Marijean, but I told myself it wasn’t a big deal.

  “Where does he go to school?”

  “He doesn’t. He’s seventeen, but he’s an emancipated minor and he’s got his GED.”

  “That’s sweet!”

  “He works at the bike shop in Multnomah. But there was this other girl at our house with red dreads hanging around him. She seemed pissed off that he was talking to me.”

  Marijean blew another ring of smoke. “I hate dreads on white people.”

  “Me too. Anyway, Coyote told me I should stop by the bike shop and he’d take me out for tea.”

  “No way!” Marijean cuffed my shoulder. “Ooh, it sounds like he does like you. So are you going to do it?”

  “Of course.” Just thinking about Coyote made me feel like dancing. Instead, I skipped a few steps along the sidewalk. We turned into the little strip of shops in Hillsdale. “What do you think I should wear?”

  “How about that black sweater with the patterned silk sleeves?” I had taken a short-sleeved sweater and sewn a three-inch-wide stripe of emerald-green fabric at the bottom of each sleeve. Under that I had added another stripe of wild abstract fabric patterned with golds and oranges. It was beautiful. There was only one problem. “That actually sold on Etsy.com.” We both sold—or at least tried to sell—things on Etsy.com, along with a million other people who made stuff.

  “Too bad. Maybe you can find something here.” Marijean pushed open the door to Zombie, a vintage store that was usually too expensive for us. Normally we scavenged things from garage sales or went to the Bins—officially the Goodwill Outlet Store, but nobody called it that—where you could buy stuff by the pound. Still, it was always fun to look.

  I started going through the sale rack. The edge of an ornately patterned sweater caught my eye. But when I pulled it from the rack, the wool felt too thick. The whole thing was too small to fit anyone but a little kid.

  “Somebody forgot to check the temperature on the wash cycle.” I held the shrunken sweater out to Marijean, who teetered up to me on a giant pair of go-go boots. Even with six-inch platforms she was just barely eye-to-eye with me.

  “The pattern is cool, though.” She fingered it, then nearly lost her balance and grabbed onto me. “You could run it through the washer again, put it in the dryer on high and make it into felt for appliqués.”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly, “I’ve got a black sweater I could put them on. It’s kind of low-cut, though.”

  “And that’s a problem?” Marijean asked.

  I thought of Coyote again and smiled. “No, I guess it really isn’t.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  A bell tinkled over my head as I pushed open the door to the Multnomah Bicycle Shop. I didn’t want to look too eager, so after consulting with Marijean, I had decided to wait until late Saturday afternoon before I stopped by.

  I had lasted until 11:17 A.M.

  At first I didn’t see him, just an older guy sitting at a battered desk and looking through a parts catalog. Part of me was almost relieved. Now I wouldn’t have to find out how Coyote felt about me. But then I spotted him in the back of the room. He was working on a bike that had been flipped upside down on top of a long, scarred table. His hands were covered with grease, his face intent as his long fingers followed a kinked chain. Above him, a couple dozen bikes hung from the high ceiling.

  When he saw me, his face smoothed out into a smile. “Hey, George, is it okay if I take a break?” he asked.

  The other man grinned. “Sure, Ethan.”

  Ethan? It was strange to think that Coyote had another name. A real name. It didn’t seem to fit him as well as Coyote did.

  “A loooong break?” Coyote drew out the word. I looked down at the toes of my clogs.

  George only laughed. While Coyote hung up his apron and washed his hands in the sink, I wondered how many girls had stood here before me. He dried his hands, grabbed a mug from a shelf over the sink, lifted up the hinged counter and walked out to join me.

  “That’s a cool sweater,” he said.

  I wore the low-cut sweater Marijean had suggested, only now it had cutout paisley shapes from the shrunken sweater I had bought at Zombie. I couldn’t tell if Coyote was looking at the sweater or the V-neck. I was just glad that he was looking. “Thanks. I made it. I like to take things I find and make them useful again.”

  “I like it,” he said as we walked down the street. “It’s different.”

  “Speaking of different, it was kind of weird to hear him call you Ethan. I guess you seem more like a Coyote. At least to me. Once I saw a real coyote.” As the words kept tumbling out of my mouth, I realized how stupid I sounded. I ordered myself to stop talking, but instead I kept babbling. “It was early in the morning and I was running by Gabriel Park. It’s strange to think they can live in the middle of a city.”

  Coyote made a face. “Too bad we’ve forced so many animals to make that choice, adapt to us or die.” His words came easily. He probably had had lots of different girlfriends. Including the girl with the red dreads.

  We waited for a TriMet bus to pass, then crossed the street. “I took my MEDic name in honor of a coyote I saw a couple of years ago, in the Portland airport parking lot,” Coyote continued. “We had just come back from Hawaii, and it was, like, three in the morning. At first, I thought it was a dog that had been hurt, you know, because of the way it ran.” Coyote demonstrated, loping ahead a few steps. He waited for me to catch up. “Then I realized it was a coyote. I stuck my head out the window and howled at it.” He grinned at the memory. “My dad didn’t much like that.”

  “What’s your dad like?”

  Coyote pressed his lips together before answering. “A consumer. He’s a stockbroker. We don’t have a lot in common. He doesn’t have that much in common with my mom, either.”

  “Do your parents mind that you aren’t going to school and you’re not living at home?”

  “Are you kidding?” Coyote gave me a twist of a smile. “It kills my dad. Absolutely kills him.”

  He held open the door to Village Coffee. It was only a block from a Starbucks, but the two places couldn’t have been less alike. Village Coffee was small and cluttered, but I liked going there because there was always a new piece of art on the walls, a new magnetic poem on the cash register or old esoteric magazines scattered on the tables. It was one of a kind.

  “Tall skinny latte,” I told the barista, who had sideburns to rival Elvis’s. “Two shots.”

  Coyote reached past me with a ten-dollar bill. “I’m paying for it.”

  “Oh, no. That’s okay. I can buy my own coffee.” I waved my own five-dollar bill at the guy.

  Coyote handed over his mug and the money to the barista. “Lemon ginger tea, please.” He turned to me. “You can buy next time.”

  Next time. I had to fight back a grin. Maybe this was a date.
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  We sat down at a table in the corner. Feeling emboldened by “next time,” I decided to tease him a little. “Isn’t this Village Coffee?” I said as he used a spoon to press the tea bag against the side of his mug. “Why did you get tea?”

  “It’s so hard to know if the coffee’s fair-trade, you know, or how many pesticides they sprayed it with,” he said.

  I clutched my latte protectively. “What about your tea? How do you know what they spray on it or who picks it and how much they get paid?”

  “Touché!” said Coyote, lifting his mug to click with my paper cup. “I probably sound like I’m full of crap. But I am trying to make a difference in what I choose to support, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it adds up to much. I want to leave the world in better condition than how I found it. That’s what I like about your parents. They get it.”

  “Where do you . . .” I hesitated, not wanting to mention the word MEDics in public, even if no one was sitting next to us. “Where do you guys know my parents from?”

  “Hawk met them at the food co-op. They’re pretty cool for—” He stopped.

  I finished his sentence. “For old people. They are old. They’re not my biological parents, anyway. They adopted me when I was a baby.”

  Coyote’s green eyes widened. “Do you know who your real parents are?”

  “Just that they were in high school. I guess they knew they couldn’t hack both school and a baby. So Laurel and Matt adopted me.”

  “They don’t mind if you call them by their first names? My dad would kill me.”

  “They think it sounds too subservient if I call them Mom and Dad.”

  Coyote looked impressed. I didn’t tell him that I sometimes wished for parents who were a little more normal. It was okay when my parents were around their own friends or even Marijean. But every time we were out doing something and ran into someone from school, I couldn’t help but feel self-conscious. Matt with his long gray hair and beard and Laurel with her belief that bras were “unnatural.”