Dyan Sheldon - The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

“You’re being really unfair, Kristin.” Sicilee pouted. “It just so happens that when I said that I’m going to walk to school, I meant that I’m going to walk every step of the way. You know, on my feet? Left, right, left, right? That kind of thing?”

“As if…” said Loretta. “And I bet that at night you’re going to do your homework by candlelight and knit yourself a sweater.”

“No, I know what she’s going to do after that,” chimed in Ash. “She’s going to start wearing other people’s old clothes!”

Sicilee’s expression soured. Is it possible that her friends have always been so cynical and sarcastic, and she just never noticed?

“I should bet you.” Sicilee swung her hair over her shoulder. “We’ll just see who laughs last.”

Kristin, Loretta and Ash were, of course, totally right to be sceptical. Sicilee had every intention of getting her mother to drive her to some secluded road near the school – and then stroll down to join the other intrepid walkers like Cody as if she really were a committed environmentalist on a carbon-free journey.

Life, however, is full of unforeseen complications, and the unforeseen complication in this case proved to be Dr Margot Kewe.

“But I heard you tell your friends that you’re walking to school from now on,” said Sicilee’s mother. “I didn’t have the impression that you meant just a couple of blocks. I thought you told them that you’d be walking all the way.”

The woman has the hearing of a bat and the memory of an elephant.

“Yeah, I did say that – and of course I’m going to walk all the way,” explained Sicilee. “Eventually. But I meant when the weather’s better and it’s not so cold. For now, I figure that if you could just drive me to, like, the top of Vanzander—”

Her mother frowned. “But you’re going to tell the girls that you walked from home?”

“Only for a week or two.” Sicilee hesitated, chewing on her bottom lip and rocking in place as if torn between honesty and loyalty. With a tortured sigh, honesty won. “The truth is, they’ve been giving me a really hard time lately, Mom. You know, about being Green? They think it’s all a major big joke. And way uncool. You should hear the things they say to me.”

“They probably feel a little jealous and resentful.” Dr Kewe nodded sagely. “That often happens when one member of a group does something different. Separates herself. It makes the others feel threatened.”

Sicilee stifled another tortured sigh. “Yeah, Mom, I know. But—”

“I’m sure they’ll get over it,” her mother reassured her. “Surely what’s much more important is that you’re doing the right thing. And your father and I certainly don’t think it’s a joke. We’re very proud of you and all the positive things you’ve been doing since you joined your club.” The posters. The lights turned off when she leaves a room. The water not left running for hours while Sicilee brushes her teeth and puts on her make-up. The hardly worn clothes stuffed into bags and hauled to the car for the thrift store. The interminably long baths replaced with short showers. The new willingness to wear something two – even three – times before putting it in the laundry. “And didn’t you say just the other night that the environment is more important than comfort or convenience?”

Sicilee blinked. “I was just quo—”

“No, honey, I’m very sorry, but no can do. It’s a shame your friends don’t understand how serious you are and won’t support you, but I think it would be extremely irresponsible of me to do what you’re suggesting.” Her mother didn’t sound all that sorry. “I can’t possibly undermine your commitment by enabling you to cheat.”

“Yes, you can,” said Sicilee. “And anyway, it wouldn’t really be cheating. It’d be being flexible. And it’d just be for a little while. I swear as soon as it gets warmer—”

“I’m not going to lie for you, Sicilee. What if Kristin’s mother says something to me about how wonderful it is that you’re walking to school?”

Hearing of a bat, memory of an elephant and mind of a criminal lawyer.

“Mrs Shepl?” Sicilee squawked. “Who’s going to tell her?”

“You don’t think she might notice that you’re not sharing rides to school with Kristin any more?” Sicilee hadn’t thought of that of course. “And naturally I’ve told her all about you and your club. She’s very impressed at how socially responsible you’ve become.”

Merciful Mother. No wonder Kristin’s been acting so strange. Mrs Shepl nags the way other women breathe.

“Besides, it’s not really that far, honey. It can’t be much more than a mile.” Margot gave her a motherly hug. “The exercise will do you good.”

And so it is that, on this crisp winter morning, with Jack Frost nipping at her nose, Sicilee Kewe finds herself walking all the way to school, just like she said she was going to do.

“Not that far my old socks…” she mutters, trudging past sparkling hedges and lawns.

Distance travelled by foot, she has already discovered, is different to that same distance travelled by car. When you’re in a car, time and the scenery all fly by, and you move as quickly up a hill as along a flat road. The journey to school – just long enough to touch up your make-up or compare your homework answers with Kristin’s if you’re in the Escalade – is now so long that it seems possible the road is actually growing in front of her. The only things that fly by are birds. And as far as her mother’s optimistic “It can’t be much more than a mile” is concerned, Sicilee has come several miles already and she’s still nowhere near the school, and may be dead by the time she does get there. She might as well be on a treadmill at the gym: step-step-step-step-step-step-step, over and over and over again and always staying in the same place. Except that, on the treadmill in the gym, she isn’t carrying a handbag and a backpack with the combined weight of a sleeping bear cub. And she isn’t wearing boots with heels, or a heavy coat. And she has someone to talk to or can listen to her iPod (which, she’s discovered, you can only do when you’re hiking through the sidewalkless suburbs if you don’t mind being suddenly beeped at, nearly run off the road or jumped on by some lunatic dog with filthy, wet paws). And in the gym she can stop the stupid machine whenever she wants and take a break.

A car speeds past her, churning up a fine spray of slush that Sicilee isn’t quick enough to avoid. “I hope you break down in the desert and your phone’s not working!” she shouts after it. “It would serve you right!”

Having no running machine to stop, Sicilee comes to a stop herself. So far, the exercise isn’t doing her much good at all. Her legs ache, her boots and coat look like she’s been hiking through mud, and there’s a blister starting on her left heal. She’s pretty sure that, despite the Arctic temperature, she’s sweating. She would very much like to cry. Having already learned that you don’t want to lean against a car in this cold unless you want your skin ripped off, she leans against a large tree. She looks around. She has no idea where she is. Has she ever been on this road before? Does she recognize anything? The houses do look familiar, but mainly because they look like houses – with doors, windows, chimneys, mailboxes, driveways, garages and snow-covered lawns. If you’ve seen one tree or shrub, you’ve seen them all. Fences are fences. Cars are cars. Lamp posts are lamp posts. So many people have a cute little wheelbarrow or some other ornament out front or a windsock hanging from the porch that it’s impossible to tell them apart. What about the statues of meerkats stuck in the lawn on the other side of the street? Surely she’d remember if she’d seen them before?

But although Sicilee has, in fact, passed these meerkats hundreds, even thousands, of times, she has never actually seen them. Just as she has never seen the tree she’s leaning against, or the cat who always sits in the living room window of the house behind her, or any of the other things that only exist on this particular road – no matter how similar its windows, doors, lawns and windsocks may seem.

There is only one thing to do. She’ll have to call her mother. Surely her mother will be reasonable. After all, she is not a heartless, mean-spirited woman. She gives to charities and sponsors a boy in a village in Africa. Sweet Mary, the woman technically works in the healing professions. It’s her job to help people and ease suffering – not cause it. Her only child is lost in the wilds of suburbia, probably suffering from frostbite and hypothermia. She can’t possibly refuse to come to her aid.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sicilee,” huffs Margot Kewe. “You were born in Clifton Springs. How can you not know the way to school?”

“But things look different in a car to how they look when you’re right in them.” At least indignation has so far prevented Sicilee from bursting into tears. “I think I must’ve taken a wrong turn or something.”

“What street are you on? What’s the nearest road that crosses it?”

“Wait a minute.” Sicilee steps away from the tree to read the signs. “I’m on Burr, and the next street’s Streb.” Near weeping a few minutes ago, now Sicilee wants to laugh. Didn’t she say that her mother wouldn’t let her down? “How long will it take you to get here?”

“Oh, I’m not coming to get you,” says her mother. “I’m going to tell you how to go from there.”

“But, Mom!” A tear now slides down Sicilee’s cheek. She brushes it off before it can freeze. “You can’t—”

“Sicilee! Hey, Sicilee!”

She turns around.

Abe is trotting towards her across a yard. He looks almost as happy to see her as she is to see him.

“I’ll talk to you later,” she says to her mother and snaps the phone shut. To Abe she says, “What are you doing here?”

“I live here.” And now she knows where she is. Abe lives around the corner. Merciful Mother, she’s only a couple of blocks from school. “My God, I don’t believe it!” Abe laughs. “Kristin said you were walking to school from now on, but I thought she was pulling my leg.”

“Really?” Sicilee picks up her things and straightens up. “Why would you think that? Haven’t you seen my Twelve Easy Ways You Can Save the Planet posters?”

“Yeah, sure I have,” says Abe as Sicilee falls into step beside him, suddenly neither cold nor tired any more. “I’ve been meaning to tell you that I really like them. You make some good points. They make you think.”

No one has ever accused Sicilee Kewe of making them think before. She swings her handbag, light as a bucket of popcorn, and smiles.

In the end, of course, Waneeda and Joy Marie gave Cody the help he’d asked for with the Things You Can Do and Did You Know? campaigns. He said there was no one else who could do it. “I’m telling you, everybody’s already tied up with committees and stuff,” he pleaded in front of Ms Kimodo. “You know I’d do it myself, but I’m running all over the place trying to drum up support for Earth Day.”

“We’re tied up too,” bleated Joy Marie and Waneeda.

“But you’re so good at this stuff,” Cody persisted. “You could do it blindfolded.”

Ms Kimodo sighed wistfully.

Cody threw himself onto his knees, clasping his hands. “Please,” he begged. “You have to help. Dr Firestone’s breathing down my neck.”

The sighs of Waneeda and Joy Marie were more resigned than wistful.

Today, however, there is a slight change in the cast of Environmental Club drudges. Joy Marie is thirty miles away, rehearsing with the county orchestra, and so it is Clemens who is helping Waneeda print the latest batch of flyers and put them up around the school.

Mrs Skwill greeted him like a long-lost friend, albeit one with whom she has some issues.

“Clemens Reis!” cried Mrs Skwill. “You haven’t darkened my door in weeks. It’s usually your friend Cody who comes in to see Dr Firestone these days.” Normally a woman of few words (many of them “no”) Mrs Skwill paused only long enough for Clemens to open his mouth. “I guess he’s your public relations person now, being so personable.” She stretched her lips into a straight line, and nodded at Clemens. Unlike you… “So enthusiastic and inspiring.” Also unlike you… “You must bless the day he came to Clifton Springs. He does so much for your club, doesn’t he? Always talking about what your plans are and what you’re hoping to achieve… I can’t tell you how much we’ve all learned about the environment and all its problems from him.” It was also rare to see Mrs Skwill (whose default setting is “cautious”) almost gleeful. “This Earth Day party of yours is really going to be something. Bigger even than the one we had when the town turned 300.”