Up Over Down Under (21 page)

Billie knew from all of her S.A.S.S. guidebooks and supplementary materials that Georgetown was a historic area of D.C., but she was pleasantly surprised to discover, as she and Parker hopped off the bright red-and-silver Circulator bus—the bus spewing extremely un-eco-friendly fumes in every direction—that it was upscale and hip, as well. Trendy boutiques lined the cobblestone streets, and she could just imagine Eliza on a shopping spree after school or on the weekend.

For a moment, Billie had a small rush of self-doubt: the area was quite posh and she herself more the natural type, but then she decided that any group calling itself the Green Gorillas was probably pretty low-key. She glanced down at the note she'd scrawled to herself with the address of the group's meeting place. It was a coffeehouse called Drip, and if she was reading her Yahoo Maps printout correctly, it was right…over…

There!
She gave herself a little mental high five. Slowly but surely, this Earth Mama was learning to adjust to life in the big city. “We found it,” she said, grinning breathlessly at Parker.

He arched an eyebrow at her. “Was there any doubt?”

She laughed, and shrugged, not wanting to admit that her sense of direction was hardly her strongest quality. “Never mind,” she said, starting forward.

She looked both ways before crossing the street—so confusing how Americans insisted on driving on the wrong side of the road—and they darted into the coffee shop, Billie ducking her head down to avoid a collision course with the oversized wooden coffee-mug sign swinging ominously over the doorway.

Upon stumbling into the shop, she realized she needn't have worried about being too “natural” for the Green Gorillas. Her eyes scanned the place—rickety, mismatched wooden furniture painted in bright primary colors, framed old-fashioned record covers hanging askew across the walls—and lit on a cluster of people about her own age huddled in the far corner. One guy in particular seemed to be holding court at the makeshift “head” of two round tables that had been pushed together. He had dreadlocks sprouting off in every direction and was wearing a worn-in long-sleeved T-shirt that read I ♥ RECYCLING.

From alongside her, Parker poked her in the ribs. “Your kind of people, right?”

She didn't turn to look at him, but nodded her head just the same, wondering briefly if Parker, in fact, felt vaguely out of place in his typical preppy uniform of jeans and a pocket T-shirt.
Never mind that he actually wears “prep” well,
she thought.

The group at the table had to be the Green Gorillas, but just to be on the safe side, Billie nodded in the direction of a passing waitress. The woman looked briefly irked (or that could have just been the effect of her glaring eyebrow stud).

“Is that the—”

“Green Gorillas. They meet here every week,” the waitress said shortly, then tottered off on matchstick legs in a blur of tattoos and black hair dye.

“Friendly,” Parker murmured, mostly to himself. It made Billie smile.

Swallowing hard and gathering her courage, Billie made her way toward the back table. Any hopes she'd had of sidling up subtly, however, were dashed as she tripped on an uneven plank of flooring and careened directly into Mr. Dreadlocks himself.

She extricated herself from the arms of his chair and willed her face to return from tomato red to its natural hue. “Erm. Hi.”

“Were you actually looking for the Green Gorillas, or did I just happen to sweep you off your feet without even trying?”

Dreadlocks grinned winningly, and Billie grew even more flustered. “Yes. I mean, no. I mean, sorry.” She took a deep breath. “I didn't mean to crash into you. But I was looking for your group. A friend of mine at school—well, he's an exchange student and we do this internship together—I mean, I should explain, I'm from Melbourne—” Suddenly every word in the English language that Billie had ever known was spewing from her mouth at once. It wasn't pretty.

“Why don't we just start with the basics?” Dreadlocks asked, mercifully cutting her off. “I'm Adam.” He stuck out a hand for her to shake.

“I'm Billie. And usually I'm a little more together than this. Not a lot, but a little.” She smiled. “I'm doing the S.A.S.S. exchange program, and I intern for the Ritter campaign. But we haven't had the chance to do a whole lot of hands-on kind of stuff, so a friend suggested that I come by and check you guys out.”

“Your friend is very wise,” Adam said, his hair bobbing in time with his words.

“Thanks,” Parker said loudly, stepping forward and extending his own hand for Adam to shake. “I'm Parker. Otherwise known as Billie's ‘friend.'”

Billie winced. She couldn't believe that she'd been so rude as to forget all about Parker in her tongue-twisted spazz-out. Thankfully, he seemed to be taking it okay.

Adam shook Parker's hand, then tilted backward and swept his hand across the table in a general sort of introduction. “This is Lisi, Meredith, Jordan, and Cal,” he said, as a petite blonde in pigtails, a tall, cool brunette, a steel-jawed boy with blazing green eyes, and a tall, lanky guy whose freckles formed constellations across his cheeks shook their heads at her and otherwise waved their hellos in turn.

“Don't worry,” Lisi said, smiling. “There won't be a test or anything.”

“Thank goodness for that, mate!” Billie exclaimed, causing the table to break out in good-natured laughter.

Adam twisted in his seat and reached for a stray chair from a nearby table. “Sit,” he said, dragging the chair over and pulling his own seat back to make room for Billie. He patted at the chairs invitingly.

After a brief glance at Parker and a questioning shrug of their respective shoulders, Billie and Parker decided to do just that, and happily.

 

As it turned out, Adam had mainly been crowned head of the Green Gorillas via family lineage, like a sort of ecoroyalty. His older brother was big into environmentalism at Georgetown, where he was a freshman, and he had essentially appointed Adam leader of the 2.0 pack as a means of maintaining forward momentum.

The group's big plan for the spring was to stage a massive sit-in to protest the postponement of Proposition Seven. They were firm believers that putting the proposition on the back burner was just the first step in a bottomless pool of red tape that would result in nothing being done to clean the bay. For his part, Adam had been doing this for long enough that he knew how to pull in support from local media to maximize the impact and the attention that the group's protest would achieve.

“So you're pro-protest?” Billie asked. She was definitely starting to feel that she was, too, after all she'd learned through her research, but she wanted to hear Adam's take on the matter. Unlike Iris and everyone else she'd met at Ritter's office, he seemed like someone who cared about the environment on a pragmatic level. In other words, less talk-y, more do-y.

“It's the most immediate and impactful way of making our voices heard,” Adam explained.

“And like I told you at school, the Green Gorillas are all about making their voices heard,” Parker chimed in. “Some of the college outposts of the group have made waves for some particularly high-profile efforts.”

Adam nodded grimly. “Obviously, we want to work with administrators to the best that we can, but you know what they say about the squeaky wheel…”

Billie couldn't deny that. And despite the nagging feeling that Ritter might not appreciate her joining a group that was going to protest his policy, Billie was in—all in.

Luckily, Parker seemed to feel as galvanized as she did, and the two left the Green Gorillas' meeting buzzing with energy and anticipation—something she knew had nothing to do with the caffeine surging through their systems.

“That was…incredible,” she gushed as they boarded a bus heading back to their neck of the woods. “I owe you a huge thanks for the hookup.”

Well, not “hookup” hookup,
she realized, blushing to herself and allowing a momentary mind movie of Adam's sparkling eyes. Maybe there was another reason for the tingling she felt all across the surface of her skin...

 

 

Unfortunately, back at school on Monday, Heather was nowhere to be found. Rumor had it that she'd caught an icky stomach bug that had been going around. Or maybe she was just suffering from the same vitamin-D deficiency that seemed to have taken hold of Billie herself.

Forced to put her need for girl talk on hold, Billie went for the next best thing. She tracked Parker down in the student newspaper office.

As usual, she found him in position behind his enormous computer monitor, engrossed in whatever his latest story was. The screen threw ghostly flickers of light across his face as he stared ahead, lost in thought. Billie almost hated to disturb him.

Almost. But not quite.

Giggling to herself softly, she tiptoed up behind him, snaking her hands lightly around his face and placing them firmly over his eyes. “Guess wh—”

Parker shouted “Whoa!” and jumped up from his seat, clearly startled.

Billie dropped her hands to her sides and stepped back sheepishly. “Did you guess?”

“I
guess
you almost gave me a heart attack!” Parker said, his voice stern, but his eyes twinkling. “Jeez.”

“Sorry 'bout that.” Billie tried to look contrite, but it was hard when the corners of her mouth still wanted to perk up into a grin. Parker was cute when he was scared half to death. “But…I have a great story idea for us!”

“Yeah?” Parker motioned for her to take a seat at the swivel chair next to his own. “If you're not exaggerating, then all is forgiven.”

“I'm not exaggerating. At least, I don't think so,” Billie assured him, settling down next to him and leaning forward with enthusiasm. “I was thinking we could do a profile on the Green Gorillas, you know? And the sit-in they're planning.”

She
had
been thinking about it—all day Sunday while she was supposed to be working on homework, the thought of the piece had played itself over and over in her mind.

The thought of the piece, and the piercing brightness of Adam's eyes.

Somehow, though, she didn't think the part about Adam's eyes was going to be the winning argument for Parker. So she'd decided to take a different tack. The activist tack. If she'd learned one thing about Parker since arriving in D.C., she knew how to hit him where he lived.

“The thing is”—she said, words pouring from her mouth in a heated rush—“the sit-in is something that anyone can get involved in, you know? And it's so proactive—like, just the one day, but a day of action. And talk about visibility! You remember what Adam said—the Gorillas' blog gets, like, hundreds of hits a day. Trust me—people will know about this protest. It's going to be so much more effective than all of those stupid mailings, e-mails, and endless, pointless ‘research' that we've been doing over at Ritter's office. And you
know
we're not the only ones who are totally tired of the busywork.” Her eyes glittered as she described the plan. She truly couldn't wait to pull it off.

“It definitely sounds like it could be big,” Parker agreed.

Billie couldn't help but hear the slight note of reluctance in his voice. “But?”

“I just…wonder how Mr. Ritter is going to take it. The news of your involvement, I mean.”

Billie's eyebrows squinched up. For her part, she'd been trying not to think about that. “Maybe he'll be impressed that we're taking…um, initiative?” Her voice squeaked, a telltale giveaway that her confidence wasn't nearly as strong as she was hoping to project.

Parker shrugged. “Look,” he said, “I think the sit-in is a good idea. I mean, heck, sign me up. But it's
possible
that Mr. Ritter would prefer something a little more off the grid. You know, quieter. Walk softly, and all that. Since you're basically protesting against his own office.”

Billie slapped her palm against the desk. The horrible part was, of course, that Parker made sense. She'd have to be mad not to assume that the sit-in wouldn't ruffle some feathers.

But still. “We
have
been walking softly. Too softly. And the result is that the bay might never be cleaned.”

Parker shook his head again. “I believe you. And like I say, I'm not disagreeing with you. But I've known the Ritters for a while now, and I think you might want to give Mr. Ritter the heads-up about it before D-day. And before you write it up for the paper.”

Billie considered this for a moment. The notion of confronting Mr. Ritter was terrifying, even if it was the Right Thing to Do. For the time being, she decided to put the Mr. Ritter issue out of her mind. She'd get him to see it her way. Maybe he wouldn't ever really
embrace
the idea of the sit-in, but if nothing else, he'd understand where she was coming from.