“Yeah, I know.” Not a day has gone by since the meeting that Alice hasn’t heard about this. In detail. By now she feels as though she was there herself. “But she didn’t invent conservation. She probably can’t even spell it.”

“It doesn’t matter if she can spell it or not. She’s determined to get a date with Cody. Gott im Himmel, Alice! She came to school with him yesterday!”

This is another episode in the life of Maya Baraberra that Alice has heard so much about she feels she must have witnessed it. “You don’t know that. All you saw was them walking in together.”

“They were laughing.”

“And?”

“And he’s never laughed with me, has he?”

Alice resists the temptation to bang her head against the chrome shelves. “But I thought you said that you humiliated her in front of him. He’s going to know she’s not much of an environmentalist after that.”

“I said that I tried to humiliate her in front of him.” Maya slaps a plate onto her tray. “But she just bounced right back. I’m wearing them, not eating them… Well, I’m sure they look better on you…” She isn’t even sure that Cody was making fun of Sicilee when he told her that he had the same shoes as Maya. He could have been laughing with her, not against her. “The problem is that Sicilee has the ego of a Master of the Universe. And she’s devious. She’ll do anything to get what she wants. I bet that even her parents are afraid to turn their backs on her.” Maya pays for the soup, two apples and the roll she finally selected. “So let’s just stroll by her table to make sure she really is eating vegetables.”

“Oh, for God’s sake…” Alice groans. “Again? Are we going to do this every day for the rest of our lives?”

“Only if we have to,” answers Maya as she steps into the lunchroom. And stops so suddenly that Alice nearly walks into her.

There, right in front of them, and no more than a step or two away, sits Cody Lightfoot. It’s a dream come true. He’s alone. By himself. Or as good as. He’s not with Sicilee Kewe, which is the important thing. He’s with Whatshername – the skinny one who looks like a librarian in an old movie – and her schlumpy friend. He isn’t eating, but talking. Instead of his lunch, there are several pieces of paper in front of him.

Maya glides up to their table as if she’s on wheels. “Hi, guys! How’s it going?”

Waneeda and Joy Marie, who know very well that Maya isn’t talking to them, don’t even bother to nod.

Cody, in the middle of a sentence, breaks off to look at Maya. “Hi,” he says. “How’re you?”

“I’m fine.” Maya’s head bobs for emphasis. “I’m terrific.”

Cody smiles as if he is really glad to hear this. “That’s great.” And looks down at the papers with a certain amount of longing.

“You know, I haven’t had a chance to say how terrific the meeting was. Remember, I sat next to you? And I was the first person to talk about why I was joining the Environmental Club?” Just in case he has forgotten. She wasn’t sure, yesterday, that he actually knew who she was. “I thought it was really so inspiring. You were.” She sets her tray down on the table with a bang. “Oh, God. Sorry.” Soup slops over the rim of her bowl and onto her tray.

Cody moves his folder out of the way. “Yeah,” he says. “It was a good meeting. Fruitful.”

“But I bet the next one’ll be way better,” enthuses Maya. She leans on the table, sending more soup over the edge and one of the apples rolling through the puddle. “Because if everybody’s like me, I already have so many ideas, I—”

“What is that stuff?” Cody’s looking at her soup as if it is toxic waste about to spread throughout the lunchroom and drown them all.

“Soup. Pea soup.” Maya beams. “You know, because I’m vegan?”

Oh, of course, he’s supposed to say. You’re the girl who shops in second-hand stores and rides her bike everywhere and is vegan – just like me. But that isn’t what he says.

“What makes you think it’s vegan?” asks Cody.

Maya is still smiling, but not so happily now. She has the unpleasant feeling that she’s watching victory (or at least a chance to score on Sicilee Kewe) being snatched from her grasp. “Because it’s made of peas.” Her laugh isn’t particularly happy either.

“Yeah, but what else is in it?” asks Cody. “Usually they make it with a ham bone or even chicken stock.”

This, of course, is news to Maya. Despite her belief that she’s been a vegetarian for the past six months, it has never occurred to her to read the label on anything, except to check the calories per serving. Fortunately, she is no stranger to adjusting the truth on the spur of the moment. “Oh, this soup’s not made like that,” says Maya. And then, inspired by despair, adds, “I checked. I mean, we vegans can’t be too careful, can we?”

“Dead right. That’s why I always bring my lunch from home.” Cody’s eyes are still on the carnage on her tray. “I guess you checked the roll, too,” he says.

Why can’t he just flirt with me? Maya silently fumes. That’s all she wanted, just a few minutes of harmless flirtation. Did he think she’d stopped so she could drown him in pea soup made with the blood of lambs? Did he think she’d gone over to him so he could give her a crash course in veganism for airheads?

“Oh, yeah,” says Maya. “Of course I did.”

It is only when she picks up her tray to beat a hasty retreat that she notices Sicilee, loitering a metre or so away by the garbage cans. Sicilee’s smile brightens as she mouths the word, “Touché!”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Waneeda builds a plane

Humans tend to be creatures of habit, and Waneeda Huddlesfield is no exception to that rule. Every day for as long as anyone can remember, Waneeda came home from school, dumped her backpack on the sofa, grabbed a snack and spent the rest of the afternoon watching TV. Then she sat at the dining-room table with her parents and shared a meal whose conversation was largely provided by the television set. After that, she watched some more TV (and snacked some more), until it was time to do her homework while she watched TV. (If she could have watched TV while she was sleeping, she probably would have.) If she got bored with TV, she played games on her computer instead.

But all that has changed.

Now, Waneeda goes to her room as soon as she gets back from school and does her homework. She emerges only briefly to eat with her parents in the glow of the television screen, and then she immediately goes back to her room, locking the door behind her (though the possibility of her mother getting off the couch and barging in on her is as remote as the return of the wood bison).

“What are you doing in there?” Waneeda’s mother asks every night as Waneeda puts her plate in the sink. “That’s what I’d like to know. What are you doing in there? Always in your room. Do you see your daughter, Oscar? She’s always in her room. It isn’t normal.”

And every night, Waneeda says as she makes her escape, “What do you think I’m doing? I’m building a plane.”

Obviously, it isn’t true that Waneeda is spending her evenings constructing a light aircraft in her bedroom. It’s much too small to hold even a glider.

What Waneeda does in her room is explore her new interest in the trials and tribulations of the third planet from the sun. As we know, Sicilee and Maya’s new interest in the planet and its problems is due to love, but, although Waneeda did join the club because she wanted to be near Cody Lightfoot, her new interest owes much more to Sicilee and Maya than to him. And to Joy Marie’s crack about Maya and Sicilee knowing more about being Green than Waneeda.

It was then that Waneeda made her decision. It was going to be bad enough to have to sit through meetings dominated by the Deadly Duo – the Cool Fool with her dumb badges like she’s going to forget what she believes if it isn’t written down, and the Living Barbie la-dee-dahing around like the rest of humanity only exists to feel bad that they aren’t her – without knowing in her heart that they really do know more than she does; and every day probably know a little more.

And that is why, that night after supper, Waneeda sat down at her computer and typed in the words “global warming”. On the second site she visited, she took a quiz: How much do you know about climate change? The answer turned out to be less than even she would have guessed. The answer turned out to be: just about nothing. Waneeda stayed at her computer till one in the morning.

It was all pretty overwhelming. There were over nearly five hundred million responses when she typed in “pollution”. Over eighty-six million for “carbon emissions”. Sixty-three million for “endangered species”. And nearly two million for “hole in ozone layer” alone. When you know nothing, Waneeda realized, you don’t even know where to start. You have no idea what information might actually prove of some use, or what information is less useful than a golfball to clear up an oil spill. The enormity of the task before you exhausts you before you begin. It was the kind of situation that would normally cause Waneeda to give up without a fight. But this time she couldn’t. Not with the smug smiles of Sicilee and Maya burned into her brain. She knew that she needed help, but she couldn’t very well ask Joy Marie – not after ignoring everything she’s said for the last year-and-a-half – so the next night she was up until one again, and up until one the night after that, too. Waneeda figured there was a real danger that her brain might implode.

But the following morning, she happened to emerge from her street at the same time that Clemens emerged from his. It was as if her guardian angel had suddenly shown up to answer her prayers. Clemens Reis – who better? Even Cody said that Clemens’ knowledge is awesome – and there’s nothing Clemens likes better than to share information. Besides which, although he is undeniably peculiar, Clemens has always been nice to Waneeda. Once, at the beach when they were little, she’d dropped her ice cream in the sand and Clemens had immediately given her his.

“Clemens!” screamed Waneeda. “Clemens, wait up!”

Unused to anyone actually asking him to explain things, Clemens, of course, was only too happy to help. He suggested books to read and loaned her documentaries on DVD. He gave her several pages listing websites that cover everything you ever wanted to know about environmental degradation but didn’t know whom to ask – from air, ground and water pollution to deforestation and plastics. Waneeda’s been going through it systematically, making notes and asking Clemens the next day any questions that she has.

Tonight, Waneeda sits down at her computer and turns to the page headed: Reasons not to eat meat. There are several sites listed, but beneath them, underlined in red, Clemens has scrawled: Watch that DVD I gave you. You will be tested! Waneeda laughs. It’s going to be another long night.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sicilee goes out with her friends

“So, fairest Sicilee,” says Rupert once they’re all settled at a table at the back of Uncle Tony’s. “What exciting, five-star, life-changing things have been happening in the wonderful world of Kewe lately?”

Sicilee looks over at Rupert. Up until this moment, she has been having a really good time. These days, she is usually in a state of at least mild stress at school and, when she hasn’t drifted off into one of her lovelorn reveries, anxiety at home – always worried about what to wear and what to say (or what she’s going to wear and going to say), but tonight, going to the movies with her friends, she’s actually managed to forget about Cody Lightfoot for more than two consecutive hours. Which these days is a record. But there is something in the inane way Rupert’s grinning at her that makes her think that brief idyll is about to end. Possibly in an ugly way.

“Nothing.” She shrugs off her new parka (made from ethically sourced materials and trimmed in fur that has never been closer to an animal than Sicilee’s head) and picks up her menu. “Same old, same old, really.”

“That’s not what we heard,” says Abe.

“That’s right,” agrees Davis. Rupert’s inane grin seems to be as contagious as measles. “We heard that you were boldly going where no one’s boldly gone before.”

“Risking isolation, destruction and possible certain death,” chips in Chris.