My Chemical Mountain Read Free

a long piece of glass, until I see a guy in a yellow plastic suit collecting water samples in long glass tubes. I nod at him, just being friendly or whatever, and he says, “Get out of the frickin’ water. What are you, crazy?” which is totally uncalled for. Then he leaves.
    I’m about to walk home, when Charlie shows up. No bruises on his face, which means he didn’t get blamed for the four-wheeler. “Your shoes are garbage,” he says.
    Like I don’t know this. I’ve been taping them up for months.
    Charlie climbs a dead tree, swings from the highest branch, and does a cannonball into the orange, fizzy water. I’m already up the tree when he surfaces for air. I crawl out to the end of a branch, swing by my hands for a minute, and then let go. I try doing a somersault in the air, but I don’t have enough momentum, so instead I do a belly flop that hurts. Charlie laughs at me. I go under and drink in a mouthful of water to spit into his face. He spits back at me. We go back and forth for a while, like water dragons battling it out. My throat is burning. His eyes are bloodshot.
    The afternoon sun turns the water a darker color, almost tomato-red. I’m ready to do something else.
    “So what’s up with you and Valerie?” Charlie asks me.
    “Nothing.”
    “Bull.”
    “She called. I wasn’t home. That’s it.” But that’s not it. I like her. A lot.
    We use empty glass jars to dig for Cornpup’s robots, but we don’t find them. Cornpup is real paranoid when it comes to his inventions. He has a secret map of hiding spots. What we do find is his metal detector wrapped in a blue tarp. Charlie uses it to look for machine parts buried deep in the ground like bones. I fill the glass jars with some deformed tadpoles and weird insects, stuff Cornpup can use for the Freak Museum.
    “Kind of looks like a purple spider.” I show Charlie the rash that’s forming on my forearm.
    “Mine are better,” Charlie says. He’s got snakelike scales on both ankles.
    We head back for food. Charlie has a corroded battery tuckedunder his arm. He loves corroded stuff. Before we part ways, he says, “We’re going out to the yards at midnight. I’ll come get you. Be ready.”
    “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be ready.”
    Mom’s home when I get back. She’s already wolfed down a frozen pizza, didn’t even leave me one slice. On the table there’s a stack of opened mail, mostly bills. I’m drawn to a letter that’s printed on Army Corps of Engineers letterhead. I skim it, my eyes snagging on certain words:
     … Two Mile Creek … discharge pipes … immediate threat … Mareno Chem … highly toxic azo dyes … not to panic … surrounding areas … assessing the risk … not for recreational use …
    “Why do you have this?” I say.
    Mom points a fat finger at me. “Two Mile Creek is a mess. They say it might not be possible to clean up all the poison. They’re talking about fencing it off. I think it’s a good idea.”
    I’m so mad, I want to punch something. “What about me? What about my summer? They’re taking everything away from us.”
    It’s like I can’t hold on to anything.
    I picture a bunch of sweaty construction workers digging holes, installing aluminum fence posts, puncturing our tunnels, confiscating our fireworks and crowbars, destroying Cornpup’s robots and throwing away the busted metal pieces.
    Mom shrugs. “You told me the creek has dead frogs all up and down the banks. That’s not normal. And the dyes in the water. I remember when I had to use a Brillo pad to get oily red stains off your skin after you went swimming there.”
    “Me and Charlie swim there all the time, and we’re fine.”
    Mom rolls her eyes. “Just stop. You
know
what I think aboutCharlie. He’s a bad seed. His whole family is nothing but trash. He’ll jump the fence, and you’ll follow. I swear if that boy jumped off the Skyway, you’d be right behind him.”
    Her words sting me like the phosphorus rocks