Briefly, Briefly - #PlanetorPlastic

Briefly, Briefly

“What are you doing?”

This happened a year ago, one gloomy afternoon in the October.

She barely even looked up at me before continuing her work, picking up plastic bottles and cans from the empty beach. She was ignoring me and I was young and self-absorbed. I didn’t like being ignored, so I said, “Odd-Liv.”

“Leave me be, Jase.”

I smiled. “You know my name.” Olive kept the constant movements: pick up the bottles, put them into the garbage bag, walk further, repeat. After a minute, it looked hypnotizing, and like metal I was drawn to her as though she were a magnet.

“Why are you picking up trash?” I asked her again.

“Because none of you would do it.”

I shrugged. “We didn’t have time.”

She stopped briefly, before starting again. “What do you have time for?”

“You know, parties, homework, hanging out with the guys, girlfriends.”

She gritted her teeth. She said, “Leave me alone then.” It was beautiful how much she cared about something no one else did.

In a way I knew what she was doing. I saw the poster on our schoolboard: a photo of a seahorse with his tail curled around a cotton bud. The picture said: Save Our Ocean.

“Why do you care so much?” I asked her.

Anger flashed in her eyes. “Why don’t you?”

“You’re taking this save environment thing too seriously, Liv, honestly. We’re sixteen. Live a little.”

She hurled the next empty bottle into the bag almost violently. “I couldn’t live if the ocean were dying.” Her voice cracked at the end, like she was on the verge of crying, like she was losing a real person instead of a concept.

I sighed. “Has anyone ever told you that you were overly melodramatic?”

“Has anyone ever told you that pretending not to care isn’t cool?” That wiped the easy grin on my face away. I stared at her. Apparently, my silence was enough answer to her because next she said, “I thought so. Now leave me alone.”

So, I did.

Things went from bad to worse to the ocean of our town in the past year. More plastic and other garbage just swept ashore from we didn’t know where. My friends never spoke of it, not more than a brief thought, saying, “Hey, I heard there’s another plastic mountain appeared on the beach.” and the other would say, “Man, that sucks. Hey, have you heard about that new coffee shop?”

Then, another garbage mountain appeared. The beach was officially closed last month due to plastic waste.

I walked by the shore sometimes, looking for Olive, but she was never around anymore. The last time I’d seen her was last month. She was crouching, her shoulders shaking, perhaps crying. She left, after. No one ever saw her again.

But that was around the time I started picking up the garbage. I watched the ocean, listening to its silent cry.

It was low and brief, but it was there.