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out when I realized it was hard and dead. Then when I was fourteen and hunting season came around, he insisted that I had to get my first buck. I told him no way, but he wouldn’t listen.”
    “What happened?” I asked.
    “We got all dressed up in blaze orange and went out in the woods. We walked around forever until we saw a buck.” His mouth pulled down at the corners. “It was beautiful. Majestic. I still remember how it turned and looked at us. I fired twenty feet over its head, but it still fell over dead.”
    “How did that happen?”
    “Because my grandpa had shot it at the same time.” Coyote raised his face to mine, his green eyes glittering. “Then he slapped me on the back and congratulated me on my kill.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    For the next few days, I was too distracted by my time with Coyote to pay attention to teachers or homework. When I talked to Marijean, my only topic was Coyote. Like a true friend, she listened patiently, even when I repeated myself. I just couldn’t stop thinking about him. We had traded cell numbers, but I had been too nervous to call him.
    When I came home from school on Thursday, the pocket door to the living room was closed again. I set my backpack down on the hall table and sniffed the air. Pot. And with people over, too—I heard the low murmur of voices.
    “We’re in here, Ellie,” Laurel called out.
    I slid open the door. The first person I saw was Coyote, who looked up and smiled at me. I grinned back, then tried to tamp it down. All the MEDics I had met before—Coyote, Meadow, Blue, Liberty, Hawk and Cedar—were crowded into the living room, along with some other people I didn’t recognize. The sweet smell of weed hung heavy in the air, but there were no joints in evidence—just cups of ginger tea.
    “Want to join us?” Laurel asked.
    Hawk, the skinny guy with the pop eyes, said, “I really don’t know about . . .”
    Matt chuckled. “Ellie’s been going to demonstrations since she was a three-month-old in a baby sling.”
    I saw Liberty nudge Meadow, the girl with the black Cleopatra bangs. Both of them rolled their eyes and giggled. Then Meadow saw that I had noticed and looked away.
    Didn’t Matt have a clue about what was embarrassing? I didn’t want these people to think of me like I was still a baby.
    Cedar cleared his throat. Immediately, everyone looked to him. “Of course she can stay,” he said. No one said anything after that, although Hawk pressed his thin lips together so tight they disappeared.
    Even though I longed to sit by Coyote, I didn’t want to be too obvious. So I sat on the floor between Cedar and Blue, the girl with the stubby blond pigtails.
    Matt laced his fingers comfortably over his belly. “As I was saying, we were pretty active in the movement ‘back in the day,’ as you kids like to say.”
    I winced at Matt’s lame attempt at slang. But the others looked interested.
    “What did you do?” a young guy with a bowl haircut and rings on his thumbs asked.
    “We did a lot, Jack Rabbit.” Matt loosened his hands so that he could tick off examples on his fingers. “Teach-ins, prayer vigils, street theater, blockades. Organizing the unions, the military and the churches. Civil disobedience. We took over the college president’s office and occupied it for thirty-three days.”
    I knew most of this. Once every six months or so, my parents would drink a couple of bottles of wine and get all misty-eyed about the glory days, thirty years ago. Last year, in social studies, we learned about hippies, sit-ins, the Vietnam War, “sticking it to the man.” For everyone else, it was ancient history.
    Coyote said, “Two months ago we chained ourselves to the fence outside a timber company’s corporate headquarters to protest water pollution.”
    “What was the outcome?” Laurel asked.
    Meadow straightened up, her black bangs swinging. “I put out a communiqué. We got on channels six, eight and twelve.” Her voice was full of