Free Girl Power by Melody Carlson Page B

girls.
    “Maybe we should’ve done that before,” admitted Carlie.
    “Maybe …,” said Amy with a sly smile. “But then we never would’ve become friends.”
    Morgan stared at Amy. “So, you really do consider us your friends?”
    Amy looked surprised. “Of course. Aren’t you?”
    Morgan nodded. “Sure.” Then she looked at the other two. “Right?”
    “Right,” said Carlie.
    “Right,” echoed Emily.
    Then Morgan put out her right hand, and the other three girls put their hands on top of it. “All for one,” said Morgan. And the other three joined in with, “and one for all!”
    “Does that make us the Four Musketeers?” asked Emily as they walked toward home.
    Morgan laughed. “Yeah. Something like that.”
    “Anyone want to join in me in soliciting returnable pop cans from the neighborhood today?” asked Amy.
    “Soliciting?” said Carlie. “What’s that mean?”
    “Begging,” said Morgan.
    So it was agreed the four girls would “solicit” their neighborhood for cans for the next two afternoons. But it didn’t take long before it turned into something of a competition. Thinking it was safer to go out as teams of two, it was soon Morgan and Emily against Carlie and Amy. And, driven to outdo each other, both teams endedup going outside the mobile-home park as well.
    By Saturday, both teams had gathered an impressive collection of soda cans. At six in the morning, they loaded numerous large garbage bags into Carlie’s dad’s pickup, since he’d agreed to drop them by the store to cash them in before heading out to the woods. Amy had tied her and Carlie’s bags with pieces of bright red yarn. “Just so we can tell them apart,” she explained as they climbed into Mr. Garcia’s club-cab pickup.
    “I think the winners should get a prize,” said Morgan, certain that she and Emily had outdone them.
    “Yes,” said Amy. “I agree. Maybe the losers should buy lunch.”
    “But then we’d have to use some of our money,” pointed out Carlie. “And that would mean less flowers and paint and things.”
    “Oh, right,” Amy agreed.
    “How about if the losers fix lunch,” suggested Morgan.
    “You’re on,” said Amy.
    Mr. Garcia just chuckled as he dropped the girls at Safeway. Then each pair of girls took a turn at the recycling machine, carefully loading their cans one by one until it was time to print out the receipt for cash.
    “Twenty-four dollars and fifty-five cents,” announced Morgan, feeling a little dismayed. “I thought it would be more than that,” she admitted. “That was a lot of cans.”
    “Twenty-nine dollars and thirty-five cents,” proclaimed Amy. “We win!”
    “Wow,” said Carlie, “that’s more than fifty bucks.”
    “That’s exactly fifty-three dollars and ninety cents,” said Amy.
    “She’s the queen of mental math,” Morgan told Emily.
    “Well, congratulations to Amy and Carlie,” said Emily.
    “Looks like we’ll be fixing lunch today.” Morgan winked at Emily. Then as Carlie and Amy were at the register collecting their cash, Morgan told her that she’d already warned her grandma that the girls would be hungry for a big lunch today. “She’s got it all under control.”
    Emily grinned. “Sounds like we’ll be eating in style.”
    By noon the girls had dug up dozens of small trees and shrubs. Mr. Garcia had gotten permits in all the girls’ names, and each one of them filled her quota. Fortunately, because of Carlie and her dad, it looked like most of the plants might survive too.
    “It looks like a mini-forest,” said Carlie as her dad closed the tailgate.
    “Just think how great these are going to look planted all around the trailer court,” said Amy.
    “But you’ll need to get them planted as quickly as possible,” Mr. Garcia warned them as he began driving down the forest-service road toward town. “You don’t want theirroots to get dry.”
    Amy sighed as she held up her filthy hands. “This is turning out to be pretty