Dyan Sheldon - The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

And then, just before Christmas, Clemens took the mike at the end of the morning announcements, saying that he wanted to send holiday greetings from the Environmental Club to the rest of the school. What he did, in fact (as the few people who actually listened could tell you), was launch into a passionate plea on behalf of the ancient oaks and the inestimable value of the natural world. “If you eradicate a species or chop down a tree, it’s gone for ever,” he told them. “If you destroy everything, you’ll eventually end up with nothing.” If there was some eloquence as well as truth in Clemens’ speech, Dr Firestone failed to see it. Dr Firestone said it was a diatribe and summoned Clemens to his office for “a little chat”. Dr Firestone was decked out for the holidays in a Christmas-tree tie with tiny, flashing lights on it. Clemens was wearing a T-shirt he’d made himself that featured a photograph of the threatened trees and the legend: Where were you five hundred years ago? Where will they be next spring? Dr Firestone did most of the chatting. “You’re turning what should be an ordinary high school club into a gang of junior eco-terrorists, Mr Reis,” he accused. “You’ll be setting fire to SUVs and breaking into animal labs next.” Dr Firestone made it clear that if the club didn’t improve both its image and its membership, the school would have no choice but to shut them down at the end of January.

“Anyway, we do have till the end of the month.” Joy Marie snaps off a piece of tape and slaps it into position. “And it doesn’t say anything about trees on the announcement.”

Waneeda blows fluff from the Tootsie Roll she found deep in the pocket of her sweat pants. The Tootsie Roll looks as if it may have been washed. “Does Clemens know you left out the trees?” Unlike Joy Marie, Clemens isn’t intimidated by Dr Firestone’s threats. Clemens would argue with God, never mind a man whose tie lights up.

Rather than answer Waneeda’s question, Joy Marie says, “What I was thinking was that we should do a serious recruitment. We could set up a table in the main hall … and do an announcement at the next assembly … and even go around the homerooms…”

Waneeda’s expression, though slightly diluted because of the candy in her mouth, delicately balances disbelief and disdain. Joy Marie is too shy to make announcements or talk to homerooms. When forced to speak in front of a class, she turns the colour of tomato soup and talks so softly that even she can’t hear what she’s saying. “You’re going to send Clemens out to convince people to join?” Which would be like using wild bears and packs of hungry wolves to convince people to picnic in the woods. “Are you nuts?”

“I didn’t mean Clemens.” Joy Marie smoothes out the paper she’s half fixed to the wall. “I was kind of thinking of you.” Waneeda may be self-conscious about her looks, but she is less shy than an angry bull.

“Yeah, right,” snorts Waneeda. “As soon as I give up my part-time job as Peace Envoy for the UN.”

“I’m serious.” Joy Marie cuts another length of tape. “Why not?”

“Why not?” Waneeda widens her eyes. “Well, just for openers, I don’t even belong to your dumb club.”

“But you could join.” Needless to say, this is something Joy Marie has suggested before.

“Yeah, right,” snorts Waneeda.

“No, really,” argues Joy Marie. “I know you don’t believe me, but it’s really very inspirational.”

Waneeda laughs. The only thing the Environmental Club has ever inspired is ridicule. “You mean besides causing public outrage.”

“That only happened once,” says Joy Marie. “And anyway, the point is that it’d be good for you to join.”

Waneeda sighs.

Joy Marie is always coming up with things that would be good for Waneeda. Yoga. Swimming. Green vegetables. Jewellery-making. Scrap-booking. Gardening. You’d think she was a personal lifestyle guru rather than a best friend.

“So would be being adopted by Bill Gates,” says Waneeda. “But that’s not going to happen either.”

Joy Marie doesn’t laugh. “That’s not funny; it’s defensive,” she says, leading the way down the hall. “It wouldn’t hurt you to get involved in some kind of extracurricular activity, you know. You need to get some outside interests.”

As if Waneeda has any interests at all. She sighs again.

Joy Marie stops outside the girls’ bathrooms. “And a little work wouldn’t kill you, either.” As a general rule, the only part of Waneeda that’s ever seen to work is her mouth.

“What do you call this?” Waneeda waves the flyers over her head. “Chopped liver?”

“You know what I mean.” Joy Marie readies the tape dispenser for another assault. “Maybe if you really involved yourself you’d have some fun.”

Waneeda is about to amend the truth slightly by saying that she already has plenty of fun when something brightly orange whacks into her arm and her stack of papers falls to the ground.

“Hey! Why don’t you watch where you’re going, Princess Pumpkin?” screams Waneeda.

The other girl barely turns around. “Are you talking to me ?”

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

“Waneeda, shhh,” warns Joy Marie. “Don’t start any trouble.”

“What do I care?” snaps Waneeda. “I hope her eyelashes fall off in her lunch. She is such a stuck-up witch.”

Meanwhile, in the virtually empty first-floor girls’ room, Maya Baraberra and Alice Shimon hug each other with the enthusiasm of people who have been tragically separated by a long war. (It has, in fact, been less than two weeks since they last saw each other, and it was distance that separated them, not heavy bombing.) Alice’s ethnic scarf gets caught on one of Maya’s crystal earrings, and Maya’s handmade backpack, heavily decorated with an intriguing assortment of iconic badges from EZLN and Che Guevara to Homer Simpson and the Sex Pistols, bangs against the sink.

“Oh, God, I am so glad to see you!” shrieks Alice, disentangling. “It was like I’d been abducted by aliens and was living with creatures with two heads who beeped. I missed you so much.”

“Me too. I can’t tell you how much I missed you. I mean, truly, Al, there’s nothing like a week with your relatives to make you appreciate your friends.” Maya swings her backpack off her shoulder with a sigh. “You wouldn’t believe how soul-suckingly horrendous it was. There were times when I felt like I’d been sent to a penal colony and would never see home again.”

“Oh, I believe you.” Alice slides her own backpack down her arm and sets it on the edge of the sink. “Trust me, the Shimons are a world unto themselves.” She makes the face of someone who understands what suffering is. “And it’s definitely not a better world.”

“They can’t be any worse than the Baraberras. Seriously, you would not believe the junk I had heaped on me in the name of peace on Earth this year. Really and truly.” Words fail her for nearly an entire second. “Everything they give you is made by workers who are virtual slaves. And even if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t want it because it’s, like, so uncool.”

Their eyes now on the wall of mirrors behind the taps, Maya and Alice remove their make-up bags from their packs and set them in the sinks.

“How did they like the stuff you gave them?” asks Alice. “Mine hated my gifts. You should’ve seen them. You’d think I’d wrapped up roadkill or something.” She reaches for her lipgloss. “Like my Gran? I gave her a box of those eco balls? So not only would she be environmentally friendly for a change, but she wouldn’t have to spend a fortune using detergent any more? She thought they were shuttlecocks! You know, for badminton? ‘Alice,’ she says, ‘I’m too old for games like that.’ I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”