Dyan Sheldon - The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

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.”

It was Waneeda who interrupted the administrative assistant’s enthusiastic monologue. “Do you think we could use a photocopier?” she asked. “We have some more flyers we need to run off.”

Mrs Skwill glanced at Clemens. “Are you sure you want him with you?” she asked Waneeda. “You know he’s going to go on and on about all the health risks of photocopy machines and laser printers, don’t you?”

Waneeda said that she knew.

“He’s a very nice boy,” Mrs Skwill continued, as though Clemens had either gone deaf or left the room, “but he’s very depressing. Don’t breathe this … and don’t touch that… He never stops. I don’t know how you can stand it.”

Waneeda pulled on her hair and smiled.

Mrs Skwill would undoubtedly be surprised to learn that Waneeda doesn’t find Clemens depressing at all. Since she has been spending so much time with him, slouching through Clifton Springs with a clipboard and a stack of Save Our Trees petitions, Waneeda has discovered that there is more to Clemens Reis than saddle shoes and doom.

“I really appreciate this,” Waneeda tells him now as they start on their rounds. “It’d take me for ever to do it by myself.”

“Fair’s fair. You help me.” Clemens gives her a conspiratorial wink. “At least no one’s going to slam the door in our faces doing this.” Which is something that happens fairly often when you’re asking people to save ancient trees.