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  When I’m four feet away, I can see through the windshield: Dirtrat’s smoking weed. He pulls off Jeff’s blue glass bowl, not even trying to hide. I stride up and knock on the passenger window. Jeff jumps and Dirtrat slips the bowl into his pocket.

  “What are you, stupid?” I say as I open the door and Dirtrat tumbles into the backseat. I point at the “Drug-Free School Zone” sign ten feet away from the car. “Can’t you wait till we get on the road?” I squint at Jeff. “Can you even drive now?”

  “Aw!” Dirtrat shouts to Jeff, laughing. “You win!”

  Jeff turns to me. “We bet on how long it would take for you to bring that up. I said three seconds. Dirtrat said a minute.” I roll my eyes. “Don’t worry, I just had one hit.” I don’t love it, but it’s not booze, and it’s not a whole bowl. All it’ll do is make him drive a little slower than usual. Fits with the Grandpa car, I guess.

  In the backseat, Dirtrat hits the bowl again. I spot a rent-a-cop across the lot. “Can we get out of here?”

  As he pulls out of the lot, Jeff pops in a Crass tape and hits Play. Without your walls I am alive, without your walls we all survive. I roll down the windows and let the smoke out. The wind whips my hair into my face, stinging, as we make our way toward I–5.

  On the highway, Jeff speeds it up, faster than usual, and I watch the speedometer. He’s worried about beating morning rush hour; I’m more stressed about the weed in the glove compartment. It hits 70. “Slow down,” I tell him. “We’ll be fine.”

  “You want to sit in yuppie traffic for two hours?” Jeff asks me.

  “You want to get pulled over with weed in the car?”

  “She’s got a point,” Dirtrat says.

  Jeff slows down. Across the divider, I watch the cars inch in from the suburbs to Tacoma, people on their daily drive listening to their stereos, bodies merging with their bucket seats till the routine and the person and the highway become one. Our side is loose, fast, almost empty. We’re going the opposite way.

  The city thins into suburbs. We zip past a Chevron; mini-malls and plastic signs, red and blue and orange like children’s toys, smooth and shiny and fake. Timber trucks swipe by us, huge logs strapped to the flatbeds. All of it is ugly. Jeff and Dirtrat yell along with Crass, their voices adding one more layer to the jangly noise, and I stay quiet, face pointed out the window, watching Tacoma fade behind me, trying not to think about my mom in our dead house, trying to forget I’ll be back there tonight.

  * * *

  • • •

  Past Enumclaw, suburbs start to give way to farmland and you can see the seams: the spots where the grass meets the pavement, asphalt striping the green earth like scars. Silos dot the horizon; trailers tuck into the few remaining stands of trees. The Crass tape clicks to an end.

  “You been up to one of these before?” Jeff asks Dirtrat.

  “Nah, but I know people who have.”

  “Yeah?” Jeff asks. I can tell he’s excited by the way he sits up straight, arches his brow. “There’s like, confrontations with the cops sometimes, right?”

  “I think more the Forest Service. And the lumber companies. The loggers can get pretty gnarly.” Confrontations. I wonder what he means by that.

  “Right, right,” Jeff says.

  “Especially Cascade Lumber,” Dirtrat says. “They’re some nasty-ass motherfuckers. Need to get their asses kicked. Or so I’ve heard.”

  “Yeah, totally. I’ve heard about their shit on KAOS. On Independent World News?” Jeff mimics the DJ’s hushed, conspiratorial voice. “The only truly independent news feed for the people.”

  Dirtrat looks blank. I don’t think he listens to the news.

  Jeff thinks for a second. “Wait a minute. I think I heard about this thing on that show. Is this the Chinook Pass timber sale?”

  “Ah—I don’t really know, man.”

  “I think it is. They were talking about it the other night.” Jeff turns to me. “Remember, Alison? We were at the lot at Wilson—”

  When we’re in the lot, I’m not paying attention to the radio; I’m paying attention to his hands, his voice, his eyes. “What was it?” I ask.

  “They were saying how it’s, like, a thousand acres of old-growth Douglas fir and there’s been this whole battle over it. Cascade’s starting up this big clear-cut, remember?”

  This is sounding vaguely familiar. Jeff gets more excited, putting it together: “Yeah, this was the thing they were talking about. The mainstream enviros were trying to fight it in court, but of course that failed, and the corporates made this deal with the feds to cut the land. They were talking about it before the segment on Mumia.” And now I realize why it sounds familiar: Independent World News had the story on while Jeff and I were making out.

  “Jeff,” I mess with him, “were you listening to the news while we were hooking up?” I think it’s funny, but I make a face like I’m actually upset.

  Jeff looks at Dirtrat for a second; I think he’s trying to figure out whether it’s more important to seem like a well-informed radical or a red-blooded heterosexual male. “Well, you know, we gotta be aware about the stuff they try to hide from us,” he says. “I have to pay attention so I can put it in my music, pass the word on to the people.” He pauses, then admits, “It was kinda hard to concentrate on the story, though.”

  I smirk at him, flirty. “Uh-huh.”

  Dirtrat laughs. Relieved, Jeff cracks a grin.

  * * *

  • • •

  Twenty minutes past the last farm, right before the road slopes up into the mountains, the guys get hungry and we stop at a Quik-Mart. Good thing, too, because as I get out of the car and see the run-down trailers dotting half-wild fields around us, I’m pretty sure this convenience store is the last outpost of civilization.

  When we walk in, the guy behind the counter immediately looks like he wants to kill us. He’s wearing a beard and a flannel, open to show off his “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirt. His black trucker hat says “POW/MIA.” A full-size American flag hangs behind the counter, dwarfing the tiny bottles of Wild Turkey and Jack Daniel’s. He just keeps staring at us, hard as stone. Like we beat up his family or something. I’ve never been looked at like that by an adult before, not a stranger. I actually feel like he might hurt me if he could.

  We fan out into the store, scanning the shelves. This place isn’t like the convenience stores near Tacoma. Instead of ever-more-inventive types of snack food, the shelves are full of staples. Soup, peanut butter, canned beans, Wonder bread. People actually buy their groceries here. It seems sad.

  The counter guy’s beady eyes track our every move down the aisle like he’s got us in the crosshairs of a rifle. Dirtrat’s shoplifting skills might be legendary, but there is no way we’re walking out of here with anything we haven’t paid for. I fix him in my eyes and whisper, pleading, “Don’t do anything dumb, okay?”

  Jeff finds the snack aisle and leans over to me in front of the Doritos. “Alison,” he hisses like we’re hatching a secret plot. “How much cash do you have?”

  I brought a couple twenties, even though Dirtrat said there’d be food at the Free State. “We’ve got a budget,” I tell him, sounding like my mom used to when I was little and she’d take me to the grocery store. “Ten bucks.”

  At the counter, Jeff and Dirtrat set down a huge pile: Funyuns, dill pickle potato chips, two kinds of Doritos, and a liter of Mountain Dew. For a couple of vegans who hate the corporate machine, they sure do like junk food. I set down a Snickers. The counter guy glares at me.

  “You got money to pay for all that?”

  “Yeah—” I say, reaching into my wallet.

  “Oh. ’Cause you look like freeloaders to me.”

  I mean, Dirtrat is definitely, shall we say, distinctive-looking, but I’m wearing a T-shirt and jeans. I bristle. “I have money.”

 
“Uh-huh. Right,” he says, staring me down. “You got a job?” He looks over my shoulder at Dirtrat. “I know you don’t.”

  “I had one this summer,” I tell him. “I’m in school now.”

  “Sure,” he sneers at me. “O-kay.” I know he doesn’t believe me, but I don’t understand why. He stares at me while I uncrumple the bills, eyes full of venom. Like he expects me to hurt him. And then he stands up straighter, squaring off with us: “So. Where y’all headed?”

  Jeff starts to pipe up: “There’s this Fr—” but Dirtrat shushes him fast.

  “My grandma lives up near Buckley,” Dirtrat tells the counter guy, his eyes wide, voice innocent. “We’re going to visit her.”

  “Uh-huh,” the guy says. “Y’know, y’all better be careful up there,” and then he fixes me in his burly gaze. “There’s a timber sale goin’ on, missy,” he says, low, like it’s a warning. “Watch for fallin’ logs.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “What was that?” I say as we tumble into the car. My heart thunks up against my chest; I feel like I just escaped something, but I have no idea what.

  “That,” Dirtrat says, nodding toward the Quik-Mart, “was that.” He points at the pickup parked across the lot. The sticker on the truck says, “Have a job? Thank a logger.” Another one beside it has a picture of a spotted owl in the middle of a target. “Timber economy. There’s nothin’ else up here.”

  “But what did we do?” I ask. “That guy seemed like he was ready for us to fight him or something.” Jeff rips open the Funyuns, and the smell makes me nauseous; I’m that shook up.

  “People who look like us come up here for one reason,” Dirtrat says. “That dude knew where we were going. We’re his sworn enemy.”

  “I’m not anybody’s enemy,” I say. “I mean, not someone I don’t even know.”

  “Come on, Alison,” Jeff says, mouth full of Funyuns. “Really?”

  “No, I mean it,” I say. “I’m not.” It’s not something I’ve thought about; it just comes out, clear, from a place underneath the part of me that thinks, that guy looked the way I feel at school. Like you’ve been pushed around, by everyone, all the time, till your eyes harden and your skin armors and it looks like you’re the one doing the pushing. I don’t want to be his enemy.

  Jeff looks at me a second, and then he swallows the Funyuns. “You don’t have anything that you’re against? I mean, you have to stand in opposition to what you think is bullshit.”

  “But I don’t think that guy is bullshit.”

  “You don’t? He practically spat in your face.”

  “Well, yeah, he was a jerk, but I mean, I don’t know . . .” I’m not sure how to explain it. “It’s like he thought he needed to fight back against us.”

  “He does,” Dirtrat says.

  “Why?” I say. “I was buying Doritos. It’s not like I oppose his right to exist.”

  “You should. He represents everything that’s fucked about the system,” Dirtrat says.

  I don’t know how to explain to him that that guy doesn’t “represent” anything to me. He looks like my mom’s customers at the diner when I was five. People aren’t symbols; they’re people. That’s like Team Naomi and the jocks: people thinking I’m a reputation, a history, an idea, making me invisible. That kind of shit is how people get hurt.

  “If you don’t hate him, you’re just stupid,” Dirtrat says. “’Cause you can count on the fact that he already hates us, man. It’s a war. Hippies, punks, whatever; as far as he’s concerned we’re all out to fuckin’ destroy his livelihood and steal his house.”

  “He can have his stupid Quik-Mart; I don’t want it,” I snap at Dirtrat; he’s being kind of an asshole.

  Jeff jumps in, stopping Dirtrat from arguing with me. “Yeah, but that Quik-Mart is part of a system,” he explains for Dirtrat. “His customers are loggers; that’s where they get their money, so that’s where he gets his. Everything depends on cutting down those trees. It’s capitalism, man. If they can’t cut, they don’t have shit. And they know we’re here to stop them.”

  I look at Jeff. Stop them? I’m just here to play hooky from school.

  CHAPTER 4

  When we head into the mountains, the driving gets slow, the road narrowing to a single lane. Every so often a huge Douglas fir towers in the middle of our path, road curving at the last minute to miss it, and I think this route must have been paved a long time ago, back before it was easy to cut down a tree. Jeff has the stereo off for once, and no one is talking. In the quiet I can suddenly hear how loud the car is. Beside me, the woods stretch out forever, dark. Evergreens drip with moss and glisten with rain, their trunks thick as buildings. They look alive.

  After a while, the road plateaus and opens to two lanes; trees open to fields. Cloudless sky stretches out before us and there it is, Mount Rainier, huge and purple and craggy, white-capped, so much bigger and more real than it looks from Tacoma.

  I’ve only been this close to the mountain one time. My dad brought us here when I was six, the tail end of one of Andy’s Scout trips. Dad decided we’d drive up to meet the troop. My mom didn’t want to go: she said it was wet up there, and everything would mildew, and Andy had a ride home all set up. But my dad reminded her we’d see Andy three hours earlier if we went. Even when he was only ten, everybody wanted to be around him. Driving up, the mountain looked almost too big to be real, like something from a storybook. As we got closer, I thought that it would swallow us, but finally it was the mountain that disappeared, not us. When we met the Scouts at camp, Andy didn’t want to go home: he wanted to stay outdoors. “Why don’t you show us the trails you guys were on,” my dad said. “Let’s hike in.” I remember the shape of Andy’s shoulders as he ran up ahead, zigzagging through the forest, disappearing behind trees, darting out, then fading into green again.

  Now the pasture closes up behind us, trees filter out the light, and we’re back in the woods. Jeff looks over his shoulder. “Where next?”

  “That was the last turn I had directions for,” Dirtrat says.

  Jeff looks worried. “What? How come?”

  I check out the gas gauge. Half a tank, but still. I don’t want to be lost.

  “They’ve gotta be careful about letting out the details,” Dirtrat says, eyes darting sideways. Shit. I knew following him anyplace was a bad idea.

  “How are we supposed to find it, then?” Jeff looks at the gas gauge. “This sucks.”

  “Nah, chill, man,” Dirtrat says. “We’ll find it. There’s a code.”

  We bump along the road for a long time, looking for anything that might tell us where to go. Finally we see a blue tarp tacked to a trunk beside the road, bright plastic color clashing with the forest. “Dude,” Dirtrat says, triumphant. “See? A sign.”

  “A sign for what?” I ask.

  “We’re near the Free State.”

  Jeff still looks skeptical. “It doesn’t tell me where I’m supposed to go.”

  Dirtrat smiles. “Sure it does. See how it’s on the right side? That means the next road off to the right is the one we should take. It’s a logging road. Probably not on the map.”

  I want to think he knows what he’s talking about. The alternative—lost in the woods with no gas and a half-empty bag of Funyuns—is too scary. But I still don’t quite believe him.

  We take the turn, Grandpa jostling off the pavement onto gravel and mud. Another hundred yards and we see an orange rain poncho nailed to a tree on the left; sure enough, a narrower road snakes off to the left side. The trees thicken around us, no sign of humans anywhere. I’m starting to think Dirtrat’s “code” doesn’t exist when I see the big hand-lettered sign propped against a tree.

  “CHINOOK FREE STATE” it says, red paint on plywood, circle-A anarchist sign on one corner, the letters “EF!” on another. It looks like the hand-drawn patches on
Jeff’s hoodies, the Xeroxed artwork on his CDs. A huge tarp stretches across the road fifteen feet above us, tied to the trunks of two trees. Laid flat in the middle, beneath the tarp, is a plank of particleboard the size of a door; behind it is a hole in the ground. We pull over and kill the engine. Up the road, I spot a few tents tucked deep into the woods. Thirty feet past those, another tarp is stretched over what looks like a makeshift kitchen—plastic buckets, a tank of kerosene, a cooler.

  “Here we are, dude,” Dirtrat says, victorious. “This is it.”

  Jeff surveys the scene, disappointment flickering in his eyes. “Where is everybody?” He’s right: it looks deserted. It’s weird to me that this is the big protest that the Quik-Mart guy was so upset about. I reach for the Doritos. “There’s no one here.”

  “Guys, chill out,” Dirtrat says. “They’re probably just waiting to make sure we’re not Forest Service. I bet they’re watching us.”

  “We’d be able to see them,” Jeff says. “Where can they hide, behind the trees?”

  “Tell you what,” Dirtrat says. “Get out of the car and see what happens.”

  Jeff gives him a look, but he takes the keys from the ignition and unlocks the door. I take off my seat belt and climb out after him.

  Stretching my legs, I inhale deep; it smells like moss and dirt. The air is cool and so clean it clears my head just to breathe it.

  Dirtrat crawls out from the backseat.

  Still nobody.

  Jeff starts to get back in the car.

  Then a voice hollers out from way up by the kitchen, wary: “Who’s there?”

  “Friendly,” Dirtrat hollers back. Branches rustle in the distance. Two figures appear: both tall, both skinny, a girl and a guy.

  The girl walks a few paces ahead of him. Her dark hair’s short and spiky; she’s wearing a grubby wife-beater and beat-up army pants tucked into combat boots. Her nose is pierced, her arms muscled and strong. Pale freckles spill across her cheeks, blanketing her skin beneath her hazel eyes. She doesn’t have on makeup, and she’s beautiful in a way that’s different from any magazine I’ve ever seen. Suddenly I want to wipe my lipstick off. When they get closer, I can see the guy, too, his tan Carhartt pants and dark green T-shirt blending in with the forest. He wears a stocking cap and a scraggly goatee. Even from here I can see his eyes are kind.