Free Crash by Jerry Spinelli Page A

There I am!”) the Wet One herself.
    They’re all standing at the entrance to the weed field, waving their signs and chanting, “No more malls!…No more malls!”
    The truck stops. Traffic ties up. Cops come. The TV lady puts a mike in the face of some white-haired geek—it’s Webb’s father. He says, “How can we criticize others for burning down the rain forests when we’re covering the earth with asphalt?”
    And then (“There I am! Me! Me! Listen! Shhhh!”) the mike is in dear little Abby’s face, and she’s saying, “We don’t need more stores. We should take better care of what we have. My mother buys my clothes at Second Time Around!”
    And then the camera shows the flatbed drivers parking alongside the road and getting out and going home, and the news switches to a fire in the city.
    Abby jumped up. “We stopped them! We won! Didja see me?” She did a cartwheel out of the den. “That was me!” She threw open the front door and shouted to the world: “I’m on TV! I’m a star!”
    I looked at Scooter. “Why doesn’t she get a little excited?”
    That was yesterday, Friday. The whole story didn’t catch up with my mother till today. She came storming home in the middle of the morning and herded Abby upstairs. I went up to my room. I left my door open.
    Abby’s door was shut, but I could hear pretty good. It went something like this:
    MOM: You can’t be going around trying to block bulldozers.
    ABBY: Why not?
    MOM: Never mind why not. You’re only ten years old. That’s reason enough.
    ABBY: I’m ten and three-quarters.
    MOM: Don’t get smart.
    ABBY: Don’t you want to save the earth?
    MOM: I want to make a good home for my children, that’s what I want.
    ABBY: Well, I want to make a good
world
for my children.
    Silence for a while. I guess that was a point for the daughter. My mother must have looked fumey, because then:
    ABBY: You’re just mad because I’m against the mail and you’re working for them.
    MOM: I’m running out of patience, is what I am.
    ABBY: You’re fed up with me.
    MOM: I’m—
    ABBY: You’re gonna tear my picture down from the wall and burn it and destroy all my dental records so there’ll never be a trace of me.
    Another silence. This time I figure my mother was biting her lip, trying not to laugh. When she finally spoke, her voice started out slow, then picked up speed.
    MOM: You campaign against your own mother who is trying to make a good life for you. You refuse to eat meat. We areinformed that you wish to turn our backyard into a jungle. And to top it off, you announce to the entire
world
on television that I buy you secondhand clothes.
    ABBY: Well, it’s true.
    MOM: No, dear, it is not true. At least, not completely.
    ABBY: What do you mean?
    MOM: I mean, one of the reasons why your father and I work so long and hard is so you
don’t
have to wear secondhand clothes. But just to humor you, yes, I do let you buy a few things at Second Time Around. But you’re so stubborn. So when I shop for you sometimes, to get you to wear something respectable, I just
tell
you I bought it there.
    Silence. Then squawkily:
    ABBY: You
lied.
Isn’t
this
from Second Time Around?
    MOM: It’s new.
    ABBY: Well, I don’t want it…
here
…and I guess you lied to your own child about
this
too, huh … here … and
this!
…and
this!
…and
this!
    The door flew open. Out she came, stampeding down the hall. My mother called, “What are you
wearing?
” but my sister was charging into Scooter’s room and slamming the door.
    I’ll tell you, if you never saw a fifth-grade girl run down a hallway wearing nothing but boxer shorts with red and blue anchors, you got a real treat coming. I swear, if I don’t stop laughing in the next minute, I’m gonna die.

27
    N OVEMBER 20
    I did it!
    Our last game of the season was yesterday against Bayboro. I needed one touchdown to break the record for TDs in one season. I got three. Scooter caught them all with our camcorder. I taught him