Dyan Sheldon - The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

“OK.” Kristin nods. “See you in a few minutes.”

Never handicapped by the sense that she needs to be either patient or polite, Sicilee marches through the crowd, which magically parts for her as the sea did for the Children of Israel. But when she reaches the nearest bathroom, Sicilee discovers that her day hasn’t started to improve just yet. Oddly enough, she isn’t the only one whose hair and make-up have been adversely affected by the bad weather. The space around the sinks is packed tighter than a designer sale. Sicilee’s sigh is heartfelt. Why does everything happen to me? she thinks. And she turns around and heads for the bathroom on the floor above. Which is sure to be empty at this time of the morning, being so far away.

There are two girls standing together near the entrance to the first-floor restroom. Sicilee doesn’t actually look at them. But, of course, she doesn’t have to. She knows instinctively – by their hair (which has obviously never seen the inside of a decent salon) and their bodies (scrawny and pudgy, respectively) and their clothes (beyond hopeless) – that they are geeks from the netherworld. Which puts them way beneath her notice. Because they happen to be in her way, Sicilee pushes past them, hitting the larger of the two (the pudgy one) with her bright orange backpack and knocking a stack of papers out of her hands.

“Hey!” snaps the girl. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going, Princess Pumpkin?”

Her companion quickly jumps back, banging her head against the wall.

Sicilee glances over her shoulder, like a movie star forced to acknowledge a ragged beggar because the beggar is hanging on to her ankle. “Are you talking to me ?”

“Yeah,” says Waneeda. “I am talking to you . Look what you did!”

“Well, maybe if you weren’t such a heffalump, you wouldn’t be in my way,” Sicilee drawls. And, still smiling, she yanks open the door.

There was no exhausting round of parties or events in the world of Waneeda Huddlesfield and Joy Marie Lutz this holiday season. They spent the Christmas vacation much as they spend most of their free time: Joy Marie studied, read, practised her violin and completed the special project on the Magna Carta she’s been doing for extra history credits; Waneeda played video games, watched television and ate.

And now, as Sicilee searches for somewhere to repair the damage wreaked by nature and Kristin searches for Loretta and Ash, Waneeda and Joy Marie move slowly through the hallways on the first floor. Joy Marie, her hair in a single perfect braid and dressed in a grey skirt and plain white blouse, is carrying a dispenser of tape, and a box of drawing pins clacks in the pocket of her grey sweater. Waneeda, her relentlessly unruly hair pulled back into a tight bun, her sweatpants and baggy pullover looking as though they are wearing her more than she is wearing them, is carrying a stack of flyers and chewing her last gumdrop. They move slowly, partly because Waneeda doesn’t really “do” quickly, and partly because they have been at the school for over an hour, going up and down the corridors taping flyers to the walls and pinning them to bulletin boards, so that even Joy Marie’s enthusiasm is starting to wane. The flyers say:

Joy Marie is here this morning because she is the co-ounder, vice-president and (due to a lack of volunteers) secretary of the Clifton Springs High School Environmental Club, which has the distinction of being the most unpopular club in the history of the school. Not that this lack of popularity bothers Joy Marie. She doesn’t do things because she wants to be liked; she does things because she is driven to achieve. Mr and Mrs Lutz expect a lot of her.

In comparison, no one expects much of Waneeda, and they are rarely disappointed. Indeed, it’s fair to say that Waneeda could be the girl for whom the words “I can’t”, “But I’m tired” and “Do I have to?” were invented. Waneeda is here this morning only because Joy Marie slept over last night and was, therefore, in a position to make her come.

“Are we done yet?” Waneeda moans as they finally complete their circuit of the first floor. “I have to sit down. My blood sugar’s really low.”

Joy Marie gives her a so-what-else-is-new? look. Waneeda’s blood sugar is always in imminent danger of collapse. “Almost. I just want to put a couple by the restrooms.”

Waneeda sighs, but dutifully follows. Waneeda is not so much driven as pulled.

She shifts restlessly from one foot to the other as she holds yet another flyer up against yet another wall. “I don’t know why you bother,” complains Waneeda. “Everybody who’s in the club knows about the meeting. And nobody new’s ever going to join.”

“You don’t know that,” says Joy Marie. Joy Marie’s nature is basically a positive one.

Waneeda’s is not. “Yes, I do know that,” she insists. “Everybody thinks your club is the pits.” Even the über-hip kids who wear vintage clothes and drink Fairtrade coffee have stayed away from the Environmental Club the way you’d avoid a house where someone died of the plague. “They’d rather pick up litter on the highway with a toothpick than join.”

“We still have to keep trying,” argues Joy Marie. “They could change their minds. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know. These things take time.”

“I thought time was the thing you don’t have.” Waneeda fumbles in her pockets, hoping to find at least an overlooked stick of gum. “I thought the end was nigh.”

“Well…” Joy Marie’s single braid bounces as she marches on. “You know what they say, Waneeda… It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

And it is certainly very dark at the moment. The club’s official enrolment (larger than the number of people who actually show up for meetings) has always hovered at the minimum needed for school support and funding, but that, unfortunately, is not its biggest problem. Its biggest problem is a greying and portly man who, besides being famous for his amusing and colourful ties, commands a great deal of authority and respect in the community. Although he likes to be seen to be politically correct, Dr Firestone, the principal of Clifton Springs High School, has never fully appreciated the club’s efforts to alert the student body to the many dangers facing the planet. The hundreds of plastic bags they dumped outside the main entrance… The posters of tortured animals they plastered through the corridors… Their picket protesting the sale of soda and water on campus… All of these things annoyed Dr Firestone, but it was last year’s infamous Earth Day Speech (in which Clemens Reis, co-founder and president of the club, suggested that his fellow students and their teachers were all complacent kamikaze consumers) that caused the principal to become openly critical. He said that the club, in general, and Clemens, in particular, lacked the delicacy and subtlety of the nuclear bomb.

This past November, things took a turn for the worse when Clemens began his current campaign to save the 500-year-old trees at the side of the tennis courts from being cut down to make way for the new sports centre. Clemens has written letters to the council, to the school, to the administration, to the school board, to the developers and to the local papers. More than one. Although these letters have proved no more effective than sticking a plaster over a crack in a dam, they did manage to alienate Dr Firestone even more. “Are you aware, Mr Reis, that you’re like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills and thinking they’re giants?” boomed Dr Firestone, running into Clemens in the corridor. “I suggest you stop wasting the club’s resources and address some real issues, not the fate of a couple of trees.” Clemens said he’d see what he could do.