FOR THE NEXT WEEK, I bugged Lizzie to tell me what her big plan was. She wouldn’t crack, though. She just kept telling me I’d find out at the next student council meeting. By the time the meeting rolled around, I was just dying to know what she was thinking. I called the student council to order by banging this wooden hammer thing called a gavel on the table—which, truthfully, is the most fun part of being the president.
Sometimes, when I’m feeling really wild, I even bang it twice.
Anyway, as soon as the meeting started, Lizzie took over. That happens a lot. She raised her hand, and when I called on her, she said, “Attention, everyone! I have a big announcement to make.”
Mrs. Starsky, our teacher and advisor, said, “What is it, Lizzie? I’m always excited to hear your ideas. They’re so new and fresh!”
My archenemy, James Beeks, who had run against me for president and lost, muttered to his friend Craig Flynn, “Of course her ideas are new—until this year, nobody was dumb enough to vote for her.” I gave him a dirty look. Technically, he and Craig shouldn’t even have been on the council, but Beeks had convinced Mrs. Starsky that with a new president and vice president, the group needed a couple of experienced fifth graders around to provide “balance.” So far, all Beeks had provided was obnoxious comments.
Lizzie said, “You know how the student council does something to help the community every year?”
Mrs. Starsky beamed at Lizzie and said, “Of course. You know my motto: Think globally, act locally!”
“Uh, right. Anyway, this year I think we should do something different … something to help the environment right here in our town.”
A little first-grade girl raised her hand and said, “Hey, we could make it rain more! My dad’s a farmer, and he says we need more rain!”
A second-grade boy turned to her and said, “How are we supposed to make it rain? Duh!”
A kindergarten boy said, “I know! Maybe we could save some fur seals! My mom says they’re almost a stink!”
Mrs. Starsky said, “That’s a sweet idea, Tyler. But I think your mother means ‘extinct.’ That’s the word for when all the members of a species have died.”
The little boy said, “Because they smell so bad?”
Mrs. Starsky shook her head and replied, “No, being extinct has nothing to do with smelling bad.”
“But,” Tyler fired back, “everything that’s dead smells bad!”
Lizzie interrupted by saying, “Thank you for sharing your idea—and your interesting logic—with us, Tyler. Unfortunately, though, Mrs. Starsky is right: We need to act locally. And there aren’t any fur seals around here, are there?”
“Oh, no,” Tyler said. “We’re too late! They’re already a stink!”
Lizzie put her head in her hands. Mrs. Starsky asked, “Do we have any other ideas for helping our local environment?”
A second grader raised his hand and said, “Mrs. Starsky, Mrs. Starsky! I just lost a tooth!”
Honestly, the next time somebody tries to get me to run for student council, I might just join the circus instead. The kid ran to the water fountain while Beeks snickered, “Wow, Willie and Lizzie sure do know how to run a smooth meeting—not!”
Lizzie sat straight up, glared at Beeks, and said, “That’s it! Time for a field trip, everyone! Grab your coats and follow me!”
Everyone looked totally confused, but they put on their jackets, and when Lizzie started walking out of the classroom, the whole student council trooped along behind her. I looked at Mrs. Starsky, who raised an eyebrow as if to say, What’s this all about? I shrugged, because honestly, I had no idea.
Meanwhile, Tyler had started crying over the imaginary dead fur seals of our little town, the tooth kid was running around trying to gross everyone out with his bloody molar, and Beeks was smirking. I heard him say, “This ought to be good!”
I was kind of thinking the same thing.
Lizzie marched out the front door of the school, turned right, and cut diagonally through the playground. We passed the slides where Lizzie and I had eavesdropped on Beeks and Flynn, and the baseball field where I had almost saved my team’s fall season. Then we reached the sidewalk that runs along the edge of the woods. Mrs. Starsky said, “Lizzie, I’m afraid I have to ask you where we’re going. I’m not supposed to be taking you off school grounds without signed permission slips, and—”
Lizzie stopped walking so suddenly that I banged right into her. “That’s okay, Mrs. Starsky. We’re here!”
I spat out a strand of Lizzie’s hair and said, “What do you mean, we’re here?”
“Yeah,” Beeks said. “What are you talking about?”
Lizzie pointed to a sign attached to a wooden spike in the ground. All the sign had on it was a phone number and two words:
FOR SALE
I gulped. Jeepers. Our woods were for sale? Dodger’s magical home? The Field of Dreams? See, these woods are kind of enchanted. If you have a certain kind of vision, and a certain kind of strange luck, you can find a field in the middle of the woods where everything is blue and nearly anything can happen. Dodger kind of hangs out there when he’s not in his lamp or following me around. Long story.
This was so not good.
Lizzie said, “This is what I’m talking about. These lovely woods—the only green space for miles around—are for sale. And do you know what happens when a forest gets sold?”
Beeks said, “Somebody makes some money?”
Tyler said, “All the fur seals die?”
Flynn said, “A mall gets built right behind our school? With a food court and everything? Because that would be totally cool!”
Lizzie sighed. “What happens,” she grumbled, “is that the trees get chopped down, the land gets bulldozed flat, all the wildlife gets either killed or chased away, and we get a bunch of new stores or rows and rows of identical houses that nobody really needed in the first place. Plus a ton more traffic right around our school, floods whenever it rains, and a thousand other problems.”
“Well,” said Beeks, “what do you expect us to do about it?”
I spoke up for the first time. “I think she expects us to, um, find a way to stop this.”
Flynn said, “And how are we supposed to do that?”
Mrs. Starsky put her hand on Lizzie’s shoulder and said, “Don’t worry. I’m sure if we put our heads together, we can think of something.”
After the meeting, Lizzie and I told Dodger about the FOR SALE sign. I figured he’d be upset, but he actually started out pretty calm. “Cool,” he said. “What’s a FOR SALE sign?”
“What do you mean, cool?” Lizzie shot back. “This isn’t cool, it’s a nightmare! A FOR SALE sign means somebody’s trying to sell—” She gestured angrily toward my bedroom window, which looked over our backyard and into the woods. “Listen, Dodger, do you see that?” she shouted.
“Um, you mean the window? Why would anybody want to buy Willie’s window?”
“Not the window—the view!”
“Whoa, dude, I didn’t know you could even sell a view. But if they sell Willie’s view, what are we going to see when we look out the window?”
“They’re not selling the view, Dodger. They’re selling the land. They’re selling the forest. They’re selling the Field of Dreams!”
Suddenly Dodger’s unpatched eye bulged. “Ooooohh,” he said, “I get it! Like when I helped those dudes with the bows and arrows sell Manhattan to the Dutch settlers. How dumb were those Dutch guys, anyway? We got ’em to give us, like, twenty-four bucks’ worth of shells and beads for it—and then they realized they couldn’t even carry the land away. Duh, like it was going to fit in their dinky little ships!”
Lizzie sat down on the bed and sighed. “Dodger, when people buy land, they don’t think they can move it somewhere—they just want to build on it. You know, like now Manhattan is all covered with huge, tall buildings?”
“Oh. Oooohhhh,” Dodger said. He sat down next to Lizzie. “So, did I get my buddies a good deal with the beads-and-shells thing?”
She patted him on the shoulder. “Not particularly, I’m afraid.”
“Are you sure? Those were some seriously cool beads.”
“I’m sure, Dodger. So that’s why we can’t let anybody buy our woods. Because would you rather have the Field of Dreams or a bunch of skyscrapers?”
“Um, Lizzie,” I said, “how are we supposed to stop a bunch of grown-ups from buying and selling a piece of land? Plus, how is this my quest if it’s your idea in the first place?”
Just then, my little sister, Amy, came barging in. Fortunately, she couldn’t see Dodger, because only Lizzie and I could—but she suspected Lizzie and I had some kind of secret, so she was constantly snooping around in our business. “Hi, Lizzie,” she said as she flung herself into my desk chair. “Hey, what piece of land? What quest? What’s going on? Are you guys having a big adventure? Huh? Huh?”
“No big adventure, Amy. Just the same old boring stuff. We’re doing some research for student council.”
“ ’Bout what? I can help. I’m a great researcher!”
Lizzie said, “We’re trying to learn how to be environmental activists.”
“We are?” I blurted.
Lizzie elbowed me in the ribs. It hurt. “Oh, Willie, you’re so funny. Isn’t he, Amy? Of course we are.”
Amy said, “Well, why don’t you just read Dad’s book?”
“Um, which book?” I asked. Dad has written a lot of books, and truthfully, most of them are about pretty boring topics.
“You’re kidding, right? I’m talking about Save the Planet in Ten Easy Steps. It’s only, like, the most important environmentalist book of the last fifty years.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Some guy named Kirkus Reviews said so. It’s right on the back cover of the book.”
“Kirkus Reviews isn’t a person, Amy—it’s a magazine. Dad once told me that only, like, five people even read it, though.”
“Well, whatever. They think Dad is a genius. I have a copy of the book in my room, if you want to see for yourself.”
“I have a copy, too, but—” I started to say.
Lizzie cut me off. “All right, Amy,” she said. “Thank you very much.”
Amy grinned at me. “See, Willie? You might think I’m annoying, but at least your girlfriend appreciates me.”
Lizzie spluttered, “I’m not his … he’s not … we’re not … we’re just friends.”
Amy winked at us, then went to get Dad’s book.