WE WERE BACK IN OUR MINI-MINE, Ashley and me, just the two of us. It was the day after our road trip to Kayford and I was still in recovery from the nightmare we had witnessed. The morning had been chilly and the leaves had turned. One final fling of color and then boom, down they went. Just like that.
“Sometimes I wish I were a tree,” I said to Ashley. “Life would be so much simpler.”
“Until some yahoo with a chainsaw comes and knocks you on your ass.”
“Hmmm . . .” I said. “Good point.”
“Anyway, if you were a tree you wouldn’t get to have sex,” Ashley added.
“Trees have sex.”
“They do not.”
“They do, too,” I said. “It’s just not like people sex. You know, they use the bees and the wind and stuff like that.”
“Good God,” Ashley said. “Imagine that. Imagine if we had sex like trees do. We’d have to have the insect express come on over and deliver the packet of your boyfriend’s stuff right inside you. You’d be like, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, dude, not that oaf of an oak’s! Gimme that hot sugar daddy’s over there, the one twiddling his twigs at me! Come on now, buzz to it!’ It would kind of take the fun right out of it.”
“I guess,” I said.
“And think about this one,” she went on. “Imagine if trees had sex like we do.”
“Like you do,” I said.
Ashley smiled.
“Imagine Bradley Beech giving the come-on to She. ‘Hey baby, why don’t you brush that beautiful white ash of yours against my hunk trunk. Oh yeah. Feel how hard my nuts are? You know I’ll make you bark for more!’”
“Is that the line Marc used on you?” I asked, laughing.
“You mean the line I used on him,” Ashley said. “He was like, ‘No rush, we can wait, I don’t want to pressure you,’ and I’m like, ‘Dude, I don’t want to wait, let’s do it!’”
“It was good?” I asked.
“Well, it hurt a little,” Ashley said. “But I was still really into it.”
“How’d you know what to do?” I asked.
“I didn’t have a clue. It just happened. And half the fun was trying to figure it out!”
“And it wasn’t, like, awkward or anything?”
“It was totally awkward. But awkward in a really exciting way. Marc had done it before with one other girl last year, so he sort of knew what was going on. But not really. And anyway, since I’m on the pill, and he had, you know, only done it with a girl who hadn’t done it before, I wasn’t worried about getting anything so we didn’t have to fool around with one of those thingamabobs.”
“Call them ‘condoms.’ ‘Thingamabobs’ has already been taken.”
“How about ‘thingamamarc’?”
“More like ‘thingonamarc’!”
We both laughed.
“Anyway,” Ashley said. “It made it easier.”
Ashley had been on the pill ever since she had first gotten her period. Up until now it had had nothing to do with sex. Her periods had been really crampy and bloody and one big horrible yuck that would keep her home from school and in bed and full of blah. The pill had been a lifesaver for her. Thanks to it her PC’s (period crummies) had all but disappeared.
“Do you love him?” I asked.
Ashley looked at herself in the mirror hanging on the wall of coal. She twisted her bob and she wrinkled her brow.
“No,” she finally said. “I don’t. At least not yet. I like him. I really like him. But I’m not in love with him. Do you think that’s wrong?”
“Do I think what’s wrong?”
“That I’m having sex with him but I’m not in love with him.”
I paused for a moment. There was no way I would have sex without making love. I just couldn’t do it. And, as grown up as I thought I was, fifteen was still fifteen. It seemed young to be doing something that intense. But I was me and Ashley was Ashley. I wasn’t going to judge.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think it’s wrong. Marc is an awesome guy. And I know he really likes you. I mean, you two are a couple and all.”
“We are.”
“You’re on the pill, so you’ve got that covered.”
“Thank God for the pill!”
“If it was a one-night thing, if you weren’t going out, if he was using you, if you weren’t on birth control then, yeah, I’d say it was wrong. But that’s not the case.”
Ashley came over and hugged me.
“You know the really weird thing?” Ashley said.
“No, tell me.”
“I bet half the people in this town would have me roasting in the fires of hell for having sex, whether I was in love or not, when I’m only fifteen. Even though they probably all did it themselves. And I bet a whole bunch of those very same folks are the ones praising to high heaven the bastards who want to bomb and bury Mount Tom. Which makes about as much sense as a cow’s meow.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s just so weird. I mean, in the same week that I had sex for the first time we went and saw Kayford’s Mountain.”
“What was left of Kayford’s Mountain.”
“Between Wednesday and Saturday I witnessed the very best and the very worst of what the world has to offer. It’s enough to make my head explode!”
“I thought you said it hurt?” I asked.
“You know what I mean,” Ashley replied.
“Anyway,” I said, “I’d say you did a tad bit more than ‘witness’ the very best part.”
“Truth,” Ashley said. “But think about it: making love, or like, whatever you want to call it, versus rape. Creation versus destruction. Heaven versus hell. Pretty weird, huh?”
“Very weird. Although let’s hope you didn’t create anything.”
Ashley snuggled over and took my hands in hers.
“Are you thinking about it?” she asked.
“Thinking about what?”
“About it!”
“Duh! But I know I’m not ready yet. I’m definitely going to wait a while.”
“You should get on the pill. Or at least get a bunch of thingamakevins. Gotta be prepared.”
“It was worth it?” I asked again.
“It was sick!”
We sat there, quiet for a moment.
I thought about what a different world it was from the end of the summer. So much had changed. I had thought I’d never have a boyfriend—and I was wrong. I had thought good girls didn’t give it up at fifteen—and I was wrong. I had thought the mountains would be here forever—and I was wrong.
“You know what is really, really, really weird?” Ashley asked.
“What?”
“With all of the bad out there. With all of the evil. With all of the mountaintop destroyers and the crazies and the meth heads and the clustermucks that go on and on—even with all of that—I am so happy right now. I really am. I have Marc. I have you. We have a mountain to fight for.”
“What’s the opposite of criss-cross applesauce?” I asked, snuggling closer.