August 4, 2018
My alarm clock went off early that morning, an annoyance on a Saturday, even though I normally wake up earlier than the rest of my family. I quickly turned it off and jumped out of bed, but when I went out into the hallway, I noticed that Everett was still sleeping. I opened his door and shouted "Everett!" and he suddenly woke up.
"Sylvie!" he complained. "It's Saturday. Why are you up so early?"
"The Pigglyville protest is today," I said.
"Why are we protesting Pigglyville again?" Everett asked. "All they do is produce cute toys for little kids."
"Why don't you know about this already?" I asked.
"I don't know," Everett said. "I don't pay attention when you guys start talking about the yacht club."
I rolled my eyes and left the room, but Everett got ready to go anyways. Mom, Dad, Everett, and I met in the dining room to eat breakfast, and we talked about the protest while Everett played on his phone. "Everett, pay attention," Dad said. "This involves you."
"It really doesn't," Everett argued.
"Anyways, my parents are coming in about half an hour," Dad said. "Molly, Theo, and Kelsey will meet us there, but Eden's coming straight from a morning soccer practice, so we're going to have to pick her up."
"Wait, what?" Everett said. "Eden's coming?"
"Yes, Eden's coming," Dad said.
All of a sudden, my phone buzzed. When I checked it, I saw that I had a text from Véro. I smiled and immediately opened up the message, eager to see what she had to say. "Can you give me a ride to the protest?" Véro texted. "My parents can't drive me."
"My grandparents are going to be there," I replied.
"That's okay," Véro texted. "I can put up with them for one car ride."
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"I'm sure," Véro texted. "It will be fine."
"Okay," I texted. "See you soon."
I still didn't think it was the best idea to have Véro and Grandpa in a car together, but there was nothing that I could do to change Véro's mind. "Is it okay if Véro comes with us?" I asked my parents.
Mom and Dad looked at each other for a moment before Mom said, "We have room for one more person. You, Eden, and Véro are going to have to squeeze into the backseat though."
"That's fine," I said.
We continued to eat our breakfast, and a few minutes later, Grandma and Grandpa arrived, bringing hand-painted signs with them. "Are you ready for this?" Grandma asked.
"I think I'm ready," I said.
Grandpa seemed a little bit grouchy, but I ignored that. "You two certainly seem ready," Dad said. "I really like your signs, by the way."
"Thank you," Grandma said. "Edward and I worked hard on them."
All of a sudden, there was another knock on the door. I ate the last few bites of my breakfast, quickly put my dishes away, and opened the door for Véro. "Hi Sylvie," Véro said. "I'm so excited for this protest!"
"Me too," I said.
"When are we leaving?" Véro asked.
"Soon, hopefully," I said.
"Phil!" Grandpa shouted. "Why did you let Sylvie bring her little girlfriend?"
"You don't have to answer that, Phil," Grandma said. "Véro is welcome here."
"Your grandparents seem like such an odd couple," Véro observed.
"They've been married for over fifty years," I said. "We shouldn't judge their relationship, because they're clearly making it work."
Véro shrugged and said, "You're right." She held my hand and added, "I want a relationship like that someday."
"Me too," I said.
"Let's go!" Dad shouted. "The Pigglyville shareholders' meeting starts in twenty minutes, and we still have to pick up Eden."
All of us loaded into the family car, with Dad driving, Mom in the passenger's seat, Grandma, Grandpa, and Everett in the backseat, and Véro and I in a row behind them. "How are we going to fit Eden?" Véro asked.
"She'll be in the back with us," I said.
Dad turned up the radio, hoping that Grandpa wouldn't complain about Véro if the music was loud enough, but it didn't work. Grandpa still interrogated Mom and Dad about why Véro was allowed to tag along. Véro thankfully ignored him. "Sylvie, is it okay if I take a selfie with you?" she asked.
"That's fine," I said.
Both Véro and I grinned, and Véro took a picture of us. She then started writing a caption for it so that she could post it on Instagram. "Is it okay if I say that we're together?" Véro asked.
I thought about it for a moment and then said, "Why not?" My whole family knew that we were together, so it wouldn't matter if Véro's Instagram followers knew too.
Véro typed a caption that read "je vais protester contre une entreprise qui pollue Clearwater Lake avec ma belle copine @sylvie_morrison46 ! je suis très excitée !!!"
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"I'm going to protest against a company that is polluting Clearwater Lake with my beautiful girlfriend Sylvie Morrison. I'm very excited!" Véro answered.
"That's so sweet of you to say," I said, kissing her cheek.
Our car pulled up in front of the soccer field, and Eden, still wearing her soccer gear, climbed into the back of the car and sat next to me. "Hi Sylvie. Hi Véro," Eden said. "It's good to see you two."
"It's good to see you, Eden," I said. "How was soccer practice?"
"It was okay," Eden said. "I think I'm better at sailing than I am at soccer, and I hate waking up early."
"Me too," Véro said. "It was worth it for this protest though."
"I actually don't mind waking up early," I said. "It was just a little annoying to have to do it on a Saturday."
"You're weird," Eden said. "Speaking of the protest, Véro, do you have a sign?"
"No," Véro answered.
"I have a few extras," Eden said. "You can borrow one of those. I wonder who else is going to be there. I know my dad posted a message on the Keep Clearwater Clear website."
"My parents told some of their friends about it at the last yacht club party," I said. "Hopefully we'll get a lot of people."
"I think we will," Véro said. "Nobody really supports pollution."
"That's definitely true," I said.
"I don't know anyone who thinks that pollution is a good thing," Eden said. "Also, I brought Zazie the Zebra with me. I kind of want to do something really dramatic, like burn my whole stuffed animal box."
"Eden, Zazie was your favorite stuffed animal," I said. "Don't throw away your childhood memories just because Pigglyville made them."
Eden thought about it and then said, "I guess you're right. Pigglyville's just so hypocritical. They have this image of being innocent and child-friendly, but then they go and pollute Clearwater Lake."
Dad parked the car in front of Pigglyville's headquarters in downtown Clearwater Lake, and all of us climbed out. We grabbed our signs from the trunk, and all of us gathered next to the door, where there was already a small group of people from the yacht club, including the rest of Eden's family. Then, we all waited for the shareholders to arrive.
In the end, it was Grandma who took charge. As the shareholders walked past us, she led us in chants and told us to lift our signs higher, but no matter what we did, the shareholders wouldn't pay any attention to us. They were pretending as if we weren't there at all - the worst possible thing that they could do to us.
After most of the shareholders were in the building, Mr. Stafford walked by, and I hoped that he would at least notice us. However, Mr. Stafford ignored us too. He gave Dad a single disapproving look, continued to walk into the building, and shut the door. After he was gone, Dad lowered his sign and said, "There's nothing more that we can do."
I expected Mom or Grandma to argue with him, but they both nodded. "Let's go home," Grandma said.
"Why?" I asked Grandma. "We've only been here for half an hour. We don't have to stop now!"
"Sylvie, don't talk back to your grandmother," Dad said.
"How are we going to change things if we quit this early?" I asked Dad.
"If the Pigglyville shareholders don't want to change anything, then nothing will change, regardless of what we do," Dad said. "You have to understand that, Sylvie."
I groaned and put my sign back in the car, and Eden and Véro did the same. All of us piled back into the car and drove home, but nobody seemed to want to talk. Despite my disappointment that we hadn't tried harder, I still hoped that we had somehow convinced the Pigglyville shareholders to stop dumping chemicals into Clearwater Lake. I clung onto that hope all the way home, and as I said goodbye to Véro and Eden, I desperately hoped that we had succeeded.
A few hours went by, and while life went back to normal for Mom, Everett, and I, Dad was constantly on the computer, checking for updates on the shareholders' meeting. I tried my best not to think about the protest, but my mind kept returning back to that morning's events. I wondered if there was something that we could have done differently to get the shareholders' attention, or if the protest was worth it at all. I texted back and forth with Véro, but she assured me that it would all work out in the end. I desperately hoped that she was right.
That night, Dad called all of us into the living room. He told us that a reporter from the Clearwater Lake Gazette had interviewed Mr. Stafford and posted it on the newspaper's website. "What did he say?" Mom asked.
"Who cares?" Everett asked. "I want to go back to playing Minecraft."
"You can play Minecraft later," I said, frustrated with Everett's lack of interest in anything that wasn't skateboarding, memes, or video games. I appreciated my little brother more these days, but at the same time, he was still my little brother.
"The reporter asked him about the protest, and he said that 'Keep Clearwater Clear's concerns are completely unfounded. Pigglyville Toys, Inc. handles its waste responsibly and always has. There is no need to change Pigglyville's current practices,'" Dad said.
"He's lying," I said.
"Yes, and the Wisconsin EPA has proof, but what are we going to do about it?" Dad asked. "Greg Stafford clearly won't listen to us, or anyone for that matter."
"There has to be a way to change things," I said.
"Sylvie, I appreciate your optimism, but if he won't listen to most of the yacht club gathered outside his headquarters, then there may be nothing else that we can do," Mom said.
"Can I play Minecraft now?" Everett asked.
I stormed back to my room, furious that Mr. Stafford refused to listen to us. He was acting as if he was the only person in the world, and he wouldn't even listen to his neighbors. I looked out the window at the lake and wondered how we could possibly clean it up with Mr. Stafford around. Would it be like this forever? Would I never get to see the sparkling, clear water that my grandparents sailed in?
I texted Véro and told her the news, and she was just as mad about it as I was. "Maybe someone will fire him," Véro suggested.
"I doubt it," I texted her. "There has to be a way to clean up the lake though."
I crashed onto my bed, and although I desperately wanted to save Clearwater Lake from the company that was polluting it, I didn't know how. It just felt like everything was going wrong, and there was no way to stop it.