Torched

Torched by April Henry Page A

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Authors: April Henry
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to do something to save the planet before it’s too late.”
    I looked out at the blackness. Even though Blue had switched to high beams, it was as dark as if we were driving through a tunnel. “Sometimes he scares me a little—he seems so intense,” I said.
    “It’s practically a requirement for being a MEDic. Anybody who’s willing to put their freedom on the line is going to be a little intense. Like, Coyote is trying to be one hundred and eighty degrees different than his family, especially his grandfather—has he told you about him?”
    I nodded, feeling jealous that he had shared those stories with other girls in MED. “A little bit. What about the others? Why are they part of MED?”
    “Liberty’s stepfather is a vice president at US Bank—she’s always trying to shock him. She’s probably friends with Meadow because Meadow was a total emo when they met, which freaked out Liberty’s stepdad. And then Liberty met Hawk when he was protesting outside a ski resort. That’s how she and Meadow both got involved in MED. Grizz probably should have been born two hundred years ago. Then he could have been a real mountain man. Jack Rabbit goes to Reed College and smokes a lot of weed, but he wants to become an environmental lawyer. And Seed is kind of a lost soul who lives with a million stray animals. She even has a baby raccoon that she found by the side of the road.”
    “My parents’ friends are all kind of like that,” I said. “Counterculture types, that’s the way they’d put it.”
    Blue sighed. “I just wish I had had my eyes opened sooner. I’m embarrassed when I think of how I used to live my life. I treated everything like it was disposable—clothes, cell phones, whatever. I never thought about the impact I was making. That’s why you’re so lucky. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”
    If you only knew. I was glad it was dark, that she couldn’t see the blush that made my face feel like it was on fire. “But it wasn’t like I made the choice to grow up the way I did. It wasn’t really my decision. Just like how you used to treat everything like you could throw it away—that wasn’t really your decision, either. You were just doing what your parents taught you. We can only be responsible for the decisions we make.”
    For a long moment, the only sound was the thrum of the tires. Then Blue said, “But are you saying that you’re only doing this because it’s your parents’ idea?”
    “Of course not,” I said quickly. “I can see what’s happening to the Earth as well as my parents can. Maybe better, because they’re more used to the fact that it’s all screwed up. It’s just that I didn’t really start to think about it seriously until recently. And if my parents hadn’t been who they were, it might have taken a lot longer.” Looking for a way to end the conversation before I heard her praise my honesty again, I yawned. “I’m going to take a little nap,” I said, leaning my head against the window.
    Although I hadn’t meant to, I really did fall asleep. I woke up forty-five minutes later with a crick in my neck. Blue was nosing the Volvo into a small clearing next to a narrow road. She pulled behind a line of trees and turned off the engine. “We’ll leave the car here and hike in. It’s a couple of miles.”
    “In the dark?”
    “We’re away from the city. We’ve got the moon and the stars. And Mother Earth will guide us.” The words “Mother Earth” should have sounded silly, but they didn’t.
    We got out of the car. Blue put on a headlamp. I fished mine out of my pack and did the same. The small circle of light it provided was only enough to sketch in the barest outlines of what was in front of me. We shouldered our packs and headed into the forest. I followed close behind Blue, trying not to step on dead branches that cracked noisily.
    At first I shivered in the chill air, but in a few minutes I had warmed up. With the help of the full moon, my

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