Running

by Natalia Sylvester

  Did the whole student body seriously just do this? We’re a school of about twenty-five hundred and it feels like nearly all of us are participating. Of the thirty-four other schools that are walking out, two are meeting with our group at my father’s parking lot. I look around, and it’s hard to imagine there will soon be more of us. For now our noise feels like chatter, quiet chants in the distance, a woot here and there.

  But we all know once Jackie says the word, we’ll raise our voices.

  thirty-eight

  Without realizing, we’ve synched our footsteps, and as we pick up the pace, my heart beats faster too. It makes me feel like we’re unstoppable, a determined force that will never be silent. Even after this ends, even when we all go home. This will change everything and we’ll all be changed because of it.

  We reach the news van and keep going. Dania’s mother joins us with her microphone and cameraman in tow. She’s wearing black three-inch heels that I guess seemed reasonable this morning. They crunch against the uneven payment and her breath spurts onto the marshmallow pad of the mike.

  “Mariana, what are you marching for today? Are you sending a message to your father?”

  I keep quiet, my eyes fixed on the space before me. If I ignore her, will she go away? Or will I end up on national television looking like one of those frozen iguanas that fall from trees in the winter?

  “Mariana, have you thought about how this will affect your father’s chances in Tuesday’s Florida primary elections?”

  A few arms lengths to my left, I hear Crissy yell, “Maybe he should’ve thought of that before letting Irving put caca in our drinking water!” Her voice nearly croaks from fury and a bunch of people bust out laughing.

  Dania’s mom doesn’t seem to catch it. She asks Crissy to repeat herself, but the moment has passed. The five of us try to keep a straight face, but every time our eyes meet we can’t suppress our giggles.

  “They’re going to think we’re high,” Jackie says, suddenly very serious, which only makes us laugh even harder.

  Didier takes a deep breath and fans his face with his CLEAN WATER NOW sign to dry his tears. Zoey holds her poster over her mouth, but you can see in her eyes that she’s smiling.

  I want to tell them how amazing they are, how happy I am that we’re friends, but I know that the second I say a word, the mike will be back in my face. Instead I keep my expression neutral and wrap my arm around Jackie’s and Zoey’s waists again, and a collective squeeze travels through all our bodies.

  We reach the intersection between US 1 and Kendall Drive and stop to wait for the walk signal. There are so many of us that we can’t help blocking traffic.

  Car horns start blaring. People scream at us in both support and anger. A group of students standing in the middle of the previous block start cheering, raising their hands and signs higher.

  It’s a cacophony of chaos. The cops wail their sirens again, and it ends up sounding like a catcaller whistling at us as we pass.

  “Mariana . . .” I’m beginning to realize that Dania’s mom starts all her questions to me by saying my name “. . . was shutting down US 1 part of your plan today?”

  Shutting it down? A couple of cars are missing their green light, and she calls it shutting down?

  “Mariana?”

  I glance at Jackie and that’s all it takes for her to swoop in.

  “Protest is not supposed to be convenient.” Even though the mike is right in front of her, Jackie has to yell for us all to hear her. “Just like our contaminated water is not convenient.” She pauses and we begin cheering. “Just like buying crates of bottled water even though our taxes are supposed to pay for drinking water is not convenient.” The cheers grow louder. “Just like making clean water a luxury affordable only to the rich is not convenient.” It begins to sound like a concert now, a back and forth. “Just like children being poisoned for years in Flint, Michigan, while the government turns its back on the Black community is not convenient.” Jackie’s amazing. I’m in awe. Her voice rises with each of the word’s three punctuated syllables, like a drum. Con. Ve. Nient. “Our health is more important than your convenience.”

  The camera is fully focused on her now. Jackie picks up the pace as she talks. She has no scripts or notes—it’s like she’s been preparing for this all her life.

  “Our right to clean water is more important than any developer’s profits.”

  Again, the crowd erupts. I stand next to her, clapping and yelling at every pause.

  “We’re not here to disrupt.” Her voice takes a calmer but still heavy tone. “We’re here to be heard. If our legislators find our voices inconvenient, that’s on them. They’re the ones who disrupted our most basic rights first. They’re the ones who need to fix this. Now.”

  She goes silent and Didier latches onto her last words, repeating them over and over in his deep voice until they’re a chant.

  Fix this now.

  Fix this now.

  Fix this now.

  We walk in step until we’ve carried our message across the intersection and through the Metro’s overpass, past the Wells Fargo bank, past the strip mall with the Old Navy and the BrandsMart, past the cluster of high-rises and developers’ billboards of more to come, past the cars that keep honking and the sudden addition of camera crews from channels six, thirty-nine, and CN-freaking-N, past the parking lot of the tall, gray glass building that juts into the sky like it’s out of place, until we arrive, out of breath but not out of words, at the door to the lobby of my father’s office.

  thirty-nine

  “We’ve just reached Senator Ruiz’s office.” Crissy holds her phone at an angle over her face and begins recording. “Enough is enough. Our elected officials need to remember they work for us, not their donors. If they can’t wrap their heads around this concept, then we’ll vote them out.”

  Dania’s mom, who up until now was interviewing other students, is suddenly at Crissy’s side. “Excuse me, can you repeat that?”

  “We’ll vote them out.”

  “And how old are you?”

  “Sixteen and a half,” Crissy says, which of course makes her sound twelve. She cringes and we all smile at her to keep going—the fact that we’ve gone national is beyond, and I don’t think any of us have had a chance to really process it.

  “So then how do you plan on—”

  “That’s not the point.” She recovers quickly. “I may not be old enough to vote yet. And there are millions of us who aren’t eligible to vote, either, whether it’s because we’re undocumented or not yet citizens, but that doesn’t mean our voices don’t count.”

  “So what are you hoping to accomplish today?”

  Crissy doesn’t miss a beat. “We’re putting people like Senator Ruiz and Harrison Irving on blast. We see what they’re doing, and we’re not letting it go. They can never rely on our silence to protect them again.”

  The kids within hearing distance start to cheer, but I stay quiet. It’s not that Crissy’s words are surprising—I’ve heard her say some version of these things before—but now that we’re here and she’s saying Papi’s name, I feel his presence emanating from the twelfth floor of the building. I wonder if he’s watching me on television or from his window. I try to imagine what he must be thinking. That he’ll ground me for months? That no longer carries the weight it used to. That his own daughter deceived him? I start to feel so guilty I have to remind myself he did it first. I can’t place why this dark sense of dread is coming over me, like a fog over my head.

  From the back of the parking lot, the faint, stilted sound of a chant begins to form. I can’t make out what they’re saying yet, just the five beats that rush toward us. People pump their fists in the air as the chant grows and gets to us.

  “not my president. not my president.”

  I stumble a few steps back, right into Jackie’s chest. I feel her hands land gently on my shoulders. “You okay?” Her voice is low, but we’re standing close enough that I
hear her words clearly.

  More important, I hear what she’s not saying.

  “You’re not chanting,” I say, my throat suddenly dry. “You love chanting.”

  She looks side to side out of the corners of her eyes, then smirks as she shrugs her shoulders. “Sometimes. If it’s a good one. And anyways, I just think this is bigger than one election . . .”

  But she doesn’t finish what she was saying. Something over my shoulder has caught her eye, and her gaze travels upward as a mixture of amazement and maybe even fear spreads over her features.

  “Senator Ruiz,” she says, standing taller.

  I turn around and there he is, not even a foot of space between us. “Papi.”

  “You wanted to talk to me, hija. So I came out to listen.”

  Everyone around us goes mute, their voices suddenly extinguished. Mine too.

  forty

  Before I can say anything, Papi has his arm around my shoulders and he’s smiling right at the cameras. His palm feels warm and sweaty through my shirt, and everything else feels distant, separate. Pressure begins settling on my chest, so heavy that when I try to say something, the words get caught inside of me.

  Papi looks into my eyes, and for a moment, it’s just us, father and daughter about to finally have a conversation. He grins and I swear I catch a hint of encouragement in him, like the day we posed for that picture with the parrot at Parrot Paradise. It’s the look that says You can do this, I know you can do this.

  It flashes between us like the sun through a swaying palm tree, and then Papi turns away.

  “I wanted to tell you all how proud I am of our youth for using their voices to champion the things they believe in.”

  He takes his arm off me and gestures at the crowd. He pauses when he gets to Jackie, then looks over Crissy, Didier, Zoey, and everyone standing behind them.

  “It takes courage to do what these kids have done today.”

  He talks like we’re not even here. Like he’s not actually talking to us.

  “This is how democracy works, and why I am so proud to have been elected to serve you. Hearing from my constituents—of all ages—helps me do my job better.”

  I blink back tears as he moves a few steps ahead of me. It’s almost masterful, the way he’s put me back in my usual place. Him taking center stage, talking over everyone. Me in the background, stiff as a prop, wishing I could be anywhere else but here. I’m frozen in place, powerless to stop him from stopping us. With a few quick words he’s dismissed me, dismissed all of us.

  Didier looks at me and nods as if to say, don’t worry. “Fix this now! Fix this now!”

  But Papi raises his hand to squash the chant before it spreads, and shockingly, it works. “If anyone has any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. But screaming back and forth at each other isn’t going to help anyone. That’s not how a conversation works . . .”

  His words begin running into one another in my mind. How can one person say so much without saying anything at all? It almost feels violent. He’s taking up space so that we can’t claim it.

  Jackie steps into the semicircle the crowd has formed around us. “Senator Ruiz, will you stop taking money from Harrison Irving and work to fix our water?”

  No one hears her, and Papi pretends not to. The cameras and their mikes are focused only on him, so he goes on about how we have to listen to both sides, how no matter what you feel about something, we’re all in this together . . .

  He was banking on this. He knew I’d be afraid to talk back to him, let alone speak. He knew he’d be able to take control of the situation easily.

  Don’t enter a fight you can’t win, he always says.

  But what kind of father fights against his own daughter? What kind of father wants the children to lose?

  I try to say something, but I’m afraid my voice won’t carry. I feel it catch in my stomach, as if someone bottled it and tossed it away until it sank. I look to Jackie and Didier, whose faces are a mix of hope and desperation. I start to shake my head, but then they nod. I blink, take a breath, and lean into the numbness that’s come over my body. I imagine all the tension and doubt and fear spilling out of it like water crashing ashore. I tell myself what Jackie said, to let my voice flow through me, but then louder still I hear Papi’s own words on the day he taught me how to swim in the ocean. I was so afraid the current would take me under. He told me not to be afraid. Swim with it, he said. Let it take you to safety.

  “No. You’re wrong.” The words feel thick against my lips.

  And yet, their sound stops all others. The street suddenly goes quieter than a room full of test-takers. The eyes of all my peers, all the millions of people watching online or on TV, land on me.

  Papi turns in shock. I can see the question form on his mouth, but he thinks better of it. Asking me to repeat myself would be giving up the podium. “I firmly believe that—”

  “You once told me that of all the reasons to run for office, there’s only one good one: to improve the lives of others,” I say in a louder voice. “If that’s still true . . . and I need to, I have to believe it is, deep down . . . then this is all really simple. There is no such thing as both sides when one side is drinking contaminated water and the other side is contaminating it. We don’t need a debate. We need action. We need clean water. It’s the most basic thing. It’s biology. It’s survival. What kind of society are we if we can’t provide people with this?”

  I’m almost yelling now; each word is a massive breath shaking everything inside of me. Beyond our semicircle, the students go wild. They raise their fists and banners. Their energy stretches before us like a rope that’s tying each and every one of us together. I can feel when they’re quieting down. They can feel when I’m about to speak.

  But what I have to say now is not really for them. “Papi. I believe in you. I’m begging you to . . . no, I know you’ll do the right thing here.”

  If his face were a puzzle, this would be the part where each piece tumbles out of place. Never, in all the times I’ve watched him onscreen, has he ever looked so lost. Every muscle in his body sags at once.

  “Are you okay . . .”

  He recovers and cuts me off with the subtle raise of his left hand. “You’re right. I made you a promise. I intend to keep it.”

  With his back now to the news cameras, he takes a few steps toward me. I begin to move away, but then he slows his pace and reaches out a hand. He places it on my cheek and kisses me on the forehead.

  Papi’s lips are wet and warm, and I can still feel their imprint against my skin, even after he’s walked back into the building and the students have started chanting again. I feel lightheaded. I feel all my senses on fire. Sights and sounds burn and Mami’s touch stings. Her hand is on my shoulder and I read her lips as she asks if I’m okay. I nod and lean into her as she wraps her arm around me. We enter the lobby and the glass walls do nothing to muffle the sound of the crowd. Everything is a blur.

  Minutes later, I’m watching the crowd dissipate from the twelfth-story window of my dad’s office. My phone is hot to the touch from all the texts and notifications coming in. I scroll through all of them without really reading until I come across one from Vivi.

  I heard you speak! Omg I HEARD YOU SPEAK!

  forty-one

  They deposit me in an empty room that, from the looks of the binders and tape dispensers on the desk, used to be someone’s workspace. Mami tells me not to go anywhere. She brings me a glass of water, a pastel de guava, and a couple of croquetas de jamón, then kneels in front of my chair. The way she looks at me, quietly and concerned, you’d think I just survived a car accident.

  “¿Cómo te sientes?”

  “Fine,” I say. When she doesn’t respond, I’m forced to really think about it. “I didn’t know what else to do. People are getting sick . . .”

  “Don’t worry about that right now. You’ve done enough for one day.”

  I can’t tell if she means that I di
d enough good or enough damage. She brushes two fingers over my forehead and wipes the sweat drops away.

  “Just wait here, okay?”

  The door doesn’t make a sound as she leaves. Minutes later, the calm gives way to a commotion unlike any I’ve ever heard before. Multiple phones ring at once, followed by several sets of footsteps thumping hard against the carpet. An air of desperation emanates from the many voices that rise and fall, competing with one another for my ear. I only catch a word every few seconds or so.

  His position.

  Crisis mode.

  No turning back.

  This damn march.

  His own fucking daughter.

  I guess I can’t blame them for freaking out. Papi made me a promise on national television. He said he intends to keep it. So, yes, maybe he didn’t go into specifics, but that’s probably what they’re discussing now. It’s a lot of work, changing policies so close to the primaries on Tuesday. But it’ll be worth it.

  They’re so caught up that they don’t notice me slipping out of my closet/office/dungeon. I stay close to the wall as I make my way down the corridor. Outside Papi’s office, there’s a desk that belongs to his secretary, who I guess is with him inside. I sit in her chair and scooch close to the door.

  “It’s fine. It’s fine,” says a voice that is unmistakably Joe’s. “We just need to figure out how to spin this asap.”

  “You think I haven’t thought of that?” Papi shouts.

  “Have you talked to Irving yet?” asks a woman’s voice I don’t recognize.

  “He’s shutting down all operations in the Biscayne Bay Aquifer. Temporarily. We’ll announce tomorrow that we’re pushing for more extensive testing of the water.”