Torched Page 3

  I took a sip of my coffee. “They never hid it from me that I was adopted,” I said. “I guess they figured it wouldn’t take me too long to figure out that they were too old to be my real parents. Sometimes I wish I had someone I looked like or that I took after. You know, like I had the same color hair as my grandmother, or an aunt who played the piano like me.”

  Coyote’s long fingers played with his tea bag. “There’s a downside to relatives, though. Take my grandfather. He’s old school—hunting, fishing, having everything stuffed and mounted. I remember being at his house one time when I was a little kid. I tried to pet this animal by the fireplace, and then I got all freaked out when I realized it was hard and dead. Then when I was fourteen and hunting season came around, he insisted that I had to get my first buck. I told him no way, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “We got all dressed up in blaze orange and went out in the woods. We walked around forever until we saw a buck.” His mouth pulled down at the corners. “It was beautiful. Majestic. I still remember how it turned and looked at us. I fired twenty feet over its head, but it still fell over dead.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “Because my grandpa had shot it at the same time.” Coyote raised his face to mine, his green eyes glittering. “Then he slapped me on the back and congratulated me on my kill.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  For the next few days, I was too distracted by my time with Coyote to pay attention to teachers or homework. When I talked to Marijean, my only topic was Coyote. Like a true friend, she listened patiently, even when I repeated myself. I just couldn’t stop thinking about him. We had traded cell numbers, but I had been too nervous to call him.

  When I came home from school on Thursday, the pocket door to the living room was closed again. I set my backpack down on the hall table and sniffed the air. Pot. And with people over, too—I heard the low murmur of voices.

  “We’re in here, Ellie,” Laurel called out.

  I slid open the door. The first person I saw was Coyote, who looked up and smiled at me. I grinned back, then tried to tamp it down. All the MEDics I had met before—Coyote, Meadow, Blue, Liberty, Hawk and Cedar—were crowded into the living room, along with some other people I didn’t recognize. The sweet smell of weed hung heavy in the air, but there were no joints in evidence—just cups of ginger tea.

  “Want to join us?” Laurel asked.

  Hawk, the skinny guy with the pop eyes, said, “I really don’t know about . . .”

  Matt chuckled. “Ellie’s been going to demonstrations since she was a three-month-old in a baby sling.”

  I saw Liberty nudge Meadow, the girl with the black Cleopatra bangs. Both of them rolled their eyes and giggled. Then Meadow saw that I had noticed and looked away.

  Didn’t Matt have a clue about what was embarrassing? I didn’t want these people to think of me like I was still a baby.

  Cedar cleared his throat. Immediately, everyone looked to him. “Of course she can stay,” he said. No one said anything after that, although Hawk pressed his thin lips together so tight they disappeared.

  Even though I longed to sit by Coyote, I didn’t want to be too obvious. So I sat on the floor between Cedar and Blue, the girl with the stubby blond pigtails.

  Matt laced his fingers comfortably over his belly. “As I was saying, we were pretty active in the movement ‘back in the day,’ as you kids like to say.”

  I winced at Matt’s lame attempt at slang. But the others looked interested.

  “What did you do?” a young guy with a bowl haircut and rings on his thumbs asked.

  “We did a lot, Jack Rabbit.” Matt loosened his hands so that he could tick off examples on his fingers. “Teach-ins, prayer vigils, street theater, blockades. Organizing the unions, the military and the churches. Civil disobedience. We took over the college president’s office and occupied it for thirty-three days.”

  I knew most of this. Once every six months or so, my parents would drink a couple of bottles of wine and get all misty-eyed about the glory days, thirty years ago. Last year, in social studies, we learned about hippies, sit-ins, the Vietnam War, “sticking it to the man.” For everyone else, it was ancient history.

  Coyote said, “Two months ago we chained ourselves to the fence outside a timber company’s corporate headquarters to protest water pollution.”

  “What was the outcome?” Laurel asked.

  Meadow straightened up, her black bangs swinging. “I put out a communiqué. We got on channels six, eight and twelve.” Her voice was full of pride.

  Laurel gave her a polite smile. “The problem is that it’s so easy to be marginalized. You end up being the human-interest story, the out-there protesters, something to run at the end of the local news. What you need to do is raise people’s consciousness until they themselves are willing to act.”

  Meadow’s face turned red. She nibbled on a fingernail. Now I didn’t know who to be more embarrassed by, back-in-the-day Matt or lecturing Laurel.

  But Hawk nodded in agreement. “Exactly. It takes more than being on TV. If people refuse to wake up, then we have to force them to by any means necessary. It’s a matter of life and death—not just the death of individual species, but the death of the entire planet. And desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  Looking stern, Cedar said to my parents, “Forgive my friend Hawk here. He can be a little hot-blooded. It is vital that people start paying attention. But we need to remember our tenets: We do not harm people, animals or the environment in defense of the Earth.”

  “How did you get people to start paying attention back then, Matt?” Coyote asked. I was glad that he had said something, because it gave me an excuse to look at him. God, he was gorgeous. I imagined what it would be like if he really was my boyfriend. I’d buy a bike, and after school and on weekends we’d ride along the Eastside Esplanade, eat picnics in Forest Park, roam through Powell’s bookstore. Village Coffee would be “our” place, where the barista knew what both of us liked to drink without even asking, where everyone knew which table was ours. Maybe Coyote would even wait for me outside school sometimes. I imagined all the stupid cheerleader girls’ mouths falling open when they first caught sight of him.

  While I daydreamed, Matt kept going. “What we cared about was more than just Vietnam. It was civil rights, women’s rights, class warfare—we wanted to tear everything down and start on a level playing field.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arms. “What turned things around for Vietnam was when people could turn on their TVs and see our soldiers dying in the jungle. That helped people reach a—what do they call it?—a tipping point. What we need for the environment is another tipping point. If we’re lucky, people will naturally realize how important it is. If we’re not, it will take a total disaster.”

  A guy with a bushy brown beard said, “Like, okay, we gotta do something now? Before something bad happens? Not just talk about doing something?” Even though he was a heavyset guy in his twenties, with what looked like bird bones in his pierced ears, his sentences all rose at the end, as if he were a teenage girl at Washington Square Mall.

  “But we have taken action, Grizz,” a woman with long blond hair said. With her buckteeth and pale skin, she reminded me of a rabbit.

  “Action? Like what, Seed?” Matt leaned forward, enthralled.

  Some of the other MED members exchanged glances, like they didn’t want my parents and me to know. Hawk pressed his lips together again.

  Seed lowered her voice, but her tone was proud. “We were the ones who liberated the four-legged captives from the Hillhurst Ranch.”

  Four-legged captives? I thought. Wait—does she mean animals? Give me a break!

  Matt wrinkled his forehead. “You mean those minks?”

  I had heard about that. The year before, a thousand minks had been released from a mink farm halfway between Portland and the coast. The newspaper had said many of them had died within a few d
ays—through roadkill, starvation or by drowning in a backyard swimming pool.

  Liberty nodded, setting her red dreads swinging. “The prisoners of the war on nature.”

  “But didn’t a lot of them die anyway?” Laurel asked.

  Liberty narrowed her eyes. “Maybe a few. But at least we gave them a shot at life. They had the chance to use their legs in freedom and to die on their own terms. When we were leaving, I could see one mink already beginning to burrow under a log, gathering twigs and grass to build a nest.”

  It was all I could do not to roll my eyes. Probably the poor mink had just been trying to hide from its rescuers. Killing minks for fur was stupid, but dumping farm-raised minks in the forest didn’t necessarily sound like a better alternative.

  Jack Rabbit stretched and yawned, then got to his feet. “Well, folks, I’ve got to go. Big test tomorrow.”

  After that, the group broke up. I loitered near the door, hoping to talk to Coyote. He lingered a few minutes, speaking to first Liberty and then Meadow. Both conversations were too low for me to follow. Telling myself I didn’t care, I turned away and started gathering up cups. Then he walked over to me, and my heart did a flip.

  He gave me an easy grin. “So how’s your week been so far?”

  “Good, good.” I was nodding my head like an idiot and tried to stop. “How about yours?”

  “Pretty tolerable. Of course, it would be better if I took more breaks. Will you be in Multnomah again this Saturday?”

  I tried to look nonchalant. “Maybe. I could stop by if you want.”

  “Of course!” His fingers circled my wrist and gave it a squeeze before he slipped on his backpack. Before I could say anything else, he was out the door. The rest of the MEDics soon followed him. My skin tingled where he had touched me.

  “Those kids are kind of cute when they get all excited,” Laurel said as we picked up the mugs that held dregs of tea. “But when we were in college, what we were fighting for was life and death. We knew plenty of guys who went off to Vietnam and never came back.”

  “At least they’re trying,” Matt said. “That’s a lot more than most kids these days. They remind me so much of us when we were young.”

  “So I saw that Coyote talking to you,” Laurel said. “Do you like him?”

  “I don’t really know him that well.” I bent down to pick up some more dishes, letting my hair fall forward to hide my face.

  “Laurel and I knew the minute we saw each other,” Matt said. “She had on her ‘Anything War Can Do, Peace Can Do Better’ T-shirt, and I had ‘An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind.’ We even got arrested the same day. Remember, Laurel?” They shared a smile.

  I carried the cups into the kitchen. Behind me, Matt was saying something more about the Vietnam protests, but the words were lost as I clattered the dishes in the sink. I heard one of them switch on the TV.

  While my parents were occupied, I called Marijean. “You are not going to believe this, but Coyote just asked me to have coffee with him again! Well, tea, I guess. He drinks tea. I’m the one who drinks coffee.”

  “You’re babbling.” Marijean laughed.

  “Do you think I should wear perfume?”

  “I don’t know. What if he kisses you? You don’t want him to taste it if you’ve got perfume on your neck.”

  “I think you’re talking about a little more than kissing,” I said.

  “I’m talking enthusiastic kissing,” she said. “I’m an ex-Girl Scout. Isn’t their motto ‘Be prepared’? So if you wear perfume, just put it on your wrists.”

  After discussing every possible detail with Marijean, I finally flipped my cell phone closed. We had talked long enough that the plastic was warm. I still had homework to do, so I got a hunk of cheddar from the fridge and some Ak-Mak crackers. I alternated eating a bite of cracker and then a bite of cheese, trying to get my mind off Coyote and onto my math problems.

  Soon I had two crackers left and no cheese, so I got up to get more. As I turned from the fridge, a glint of light in the front yard caught my eye.

  A man, all dressed in black, was approaching the house.

  The glint was a reflection from the silver badge he wore on his chest.

  “Laurel! Matt!” I cried out. “Cops!”

  From the living room came shouts and the sounds of wood splintering. A man burst in from the utility room between the kitchen and the garage. In his black-gloved hand, he held a gun. POLICE was spelled out in yellow letters on his black baseball cap. “Don’t move!” he barked.

  On the other side of the house, I heard shouts, orders, questions. Laurel cried out. It sounded like someone had hurt her. I tried to run to her, but the policeman grabbed my arm.

  “I said don’t move!”

  “What’s going on?” My voice shook.

  He didn’t answer.

  A minute later, more cops marched my parents into the kitchen. Their wrists were handcuffed behind their backs.

  “You’re under arrest,” one of the cops told them.

  “For what?” Matt said defiantly, but he looked scared. He was breathing in big gulps, like a swimmer who had just escaped a rough sea. His face was red and blotchy, shiny with sweat.

  “Drug dealing. We can talk about it down at the station.”

  “What about our daughter?” Laurel asked.

  The cop holding my arm said, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of her.”

  I could not believe this was happening.

  As I watched Matt and Laurel being led outside, I couldn’t breathe. When I went to the kitchen window, no one stopped me. After a cop came back in to grab a pair of shoes for Matt, they were taken to separate squad cars. A few of the neighbors had gathered on the curb, watching.

  Someone touched my shoulder, and I jumped. It was the cop who had grabbed my arm a few minutes before. “Come on, Ellie,” he said. “I have to take you in, too.”

  It felt all wrong that a stranger knew my name. “Can’t I just stay here?” I managed to whisper. It was hard to force words out past the empty space in my chest. “I’m sixteen.”

  He shook his head. “Sorry. We’ve got orders. Everyone in the house has to go down to the station.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  They put me in a small, dreary room, square and windowless. It held only a scarred table and two orange plastic chairs. The cop had left me there after promising that “somebody” would be by “soon” to talk to me. There was nothing to read, nothing to look at except the graffiti scratched into the table. With one finger, I traced the deepest of them. It read THE 5-0 ARE SCREWED.

  I hadn’t even thought to grab my purse, so I didn’t have my cell phone. I didn’t know who I would call, anyway. Marijean? She wouldn’t know what to do any more than I did. Coyote? How could he help me?

  At first I did nothing but cry, leaning over to wipe my nose on the knee of my jeans. What was going to happen to me? To my parents? I guessed it could be pretty bad. Finally I forced myself to choke back the tears. I hadn’t seen a camera or a tape recorder, and the room didn’t have one of those two-way mirrors, but I had seen enough TV to know that someone must be watching me.

  After a while, I rested my head on my folded arms and tried to sleep. The best I could manage was a feeling like I was floating, not anchored to anything.

  When the door finally opened about three hours later, I started. Quickly, I composed my face, hoping that the man walking into the room hadn’t noticed. I didn’t want to look vulnerable or weak. He wore a suit instead of a uniform, but his dirty-blond hair was so short he still looked like a cop or a soldier. He was older, but not as old as Matt, tall and muscular, with fine lines at the corners of his bright blue eyes. In his suit and with his short hair, he looked kind of like the TV father I sometimes daydreamed about.

  “Hello, Ellie.” He gave me a nod.

  I didn’t like that he already knew who I was.

  “And who are you?” I said.

  “I’m Special Agent John R
ichter. Federal Bureau of Investigation.” In one hand, he held a briefcase. With the other, he reached out and shook my hand, squeezing the bones.

  Richter sat down in the other chair, set the briefcase on the floor and regarded me calmly. A minute passed. Then another. I looked anywhere else but at him—the floor, a corner where the walls met the ceiling, the toes of my shoes. Whenever I caught a glimpse of Richter’s face, he was still studying me. He seemed in no hurry.

  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “What’s going to happen to my parents?”

  Richter ignored my question. “What were you doing there, Ellie?”

  “What do you mean, what was I doing there? I live there.” All my anger and fear came boiling up. “I was just doing my homework, like any other kid, and these cops came busting in.”

  “Only you’re not like every other kid, are you, Ellie? The people you live with are drug dealers.”

  Drug dealers? He can’t be serious. “They’re not drug dealers. Maybe they smoke pot, but that’s all.” And maybe they sell it to a few friends. But nothing more than that.

  “And they’re not your parents, either, are they? Not your real parents.”

  “Hey, it doesn’t matter who gives birth to you,” I said, stung. “They are my parents. And they’re good parents.”

  Richter gave an exaggerated sigh. “It’s sad, really. We see this all the time. Kids who don’t know anything better, so they don’t want to leave their lousy homes. But you’re going to have to leave, I’m afraid. Unless you’re willing to help us.”

  “What do you mean, leave?”

  “With luck, you’ll get sent to a foster home. That is, if we can find room in one. At your age, frankly, that’s not going to be easy. Babies are one thing, but the number of families who are willing to take in a troubled teen is pretty small. Which means you’ll probably go to juvenile hall. You may end up down in Salem if there’s not room in Portland.”

  “But I haven’t done anything wrong!” I protested. My eyes stung, and I blinked furiously. I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry.