Torched Read Online Free PDF Page A

pride.
    Laurel gave her a polite smile. “The problem is that it’s so easy to be marginalized. You end up being the human-interest story, the out-there protesters, something to run at the end of the local news. What you need to do is raise people’s consciousness until they themselves are willing to act.”
    Meadow’s face turned red. She nibbled on a fingernail. Now I didn’t know who to be more embarrassed by, back-in-the-day Matt or lecturing Laurel.
    But Hawk nodded in agreement. “Exactly. It takes more than being on TV. If people refuse to wake up, then we have to force them to by any means necessary. It’s a matter of life and death—not just the death of individual species, but the death of the entire planet. And desperate times call for desperate measures.”
    Looking stern, Cedar said to my parents, “Forgive my friend Hawk here. He can be a little hot-blooded. It is vital that people start paying attention. But we need to remember our tenets: We do not harm people, animals or the environment in defense of the Earth.”
    “How did you get people to start paying attention back then, Matt?” Coyote asked. I was glad that he had said something, because it gave me an excuse to look at him. God, he was gorgeous. I imagined what it would be like if he really was my boyfriend. I’d buy a bike, and after school and on weekends we’d ride along the Eastside Esplanade, eat picnics in Forest Park, roam through Powell’s bookstore. Village Coffee would be “our” place, where the barista knew what both of us liked to drink without even asking, where everyone knew which table was ours. Maybe Coyote would even wait for me outside school sometimes. I imagined all the stupid cheerleader girls’ mouths falling open when they first caught sight of him.
    While I daydreamed, Matt kept going. “What we cared about was more than just Vietnam. It was civil rights, women’s rights, class warfare—we wanted to tear everything down and start on a level playing field.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arms. “What turned things around for Vietnam was when people could turn on their TVs and see our soldiers dying in the jungle. That helped people reach a—what do they call it?—a tipping point. What we need for the environment is another tipping point. If we’re lucky, people will naturally realize how important it is. If we’re not, it will take a total disaster.”
    A guy with a bushy brown beard said, “Like, okay, we gotta do something now? Before something bad happens? Not just talk about doing something?” Even though he was a heavyset guy in his twenties, with what looked like bird bones in his pierced ears, his sentences all rose at the end, as if he were a teenage girl at Washington Square Mall.
    “But we have taken action, Grizz,” a woman with long blond hair said. With her buckteeth and pale skin, she reminded me of a rabbit.
    “Action? Like what, Seed?” Matt leaned forward, enthralled.
    Some of the other MED members exchanged glances, like they didn’t want my parents and me to know. Hawk pressed his lips together again.
    Seed lowered her voice, but her tone was proud. “We were the ones who liberated the four-legged captives from the Hillhurst Ranch.”
    Four-legged captives? I thought . Wait—does she mean animals? Give me a break!
    Matt wrinkled his forehead. “You mean those minks?”
    I had heard about that. The year before, a thousand minks had been released from a mink farm halfway between Portland and the coast. The newspaper had said many of them had died within a few days—through roadkill, starvation or by drowning in a backyard swimming pool.
    Liberty nodded, setting her red dreads swinging. “The prisoners of the war on nature.”
    “But didn’t a lot of them die anyway?” Laurel asked.
    Liberty narrowed her eyes. “Maybe a few. But at least we gave them a shot at life. They had the chance to use their legs in freedom and to die on their own terms. When we were leaving, I