Furious - By Jill Wolfson Page 0,32

must keep her away from that meddlesome goddess of justice disguised in teacher’s clothing. You know who I mean.

Plus there’s her little friend, Raymond. He’s a question mark. Will I have to do something to keep that interfering ray of light from fiddling sunshine notes into her ear?

Three plus one is four, and four is not an acceptable number. Never four. Never two. It’s always three.

SECOND STASIMON, THE BOOK OF FURIOUS

13

With one less ant in the world, we leave Raymond’s house. Alix, Stephanie, and I decide to walk the long way home through downtown. We could talk for the next month nonstop and not get everything said and sorted out. What happened? What exactly did we do to the ant? How did we do it? Can we do it again? Can we do it any time we want? Whom can we do it to? We need so many answers and I’m not even sure we have the right questions.

I zip my hoodie and shove my hands into the pockets. It’s not raining for once and it feels more like the usual October weather in this part of California, warm in the day but chilly as soon as the sun sets. Alix takes a black knitted watch cap—basic headgear for surfers—out of the back pocket of her baggy, low-slung jeans and pulls it hard over her ears. Stephanie buttons up her cardigan, which is worn thin at the elbows. Between the bells on her belt and the metal beads threaded into her dreadlocks, she makes music as she walks. She’s dominating the conversation.

“Let’s each pick our top candidate, the number one person who deserves a lesson from us. Can we call what we do a lesson? Lesson sounds so professional. I’ll start.” Pause. “It was in the news today. There’s this coal company in West Virginia that thinks the Clean Water Act doesn’t apply to it. The boss dumps chemicals into the town water supply. And that gives people cancer and kidney damage. Little kids get open wounds, just from taking baths. I’ll show you the pictures. They’re awful.”

It’s a big joke at school how easy it is to make Stephanie cry. Mention a toxic spill or an endangered species halfway around the world, and boo-hoo-hoo. I overheard the Double Ds in the bathroom say that they think it’s all a big phony act, and that Stephanie only pretends to be oh so sensitive because it’s the only way a geek like her can get any attention. They would say something cruel and shallow like that. Stephanie sniffs, and even though I’m not looking at her directly, I know there are tears.

“You really feel for those people, don’t you?” I ask.

She stops so suddenly that we almost collide, and she puts herself right in my face. “How can you not care? How can anyone not feel?” She starts walking again, picking up the pace. Alix and I take giant steps to keep up with her. “What can someone our age do about it? About anything? Write letters? Hold a fund-raiser bake sale? Make speeches in class that everyone makes fun of? Try to tell the truth in a blog that nobody reads? I can’t even vote. I have no power. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Until now,” Alix says.

Stephanie perks up, remembers. “That’s right. Now I finally have power.”

“We have power,” Alix emphasizes.

“Power that we can use to undo the injustices in the world. To make things right and fair.”

“Right for us, too,” Alix points out.

We turn the corner and get hit by a mind-blowing sight. The moon. It’s low on the horizon but full and huge, vibrating white and sharp around the edges. It’s like a cutout moon taking up a whole section of dark construction-paper sky. I stare at it with awe. Stephanie asks Alix whom she would put first on her list to teach a lesson. Alix mumbles a name.

“You want to punish someone named Simon?” I ask.

She turns on me so fast that I stumble backward. She shouts in my face, the Ps popping. “Not punish him! Punish anyone who lays a finger on him, anyone who gives him any shit or takes advantage when I’m not around to stand up for him.”

Stephanie unclips her stainless-steel water bottle from the side of her backpack, takes a drink. “Who’s Simon?”

“My brother. He’s nineteen, but he’s like a little brother. He’s … um, retarded.”

A disapproving groan from Stephanie. “Alix, the word retarded is a derogatory term. You mean developmentally different.”

“Whatever.