She can’t let them see her. Maya has weathered the teasing, ridicule and mockery with patience, if not actual good humour, but riding the pink and blue bike (now equipped with brakes) to school, always asking what’s in the soup or sauce or telling them what’s in that cookie or that body spray, and often being seen with her new friends Clemens and Waneeda are nothing next to this. If they see her dressed like this with her bucket, she’ll never live it down. Uninvited, Alice’s voice echoes through Maya’s head. It’s really uncool… Everybody’s going to laugh at you… Well, if they’re not laughing now, they will be very soon. And the hip image she’s worked so hard to build since the beginning of high school – and already dented – will never recover.

The normal response to danger is, of course, either to stay and bravely fight or to run away as fast as you can. There is no time for Maya to get out of her costume – and no way she’s going to be standing here looking like The Scourge of Landfill when Brion, Finn, Jason and Shelby stroll by. Especially Jason. The only question is in which direction she’s going to flee.

The car park’s too dangerous. The alley down the side of the supermarket’s too far. Maya turns as sharply as a girl enveloped in plastic bags and bottles can, and rustling and clacking, heads for the supermarket’s automatic doors. The opening is narrow for her costume, but by twisting her body she manages to squeeze through without knocking anything off the displays dotted around the entrance. With all the grace and ease of a robot made of tin cans, Maya moves into the produce section. It’s unlikely that the boys are coming into Foodarama. Probably they’re going to the pizza place or the taqueria at the other end. But if some evil star does guide them into Foodarama, it’s even more unlikely that they’ll be looking for vegetables or fruit. They’ll cut straight across to the snack aisle.

Paying no attention to the people staring at her in open-mouthed amazement, holding aloft an apple or an avocado or a box of croutons that has been forgotten in surprise, Maya lumbers over to a revolving tower of salad condiments and stands beside it, ready to bury her face in the shelf of thousand-island dressing and Italian vinaigrette if Brion, Shelby, Jason and Finn do suddenly appear.

The same shoppers who would have pelted past her outside Foodarama show no fear or surprise at her presence beside the salad dressings. They come and go, testing the tomatoes and sniffing at the oranges – and looking over at Maya with indulgent smiles and mild curiosity. Several people ask her what she’s promoting, and if she has samples. “What are you supposed to be, honey?” asks one woman. “Plastic Girl?” There hasn’t been this much laughter in Foodarama since the pigeons got in last summer.

Word of the presence of Plastic Girl in Fruit and Vegetables moves through the store. Something’s about to happen. There will probably be giveaways. A small crowd starts to gather, watching as if they expect her to start singing and dancing. Maya does, in fact, recognize some familiar faces – friends of her parents, a woman from her block, Shayla’s mother – but for some reason this no longer bothers her. The panic that drove her through the electronic doors has vanished as completely as the Labrador duck. This, Maya realizes, is her great opportunity. She has an audience. An audience that is waiting to hear what she’s going to say.

“Hi, everybody!” says Maya. “I’m Plastic Girl. And I’m here to tell you what’s happening to the Earth.”

She is still talking when there is a call over the loudspeaker for security guards to go immediately to the produce department.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Truly great reasons not to save the trees

Clemens and Waneeda have spent the morning, as they have spent most weekend mornings for the last couple of months, trudging up and down the streets, roads, crescents, drives and dead ends of Clifton Springs with their petition to save the old-growth oaks from being turned into firewood. Clemens has his jacket open so his Trees Don’t Grow on Money T-shirt is visible. Waneeda’s jacket is also open to reveal the T-shirt Clemens made for her (a picture of a tree being felled and the caption Chainsaw Massacre). Her hair, in keeping with the arboreal theme of the afternoon, surrounds Waneeda’s head like a bush.

They stop in front of a blue ranch house whose front window is filled with china rabbits.

“Rabbits is a good sign,” Waneeda decides. “It means they like animals. At least that’s a start.”

“Or maybe all it means is that they like buying figurines,” says Clemens. Maya isn’t the only one who’s had a long morning. He slips a coin from his pocket. “Your call. Heads or tails?”

“Heads you do the spiel,” says Waneeda. “Tails I do it.”

In the world of petitioning (as in most worlds) some days are better than others. This one has been a fairly demoralizing one. The people who eagerly snatch the pen from their hands have been very few and very far between. Although many of the good folk of Clifton Springs have been courteous and even polite, if only vaguely interested, it would be misleading to suggest that Waneeda and Clemens have been universally greeted with warmth and support. Very often, curtains have twitched, but no one has answered their ring. Just as often, someone has answered their ring and then shut the door in their faces. Dogs have run after them. Small children have jeered at them. Adults have been unpleasant and rude.

“Heads, damn it.” Clemens ruefully shakes his head. “I swear you have to be psychic.”

“Just lucky.” Waneeda tugs on a strand of hair. “Anyway, you’re better at talking than I am.”

Clemens pushes his glasses back up his nose. “Yeah, but people like you more.” He sighs. “Everybody thinks I’m weird.”

“You’re not weird.” She gives him an encouraging smile. Today, Clemens is wearing an old black beret and one of his grandmother’s many knitting projects, a scarf patterned with pine trees. “You’re just different.”

This time, the door is opened by a middle-aged man who listens patiently to Clemens’ plea, but when he’s finished says, “You don’t think maybe the town needs a new sports centre more than it needs a couple of trees? We’ve got plenty of trees, you know, but we don’t have plenty of sports centres.”

“But these aren’t just any trees,” argues Clemens. “Sports centres can be built anywhere, but these trees can never be replaced. They were here way before the white man. They’re the living past and have witnessed hundreds of years of history. They’ve seen whole peoples come and go and the sky black with passenger pigeons. If these trees could talk they—”

“Yeah, but they can’t talk, can they?” interrupts the man. “They’re just trees.” He grins in an I’m-laughing-at-you-not-with-you way. “And do you know what another name for trees is? Do you know what else they’re called?”

Clemens and Waneeda glance at each other, but neither answers.

“Wood!” shouts the man. “That’s the other name for trees! Wood!”

They can still hear him laughing after he’s shut the door.

“I think it’s time to take up our post at the village square for a while.” Clemens slips his clipboard into his backpack. “This neighbourhood’s got some kind of juju curse on it.”

“At least that last guy was original,” says Waneeda as they head back to town. “That’s the first time we’ve heard that one. I think that should go on the list. Which makes … what? Five or six for today?”

Truly great reasons not to save the trees is the game Clemens invented to keep them from getting too depressed.

“Well, let’s see.” He frowns, thinking. “The first three were: I can’t find the ferret, It’s too early and I once fell out of a tree and broke my leg. So that guy who said, Son, you just don’t get it, do you? The thing about trees is they grow back was number four.”

Waneeda laughs. “You know what would happen if we didn’t chop down trees? We wouldn’t be able to get our cars out of the garages was five.”

“Well, what about the lady in the tracksuit and the shower cap? What was it she said?”

“Trees cause pollution.”

Clemens looks as if he can’t decide whether to laugh or cry. “And even when I said that they only cause pollution when you cut them down, she still wouldn’t sign the petition.”

They turn into the historic town of Clifton Springs.

“Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute.” Waneeda pulls on Clemens’ arm as if she’s literally trying to slow him down. “What about that man with the funny-looking dog? The one who said that if I had to rake up the leaves I wouldn’t be so eager not to cut down trees? He’s number seven.”

Clemens takes her elbow and guides her across the road to the square. “And how about Mr Where-would-we-be-if-the-pioneers-had-felt-like-that?”

“And you said that we wouldn’t be shopping in Wal-Mart, that was for sure,” gasps Waneeda. “And he slammed the door in your face. Just like the woman with the Yorkshire terrier that time. Remember her?”

“Remember her? Even if she hadn’t had that dumb dog up her sleeve, I’d never forget her,” says Clemens. “She shut that door so hard she would’ve broken my foot if I hadn’t been wearing my steel-toed boots.”

“Well, at least you know that if you don’t become some kind of environmentalist, you can always get a job as a door-to-door salesman,” says Waneeda. “You’re pretty good with that sticking-your-foot-in-the-door routine.”

Clemens leans against the old cast-iron railings that surround the churchyard, solemnly shaking his head. “I couldn’t take the constant rejection. It’s soul destroying.”