“I thought you meant that he asks him things like what he got for question three in the maths homework. Not that he hangs out with him.”

“Well, that’s not what I meant. I meant that they’re friends.” Joy Marie takes a bite of her sandwich. “Clemens says he and Cody have a lot in common.”

This seems so unlikely that Waneeda laughs. “That must be a nice change for Clemens.”

“I’m serious.” Joy Marie helps herself to the bowl of salad on Waneeda’s tray. Waneeda doesn’t really do vegetables. “Clem said that he and Cody are more or less on the same page. You know, about the environment and stuff like that.”

“Oh, come on!” Waneeda picks up her burger. “I know you don’t notice that kind of thing, but Cody is seriously attractive and—”

“And what?” Joy Marie stabs a piece of tomato with her fork. “He’s good looking so he must be shallow?”

“And pretty much the anti-nerd,” finishes Waneeda. “Boys who look like Cody don’t hang out with boys who look like Clemens.”

Joy Marie groans. “Oh, not you too.”

It’s not easy to look indignant with a cheeseburger dripping ketchup in your hand, but Waneeda pulls it off with considerable panache. “Not me too, what?”

“Not you have a crush on Cody Lightfoot too.” Joy Marie points the speared tomato at her. “You do realize that practically every girl in this school has a thing about him, don’t you?”

“No, I didn’t realize,” says Waneeda. “I didn’t want to tell you in case you got upset, but I’m actually totally blind.”

“I was only saying—”

“And I was only stating a simple fact – not swooning with lust,” snaps Waneeda. “Forget I said anything.” Now would be a good time to change the subject, before she reveals anything else. She bites into a French fry. “So what’s happening with the club? Isn’t it your big meeting today? You think old Firestone will really shut you down if you don’t get any new members?”

Joy Marie shrugs. “I don’t see how he can,” she says. “I mean, you have to look at all the ramifications and issues.” And she starts explaining what she sees the ramifications and issues to be.

Waneeda feels herself start to drift off – the way she does during classes that are especially boring, lectures from her mother and conversations with Joy Marie when she’s in serious, earnest mode. She’s thinking about what it would be like to sit at the same table as Cody – to ask him, for instance, if he’d like a couple of fries. She is imagining him coaxing her to eat her salad – Come on, Waneeda, vegetables are really good for you – when she notices something out of the corner of her eye. It is Cody Lightfoot, the real Cody Lightfoot, gliding up the far aisle so smoothly that his feet don’t seem to touch the ground.

Almost level with their row, Cody turns and heads towards their side of the cafeteria, edging his way between tables. Where is he going?

Waneeda glances behind her, but there is no one there except Sicilee Kewe, rummaging through the cutlery, and Miss Artsy-fartsy, Maya Baraberra, looking as if she doesn’t know why she’s there. Waneeda turns to her right, but there is no one there at all now, just a tabletop covered with crumbs and spills to show where the other girls had been.

“You know what I mean,” Joy Marie is saying. “Lots of schools are starting to get on the bandwagon now – it would look pretty dumb if Clifton Springs suddenly got off.”

Waneeda kicks her under the table.

“Ow!” Joy Marie scowls. “What did you do that for?”

But Waneeda, of course, can’t answer. Cody Lightfoot is only thirty centimetres away. Twenty. Ten.

“Hi,” he says, those tropical-sea eyes aimed at Joy Marie. “You’re Mary Jo, right? Clem’s friend?”

She blinks. “I’m Joy Marie.”

“Right. And I’m Cody. Cody Lightfoot.” He holds out his hand, and Joy Marie, still looking as nervous as a cat on a raft, takes it. “I just wanted to introduce myself. You know, before the meeting.”

Joy Marie smiles uncertainly. “The meeting?”

“Yeah. The Environmental Club meeting? Clemens said you’re the vice-president and the secretary? He said you’re looking for new members.”

“Yeah.” Joy Marie nods. “Yeah, we are.”

“Right,” says Cody. “Well, I wanted you to know that you can count me in. I was totally committed to the movement in my old school – we did some real cool stuff – and I want to keep it up. You know, different space but same place, right?”

Joy Marie nods.

“So I’ll see you this afternoon,” says Cody. And suddenly his smile is on Waneeda. “See you later.”

Looking at Cody, it’s actually possible to believe that you’ve never seen anyone smile before. “Yeah,” says Waneeda. “See you later.”

Chapter Eleven

“Come on, gang! Let’s save the planet!”

“What do you mean, you’re not coming?” Kristin laughs, on the off-chance that Sicilee is making a joke. “It’s Monday.”

Every Monday after school, Sicilee, Kristin, Loretta and Ash go to the Nature’s Way Fitness Centre, where they alternate their time between aerobics, dance and hanging out at the juice bar, looking like an advertisement for low-fat cereal in their designer spandex and sports bras.

Though not this Monday, it would seem.

“I know what day it is, Kris.” Sicilee slams shut the door of her locker. “But I can’t make it. I have something else to do this afternoon.”

Loretta’s eyebrows go up. “Like what?”

“It’s no big deal.” Sicilee’s smile shrugs. “There’s just this meeting I want to check out.”

Ash tilts her head to one side. “What meeting? I didn’t hear about any meeting.”

“Sweet Mary… It’s for this club, that’s all.” Sicilee’s hair swings like golden blades. “I didn’t think I had to get your permission.”

Loretta points out that she’s already in a club – Diamonds, the club they all belong to.

“This is Mrs Skelly’s idea.” Sicilee makes a bored, put-upon face. “She says that if I belonged to something more, you know, serious than Diamonds it would look good on my record.”

“Nobody ever listens to anything Mrs Skelly says,” scoffs Kristin. “Why don’t you just—” She breaks off as her eyes fall on the flyer on the wall behind Sicilee’s head. Appearing to sprout out of Sicilee’s shining hair are the words: “Come on, gang! Let’s save the planet! Monday at 3.45 p.m.” Most clubs meet on Friday afternoon. “Oh, God! Sicilee! You’re not going to that Environmental Club meeting, are you?” Kristin is clearly a lot better at deductive reasoning than is generally supposed.

Sicilee ignores the shocked expression on Kristin’s face and focuses on the small gold hoop in Kristin’s right ear. “Why not?”

“Why not?” Ash’s shriek ends in laughter. “Because it’s, like, the most pathetic club in the whole universe, that’s why not! Everybody in it’s an industrial-strength freak.”

“They’re super freaks,” adds Kristin. “You know that munchkin Joy Marie whatshername is in it, right?”

“And that total dork Clem the Clunk,” adds Loretta. “I mean, like, really, Sicilee. He wears saddle shoes! Saddle shoes! Like some reject from Grease! For God’s sake. I mean where does he even buy them?”

“They probably still make them on his planet,” offers Ash.

“And the glasses!” Loretta rolls on. “I mean, like, why doesn’t he wear contacts like everybody else?”

“And what about all the dumb things they do?” Kristin wants to know. “Remember when they wanted us to drink water instead of Coke? Water! And it wasn’t even bottled!” Her smile becomes just a little serpentine. “And in case it’s slipped your mind,” she adds, “you did once threaten him.”

Bizarre though this may sound (rather like a lioness threatening a flea), this statement is true. Sicilee did, in fact, once threaten Clemens Reis. “You’d better hear what I’m saying, Geek Boy,” Sicilee warned him. “Because if you don’t stop this fascist campaign against my constitutional right to drink whatever I want, I’m going to put a curse on you. I’m going to make you wish that you’d never been born as much as the rest of us do.”

“And those disgusting pictures they put up in the hall of tortured animals?” Ash wrinkles her nose in disgust. “They were, like, so totally gross they made me want to barf. I mean, who wants to know about stuff like that?”

“You have got to be kidding, Sicilee,” cuts in Kristin. “You can’t possibly join anything they’re in. What’s everybody going to think?”

“I don’t care what everybody thinks,” lies Sicilee. She raises her chin just enough to show that she is above the petty, transient concerns of lesser mortals. “What I care about is the planet, you know? Because it’s, like, the only one we have?”

Ash, Loretta and Kristin all raise their eyes to the heavens (metaphorically, of course, since there is a ceiling above them) and groan. Sure you do…

It is one of Sicilee’s great talents to be able to flounce without actually moving. “Well, maybe you haven’t heard, but everybody says the planet’s going to totally die if we don’t do something.”

“That means turn off the lights when you leave a room, not become a social outcast,” says Loretta.

“Oh, please… I’m not joining. I’m just checking it out. There is no way I’m going to become a social outcast just because I go to one measly meeting.” It is Sicilee who decides what is in and what is cool at Clifton Springs, not other people. They wouldn’t dare. “And even if I did, Loretta, then maybe there are more important things in life than just being popular? Did you ever think of that?”