Torched Read online

  “It’s for your own good, Ellie. For your own protection.”

  “Protection?” I had to force the words out. “From what?”

  “This atmosphere those people are raising you in. You and their marijuana plants. It’s tantamount to abuse to bring up a child in that situation.”

  This was all such BS. But Richter had the power. Desperate, I snatched at the phrase he had used earlier. “But you said that if I helped you . . . ?”

  He looked at me for a long moment. Finally, he nodded, seemingly more to himself than to me. “Tell me about this group of people your parents have been meeting with. The ones who were at your house earlier today. Do you know who those people are, Ellie?”

  I shrugged, suddenly glad that I didn’t know, not really. “They’re Mother Earth Defenders. But I don’t know their real names. I honestly don’t.” I wasn’t going to tell them that Coyote’s name was Ethan, or that he worked at the Multnomah Bike Shop.

  Richter leaned toward me, his expression intent. “Tell me this, Ellie, what do you think of their cause?”

  “Well, the Earth is getting hotter. You know, the glaciers are melting, and there’s dead spots in the ocean, and more people are getting skin cancer.”

  “So how do Mother Earth Defenders stop that?”

  I thought about what they’d been discussing at our house. “Protests, petitioning, tree-sits, stuff like that, I guess.”

  He looked disappointed. “They aren’t all peaceful tree-sitters, Ellie. These people are terrorists. Domestic, homegrown terrorists.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” I wasn’t that naïve. “They’re not flying airplanes into buildings full of people.”

  Richter slapped his palm on the table, making me jump. “Just because they’re Americans doesn’t mean they aren’t terrorists. Some of the worst terrorists are homegrown. Have you heard of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing? Some of the Mother Earth Defenders are violent fire bombers who destroy anything they don’t approve of. So far, they’ve been lucky, but we know it’s only a matter of time until someone is killed. That’s where the FBI comes in. And that’s where we need your help.”

  “Help? What do you mean by help?”

  “We need someone who can get inside Mother Earth Defenders.”

  “No way!” I didn’t even need to think. “You’ll have to find someone else to do it.”

  Richter’s gaze locked with mine. “We need someone who already has an inside track. Somebody who can find out what they’re planning so we can stop it before anyone gets hurt.”

  “No. No way. I’m not going to be a narc.” The thought sickened me. Then I put two and two together. “My parents already turned you down, didn’t they?”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “We never asked them. MED trusts your parents—but they would never ask them to take part in an action. They’re dupes who offer MED a place to meet, maybe a little funding, as well as free, shall we say, refreshments. But they’re far too old to be asked to be part of the group. That’s why we need someone younger. Someone who can get on the inside and help us gather real evidence.”

  “No. I can’t do it.” My eyes felt wet again. “I’d rather go into foster care.”

  “Let me show you something, Ellie.” Richter reached down. As he set his briefcase on his lap and took out a manila envelope, I dashed the tears from my eyes before he could see them. He slid a photo across the table to me.

  My eyes traced the lines and shadows of a monochromatic print. I was staring at the charred outlines of a building.

  “This was going to be an apartment complex in Southern Oregon for low-income people,” Richter said. “That is, until MED set it on fire. Half the valley had to be evacuated when the fire spread to a nearby housing development. And do you know why they set the fire?”

  Richter waited until I finally shrugged at his rhetorical question.

  “Because they felt it was an environmentally sensitive area. So they burned down the building—and the fire spread to the site they supposedly wanted to protect! That’s how MED operates. They burn forest ranger stations because they don’t like the Forest Service approving any logging at all, even if it prevents wildfires. They destroy agricultural stations and science labs. In Cannon Beach, they torched a helicopter that sprayed herbicides to fight non-native weeds. Here in Portland, they pipe-bombed a research lab working to make more nutritious rice. But worst of all, we now believe there is a faction of MED that’s planning to target people.”

  With every word he spoke, I kept thinking of Coyote, checking the accusations against the person I knew. “That is so unbelievable. They wouldn’t hurt anyone. You should have heard them today. They were talking about freeing minks. If they care that much about a mink, they would never hurt a person.”

  “You don’t think so? What if I told you that animals are the only ones they really care about?” He took out another photograph. With a shock, I recognized the yard of my own house. It showed the people who had stayed for dinner the night I had made pasta.

  Richter tapped his finger over the picture of Hawk. “This guy here—his real name is Darryl Denigan, by the way—we have e-mails where he says the only way to get people to listen is when their blood is spilled.”

  I didn’t let the expression on my face change, but I remembered how Hawk and Cedar had seemed to disagree when Hawk said that dangerous times called for dangerous measures. “Those e-mails are evidence, then.” I crossed my arms. “Use them.”

  “They’re too smart to leave a trail that can be traced back to them. The e-mails are encrypted and anonymous. What we have wouldn’t stand up in court.”

  “I still can’t do it.” Bile rose in my throat. I didn’t want to go into foster care or to juvie, but I couldn’t do what he was asking me. Who knew if Richter was even telling the truth?

  Richter took back both photographs. “So are you saying you don’t care what happens to your parents?”

  My parents? “What do you mean?”

  “If you don’t cooperate with us, Ellie, it’s not just a matter of you being put in foster care. Your parents—excuse me, Matt and Laurel—have drug arrests stretching back into the seventies. That makes them career offenders. Career offenders with a grow operation in the basement. And this isn’t the seventies anymore, in case they haven’t noticed. The law takes drugs a lot more seriously. A lot more. At a minimum, they can be charged with maintaining a dwelling for the purpose of manufacturing marijuana, possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of selling or delivering, felony possession of a schedule II controlled substance, manufacturing marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. Not to mention child endangerment.”

  He paused, but I didn’t say anything. The list was overwhelming. Under the table, I clenched my fists so hard I could feel my fingernails cut into my palms. How could my parents have been so stupid?

  Richter stood up. “If you help us, we’ll make you a deal. We’ll drop the charges against your parents for lack of evidence. Otherwise, they will be looking at a long stretch of jail time.”

  “So if I spy on MED for you, my parents won’t have to go to jail? And I won’t have to go to a foster home?”

  He nodded. “If you help us, we’ll help you.”

  I told myself there was no way that the MEDics could be what Richter said. I thought of Coyote, of how much it had hurt him when his grandfather had shot the deer. If he got that upset over a deer, he would never do anything to a person. No matter what Richter says, I know Coyote, at least, can’t be involved in anything violent.

  So even if I did what Richter asked, probably nothing would come of it. They wouldn’t find anything, and my parents wouldn’t get in trouble. Still, I tried to think of another way out, tried to find a place to look other than in Richter’s eyes.

  But finally I had to speak.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “We won’t tell Matt,” Laurel murmured into my hair as she held me close.

  Richter had let
Laurel in only after I had signed a long form that I had been too exhausted to read. The one detail that caught my attention was that my mother had already signed it. It seemed like a betrayal, but the thought flew from my mind when she pushed passed Richter and hugged me.

  It was only after Richter left that I finally allowed my tears to fall. I hadn’t let Laurel hug me like this in years, but now I felt like a child again.

  When I finally calmed down, I put my lips next to her ear. “They want me to spy for them.”

  Her reply was no louder than a sigh. “We’ll figure out something.”

  She let go of me and opened the door. I wondered if it had ever been locked. How could I have been so cowed by Richter’s threats? In math class, I could solve any problem—why couldn’t I have figured out something that would have gotten Richter off my back and saved my parents?

  Laurel’s plan not to tell Matt was tested right from the beginning. He was waiting for us in the lobby, and as soon as we were on the sidewalk outside the police station, he unleashed a whole bunch of questions. Was I all right? Why were we being released? Had we gotten a lawyer? Had we paid bail?

  Laurel held up one hand. “Calm down, Matt,” she said in a weary voice. “Nothing bad happened. They were in the middle of questioning me when another cop barged in, and they ended up having this big, angry discussion. It turns out there was a mistake in the warrant.”

  “What?” Matt looked dazed.

  “It wouldn’t have held up in court. And I started telling them about how we have a friend who’s a lawyer—you know, that guy Mike Callinan at Legal Aid—and about how he could sue their asses, and suddenly they decided the best thing was to let us go. Act like it never happened.”

  Laurel went on, constructing her lie in midair, adding more details about how the police had apologized, until her story seemed more real than what had happened. The more Laurel talked, the less Matt seemed to listen. It was like he just checked out.

  Because the cops had taken us away, we had to call a taxi to get home. Crammed next to him in the backseat, I looked at Matt whenever I thought he wouldn’t notice. In his shadowed eyes, I saw how exhausted he was. Exhausted and old and scared. And that scared me more than Richter had.

  When we got home, there was no marijuana growing in our basement anymore. The only clue the plants had ever been there was the metal tracks on the ceiling where the grow lights had run. The house had been thoroughly searched, but the only stuff missing had to do with my parents’ pot.

  That didn’t mean everything wasn’t a mess. Closets and cupboards had been flung wide open. Everyone’s dresser drawers gaped, even mine. Grossed out by the idea of some pervy cop rifling through my underwear, I dumped the entire contents of the drawer in my laundry basket and carried it to the washing machine.

  When I walked past my parents’ room, I saw Matt lying on his back on the bed, his eyes closed. His arms were by his sides, and he was absolutely still. When I was thirteen, Matt had had a heart attack. So I stood for a long moment in the doorway, watching to make sure his chest still rose and fell. My head felt like it might split in two. How could my parents have been so selfish?

  In the kitchen, I found Laurel. She was making a stir-fry. It was nearly ten o’clock at night, but it was like she was pretending it was still dinnertime, that nothing had happened.

  “What am I going to do now?” I said. My voice was hard and harsh.

  Laurel put down her chef ’s knife and put her finger to her lips. “Shh! I don’t want Matt to hear us.”

  “I don’t want to do this,” I said. My voice wasn’t much softer than it had been before.

  She tried to put her arms around me again. For a second, I wanted to close my eyes and lean into her soft warmth. But I wasn’t a kid anymore. And it was Laurel and Matt who had gotten me into this mess, with their stupid reluctance to admit that it was no longer 1972. I shook off her hands and took a step back.

  “How could you do this to me?” I crossed my arms.

  “We didn’t do it to you. The Man did.” I heard the capital letters in Laurel’s voice, as if she were speaking about a real person.

  “For once, couldn’t you have done what ‘the Man’ said? Couldn’t you follow the rules?”

  “Even when the rules don’t make any sense?” Her tired eyes pleaded with me. “In a lot of countries, pot’s legal. Cigarettes are a lot more harmful.”

  “But we don’t live in other countries, Mom,” I said sarcastically, watching her flinch. “We live here. Where it’s not legal and where they can use it as an excuse to get the MEDics.”

  “Look, we’ll figure out something,” Laurel said again, turning away to slide some chopped onions into the wok. “But our first priority is to keep Matt out of jail. He couldn’t hack it, not at his age. With his heart, and the sentences they give out now, he could even die there. You saw how bad he looks tonight. I want him to call his cardiologist, but he won’t.”

  Laurel picked up her knife again. “Besides, it’s the lesser of two evils. Whatever the MEDics are, it’s up to them to prove it. If Richter is wrong and they aren’t turning to violence, he promised me they would drop the investigation.”

  “But what if he’s right?” I had to ask. “If he’s right, then what?”

  “Then,” Laurel said as she brought her butcher knife down with a thwack on the green tops of a bunch of carrots, “then they’ve made their bed. And they’ll have to lie in it.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about what Richter had said. So I got up and Googled MED. One article said that MED was “dedicated to taking the motive out of environmental destruction by causing economic damage to businesses.” But most of what I found called them ecoterrorists.

  In Oregon alone, MED had claimed responsibility for seven “actions” since September. Like Richter had said, they had firebombed a helicopter used to spray weeds, as well as burned down a wild horse corral, a logging truck and a ranger’s station, for a total of more than five million dollars in damages.

  I also read about a reporter who had infiltrated a group of MEDics in England. After he published a series of stories about them, he had been abducted by four masked men. They let him go—after branding the letters M-E-D on his back.

  I went back to bed, but just tossed and turned until the sheets were wrapped suffocatingly tight around my body. I kept trying to think of a way out, but found none.

  In the morning, Matt, who was usually up early, stayed in bed. Bustling about the kitchen as if nothing had happened the night before, Laurel made me oatmeal for breakfast. She set it down before me, and it was just the way I liked it—with lots of maple syrup, raisins and almonds. I ate two spoonfuls, but when I tried to swallow a third one, it wouldn’t go down. I barely made it to the bathroom before I threw up in the sink. When I lifted my head, my eyes looked like two bruises in the mirror.

  At school, I didn’t hear a thing the teachers said that day. My head ached, and I kept my eyes down so no one would call on me.

  When the last bell rang, I met Marijean outside the front doors. For the first time that year, I was glad that we didn’t have a single class together. Because as soon as she looked at me, Marijean knew something was up.

  “What’s wrong? You look terrible.”

  “Nothing.” I couldn’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t tell anyone.

  “It’s something to do with Coyote, isn’t it? Did he call you? Is it that other girl?”

  “What other girl?” I barely heard her.

  “The one with the red dreads.”

  “No, it’s not that.” I tried to find something to say that wasn’t a complete lie. “It’s my dad. His heart was acting up again last night. He wouldn’t call the doctor, but he looked terrible.”

  “Oh.” Marijean hugged me, then reached in her pack for her cigarettes.

  I held out my hand. “Can I have one?”

  “What?” She raised her eyebrows in surprise
. “But you don’t ever smoke. You’re always telling me how bad it is for you.”

  “Just give me one, okay?” Smoking was bad, which was why it was suddenly so appealing. Smoking would match how I felt inside.

  “I’m just saying.” She put two in her mouth, lit them both with her lighter and handed one to me.

  I took a deep drag, welcoming how it burned my throat, and then I started coughing. As I coughed and coughed, I imagined the smoke turning my lungs all gray and dirty, the way I felt.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  That Saturday, I walked over to Multnomah Village to meet Coyote as we had planned. On any other day, my footsteps might have been slowed by nervousness. Now it felt like every step took me closer to the edge of a cliff.

  I had barely stepped into the doorway of the bike store when Coyote ducked under the counter. “I’m leaving, George!” he called over his shoulder.

  George was in the back, holding a small wrench between his teeth. He grunted in response.

  Coyote grabbed two tall mugs. I tried to smile at him, but my face felt stiff.

  He held the door open for me. “Hey, I like your bag.”

  My messenger bag was made of green fabric patterned with sky-blue scribbles. Before I bought the fabric at the Bins, it had been a tablecloth. “Thanks. I made it.” The fact that Coyote noticed small things about me made me feel worse. I wondered if he had noticed that today I wasn’t wearing any eyeliner. My face felt oddly bare without it. But I figured wearing makeup was fundamentally incompatible with being a MEDic.

  When we got a block away from Village Coffee, Coyote didn’t say anything, just flashed one of his mended-toothed grins and sprinted ahead of me. I stood there for a second, trying to figure out what he was doing. By the time I finally started running myself, it was too late. When I got to the counter, he was already handing over a bill to the barista.

  “Hey,” I said, panting, “I thought I said next time it would be my treat!”