Running

by Natalia Sylvester

  Jackie stares down Dania, then she closes her eyes and sighs. “She’s right. We didn’t think this through.”

  “No, Jackie. We planned everything,” Crissy says.

  “We need something bigger. Otherwise, everyone will just ignore us and move on to the next story.”

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this worried. “We’re doing fine,” I say. “Just ask my dad . . . he’s been freaking out all week.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “What?”

  “Oh my god. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner.” She drops her backpack to the ground and pulls her phone out of the front pocket. As she types something into the GPS, she begins bobbing her head as if she were at a concert. “Mari . . . please don’t kill me.”

  “Why would I?”

  “We have to march to your father’s Senate office.”

  Didier laughs like it’s preposterous. I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks so. “All the way off US 1? That’ll take forever. And not everyone can walk that far,” he says.

  “No, I know, but not everyone has to. We can set up stations. We’ll need students holding up signs by the school entrance, so that we can maintain a presence here at Grove High. And we have a whole group staying in the PODER office to live-tweet the latest news and monitor our hashtag. But for whoever’s marching . . . we need a destination with a real purpose. This way, we can leave the senator our demands.”

  “The senator is my father,” I say. “I can’t just . . . march up to his office.”

  “Why not?” Jackie says. “If he won’t listen to you, then what chance do we have?”

  I try to imagine it. There’s a security guard in the lobby of the main floor; he’d probably be the first to come to the door. He’d tell us this is private property, and that we’re welcome to congregate at least fifteen feet from the entrance. He’d take one look at me, and maybe, for half a second, have a hard time recognizing me. Then he’d immediately call Mami on his walkie-talkie. She’d run out of the elevators, through the revolving glass door, and yank me into the building by my hair. In front of everyone. Probably on national television.

  I shake my head. “I never signed up for this.”

  The bell rings, signaling that we have five minutes to get to class. “It’s fine. I get it,” Jackie says. “You have to do what you’re comfortable with.”

  Something about the way she says comfortable, though, rubs me the wrong way. “I don’t think you understand how far out of my comfort zone I already am.”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  “No. You don’t get to judge me just because I don’t feel like betraying my father.”

  “Mariana. I’m not judging you. I promise. I get it. This is as far as you can go right now. And I don’t mean that in a blaming way. Just that, everyone’s in different places. Everyone has something different to contribute. I can’t begin to understand what it’s like to be you right now. I don’t know what I would do either.”

  Somehow, her sympathizing with me feels worse than if she actually got upset, and I can’t place why.

  “I have to go,” I say, afraid that if I say anything else, I’ll burst into tears in front of all of them.

  thirty-six

  We’re only a few minutes into second period when Principal Avila’s voice comes through the PA. There’s a lot of rustling and throat clearing, and the muted sound of other voices in the background. She speaks slowly, as if she’s being fed lines in real time.

  “We understand that today there are . . . plans for a student . . . demonstration. While we strongly support students’ First Amendment rights, our interests are first and foremost your safety and education.” All around me, there’s a lot of eye-rolling, and everyone begins texting under their desk. “Any actions that disrupt your time in the classroom, or put students in harm’s way, will be dealt with accordingly. Students must remain on school grounds during school hours. Those who leave the grounds will be marked absent.”

  Mrs. De la Torre, before she was interrupted, was about to have us interview the student sitting next to us and write a short story about them. There are almost forty of us and the whole class begins talking at once. Kids get out of their seats and call across the room, “You think you’ll go?”

  “It says to meet at the tennis courts.”

  “Will you help me make a sign?” Justine pops out of nowhere and sits in the empty seat next to me. I’ve never heard her say a word except for when she shared that her community service project was to help shelter dogs. “I think it’s really brave what you’re doing.”

  “It’s mostly Jackie’s thing.” I sit up, alarmed. “Are they saying I’m the one behind all this?”

  “I mean, we just assumed. Because of your dad and all.”

  I check my phone and realize I have a barrage of messages.

  None of them are from Papi, Joe, or Mami, though. The oldest is from Dania saying that she told her mom we’re going to his office.

  Jackie wants me to know everything’s going to work out fine. Better than fine, you’ll see.

  Crissy wants to know if I’m okay, which makes me wonder if she texted the wrong person. Since when does she care if I’m okay?

  Didier has sent me a bunch of laughing emojis. Avila’s announcement lol.

  And there’s a stream of messages from numbers I don’t recognize, people I’ve texted for a project or a party but whose names I forgot to save to my phone, saying they’ll be at the tennis courts before lunch.

  Let’s do this!!! the last random person writes.

  Crap. This is really happening. It’s not just another one of Jackie’s small protests; a few signs held by the school entrance, a few videos uploaded with #PODERforchange. Now all of a sudden the whole student body cares about clean water?

  I mean, it’s amazing.

  But it’s also terrifying. Because it means Jackie was right. They wouldn’t care this much if they didn’t think I was the one behind it. If it was just Jackie protesting Senator Ruiz, and not me protesting my father, they wouldn’t be showing up. And yeah, probably some of them are just here for all the drama. But a lot of people think we have a real chance of stopping Irving from contaminating the water. They think we have a chance of being heard.

  I have power. I didn’t ask for it, but there it is.

  See you at the tennis courts, I text Jackie.

  She sends me back three lines of exclamation points, and a hug.

  The two-tone bell signifying the PA system goes off again, and the class grows quiet.

  “Mrs. De la Torre? Please send Mariana Ruiz to the office. Her mom is here to pick her up for early dismissal.”

  A collective gasp sweeps over the room, as if someone left a window open and a breeze snuck in. I feel them watching and whispering as I gather my stuff.

  “You’re not really leaving, are you?” Justine says.

  I shake my head in disbelief. “I don’t . . . know, it’s fine. Everything’s still going as planned.”

  The halls are empty as I make my way to the attendance office. A kid I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before gives me a nod as he comes out of the bathroom.

  “Hey. See you outside.”

  I smile but don’t say anything.

  When I get to the attendance office, Mami is standing by the front desk, both hands on her phone and her big gray purse swaying from her elbow as she types. My whole body feels like it’s sinking into sand.

  She looks up and meets my eyes. She’s got that look on her face again, the one that says Don’t you dare start with me right now. Without saying a word, she walks out of the office and I follow.

  She’s waiting for the moment when we get into the car to say something, and each minute that passes only gives me more time to imagine the worst.

  When we’re finally inside, she puts her foot on the brake but stops short of turning on the car. In the distance, I hear the bell ring inside the school.

  “We
got a call. From MSNBC. They wanted to know if we had any comments about our daughter’s plan to march to our office.”

  She pushes down on the START ENGINE button and it roars to life. “Of course, we thought it was a prank. Mariana has done some crazy things lately, but this? This would be . . . unimaginable. Not our daughter. Not the girl we raised.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “We’re going to your father’s office. And you’re going to stay upstairs. And you’re going to watch, quietly, while your father handles your schoolmates.”

  “They don’t need to be handled. Just hear them out!”

  We idle through the lot, making our way toward the exit, when she suddenly stops. A group of students—at least three or four dozen—crosses in front of us. They’re holding posters and banners as they make their way toward the tennis courts. A couple of them meet my eyes through the windshield, which makes me want to crawl under the seat.

  It’d be one thing if I were running away from all this; that alone would be pretty shameful. But to have my mom pick me up from school and drag me out of the fight?

  Mami makes like she’s about to honk the horn, then seems to think better of it. “Look what you’ve started.”

  “I didn’t start it,” I say, though now I wish I had. If none of this mattered, if we really were just a bunch of kids whose actions won’t make a difference, then why is she so afraid? Why is Papi so dead set on stopping us?

  All my life, my parents have said they wanted to shield me from politics, but that was a lie. They didn’t want to shield me from politics any more than they’d want to shield me from air. They just wanted me not to notice what I was breathing. If every part of our lives is a decision that someone is making for us, then everything is political.

  Even doing nothing.

  Even staying in this car.

  Crissy would say a nonaction is still an action. It enables things to stay the same. It’s the opposite of change.

  “Mami?” My voice sounds four years younger somehow. “Wasn’t that you once? Didn’t you work for things you believed in?”

  Outside, the crowd is getting thicker, and the students show no sign of clearing a path for our car to pass.

  “That was different,” she says.

  “How?”

  “How do you even know about that?”

  “Jackie told me. She thought you were a badass. Also Google.” There were so many stories on the speeches she gave, the demonstrations she led. The Mami I never got to meet stayed silent for no one.

  She places her elbow on the door and looks out the window.

  “Why do you hide it? Why do you act like it’s something to be ashamed of?”

  “I’m not ashamed. It’s just that it was nothing. It amounted to nothing.”

  “Is it because you and Papi got married? I did some digging. Some people think he made you promises he didn’t keep.”

  “Things changed, that’s all. We changed, and I made a strategic choice. I took a risk that—para. I don’t want to talk about this.” She stops. I can’t see her eyes through her sunglasses, but in a quick motion she brings a finger to her eye, like she’s wiping away an eyelash.

  “I’m sorry. I just wanted to know what happened.”

  “Children are not supposed to see their parents’ failures,” she says. “We’re supposed to protect you.”

  “From this?” I gesture to the students gathering by the tennis courts. They’ve begun chanting now, their voices rising through the air in four beats. I lower the window and it gets louder.

  Our planet, our voice.

  Our planet, our voice.

  “Our planet, our voice!” I turn to see Jackie walking in front of our car, pumping her fist in the air. She moves slowly, her eyes locked with mine. I contemplate jumping out to join them. It’d be so easy.

  Before I can make a decision, my window slides up. I hear the door locks click and see my mom’s delicate fingers on the button.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Get out of the car.”

  “What?”

  “Get out of the car. Go. Right now.” She’s saying it like it’s a punishment, the way she used to do when Ricky and I would argue on the way home from Publix, and she’d threaten to leave us right there on the side of Red Road if we didn’t shut up and let her drive.

  I don’t understand. I look at the door and realize the click I just heard was her unlocking it.

  “Anda. Before I change my mind.”

  “What about Papi?”

  “That’s for me to deal with, not you.”

  I want to hug her, but there’s no time. Jackie’s kept walking and the crowd is moving fast. I push the door open and get out.

  thirty-seven

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many students in one place unless there was a fight going on. I find Crissy and Didier by the portables on the edge of school grounds.

  “You made it!” Crissy says.

  “I got out of my mom’s car when I saw you all walking out.”

  She looks impressed. “That’s genius, Mari. Your mom checked you out of school so you’re technically not skipping class. Meanwhile, they’re saying the rest of us might get detention or in-school suspension.”

  “They said that?”

  Didier nods. “Principal Avila called Jackie into her office and demanded she call everything off. So then she moved the whole thing up!” he says, giddily flicking his wrist in the air so that his fingers make a smacking noise against one another. He’s holding a paper banner that drapes from his chest to his calves, pressed against his body by the wind like a skirt.

  “Are you okay?” I whisper. “With the suspension?”

  “I probably won’t get to use the car again till summer, but . . . what can we do?”

  “I didn’t know so many people cared,” I say. The crowd has grown past the tennis courts, past the science wing, and past the teacher parking lot to the front of the school, where a security guard stands next to the main gate. Which, as far as I can tell, is locked.

  A couple of students start climbing over it, but mostly the mass of us moves slowly toward it, like a bottleneck of cars trying to get off a one-lane exit on the highway. People try opening the gate, shaking it to no avail, as they start yelling for the school to open it until the security guard finally unlocks the entrance. Maybe he sensed he had no other choice, that there was no stopping us. Students cheer and start trickling through, one by one.

  The person directing the traffic? Jackie. Of course.

  “Come on.” I grab Crissy’s hand and begin pulling her through the crowd. Didier takes hold of her other hand and follows. “Sorry. ’Xcuse me. Behind you.” Everyone seems pissed that I’m trying to cut until they see it’s me. They pull out their phones and begin shooting. Pretty soon, they’ve cleared a path for us. I keep my head down as we move forward. A light tap on my shoulder makes me stop and turn. It’s Zoey.

  “You’re here!” I start pulling her with me.

  Her face has specks of glitter all over it. She holds her sign over the back of her head and it doubles as a visor, blocking out the sun.

  “Come on! We have to hurry.”

  When we finally make our way through, I reach through the gate to tap Jackie on the shoulder. “Oh my god, we thought we’d lost you!”

  Everyone starts cheering. She pumps her fist in the air and yells, “We’re doing this!” The crowd grows even louder and I join them. It’s like the more I scream, the less alone I feel. My voice isn’t drowned out because it becomes part of something bigger, amplified.

  I look around, stunned that we managed to organize so quickly. Not everyone had time to make a sign, so some people hold up single sheets of paper, or notebooks where they’ve written things like #ITSTOPSNOW. Others pick up fallen palm fronds or banana leaves strewn across the sidewalk as we make our way down the road. We haven’t even been out for ten minutes when I notice a small procession of cops on motorcycles.

&n
bsp; “Shit,” Didier says.

  “Principal Avila said they’d show up if I didn’t call off the protest,” Jackie says. “She said they’d have to protect the students, and that it wasn’t fair to local taxpayers. She’s so full of it.”

  “Right. They’re ‘protecting’ us,” Didier says, using air quotes. He picks up his pace and edges toward the center of the crowd as he takes out his camera and begins filming.

  I check my phone to see if he’s streaming live. A text message from Mami covers the main screen.

  Cuídate. Don’t do anything you won’t be proud of later.

  It’s weird. It’s like I’m meeting a stranger but also finding a piece of her that was missing. They say parents live vicariously through their kids to make up for things that they regret.

  Is this who she used to be? The person that I’m becoming?

  We stay in a nearly single file to avoid spilling out onto the road. The wind picks up and the palm trees bristle over our heads. They sound like waves crashing ashore.

  A cop wails his siren once, warning us to stay on the sidewalk. A white van with a giant red-and-blue seven painted on it speeds past and parks several blocks ahead.

  “Ha! So they do want to watch us walking down the street,” Jackie says. “Dania can eat it.” In the distance, a four-person news crew climbs out and begins setting up equipment. A woman with big brown hair and a teal dress—Dania’s mom, I assume—stands with a mike in her hand. Just the sight of her sends a tremble through my limbs.

  “I don’t think I can talk to them,” I blurt out. No one seems to hear me. “Jackie?” I say louder.

  “Yeah. You okay?”

  I give several tiny, quick nods. “It’s just . . . They’re going to want to talk to me, right?”

  “Probably. But you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

  “I’m not ready.”

  “We’ve got you.” She puts her arm around my shoulder and I wrap mine around her waist. Crissy catches up to us and gives me a silent look, as if to ask if she can join. I nod, and pretty soon, along with Didier and Zoey, we’ve become a human chain.

  I turn my head to get a sense of how many we are now. There are students as far back as I can see. Where the road ends, several blocks behind us, there’s a group setting up chairs and signs at the intersection, and a few other clusters of kids crossing, making their way toward the highway we’re close to reaching.