NEXT UP! 3 68 Freaking Green by Laura F. Sanchez Jasmine Hayward is a regular teenage girl who lives a regular teenage life. One day a deliveryman shows up at her doorstep with a package. The package turns out to be a huge container holding the body of her father’s late Aunt Olivia. With it comes Aunt Olivia’s will stating that Jasmine’s family will inherit five million dollars. But there’s a catch: the family has to reduce their carbon footprint by 80 per cent if they want the money. The first challenge is to make the burial of Aunt Olivia as green as possible. […] Footsteps slapped across the hard tile of the entry. Owl-eyed from fatigue, Stirling flopped against the doorjamb. He held up a sheet of paper. “I’ve been researching since supper and I figured it out.” “What?” I said. “Go to bed,” Mom said. “Best way to bury Aunt Olivia. Green burials cause hardly any carbon emissions and there’s a green cemetery forty miles away.” He waved the paper. “I made a chart. A regular funeral? All that metal and concrete?” He did a Ta-daa! dance step. “Now there’s some embodied energy. Get it?” “No,” I said. Stirling may be a child genius, but I think he makes up stuff half the time just so nobody will know what he’s talking about. “Embodied energy is how much energy it takes to make things. A regular funeral causes maybe 500 pounds of carbon emissions for the coffin and vault and taking care of the plot. Cremation’s almost as much because of the burning fuel and the body.” “Stirling, go to bed this instant,” Mom said. “With green burials, there’s no toxic embalming fluids leaking –” “Bed!” Before reading Consider: What do you think the title Freaking Green means? How might this text connect with the topic of the chapter? Freaking can mean several things: to streak with colour; to feel extremely surprised, upset, angry or confused; or it can work as an alternative to the offensive f-word. late – heitinn (sagt um þá sem eru látnir) a will – erfðaskrá to inherit – erfa a catch – skilyrði a burial – jarðarför owl-eyed – með augu eins og ugla fatigue – örmögnun a doorjamb – dyrakarmur a coffin – líkkista a vault – grafhýsi embalming fluids –vökvi sem notaður er til að varðveita lík Laura F. Sanchez (born 1944) worked several jobs before she published her first writing. She has focused on sustainability in greater parts of her writing. Her novel Freaking Green came out in 2013. Sanchez lives with her family in Los Lunas, New Mexico.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjIxNzc=