would.
She reached over near the door, where years ago the school had installed an antibacterial hand sanitizer dispenser, yielding to the pressures of some parent or the other to keep up with hygiene standards. It was this dispenser that had given Marisa the idea to stage her protest at CIS (she did not find the word distasteful in the least; on the contrary, when she realized that’s what she had to do, her heart latched on to the word like a life raft, like a kite soaring in beautiful azure skies, latched on to the word in the way it had been used by the righteous so many times before, those on the right side of history).
* * *
CIS was the perfect setting to draw attention to Lokoloko Island. Powerful businessmen sent their children to this school, as did three ambassadors. The twin children of an Oscar-winning Hollywood director attended the school. Not to mention the countless connections all the other parents of current and past students held. Ministry heads in the local country, newspaper publishers in the US, a former Mexican president. All had attended CIS, or sent their kids there, or their nephews. They had donated large sums of money, or were in some other way affiliated with the larger CIS community (Go, Sea Cucumbers!).
All this, whatever Marisa hadn’t been able to discover in class with a little prying, was easy to find online. Much of it she had discovered accidentally, by overhearing her peers’ conversations before class.
The only part she’d had trouble finding was who she could get to suspend the construction on Lokoloko Island. The hotel company opening up the resort was an international conglomerate, but the construction company was based locally. Their website was frustrating to navigate, and Marisa hadn’t been able to find the name of a CEO, but she was willing to bet someone at the company sent their kids to CIS.
When Marisa had started planning, the construction site on Lokoloko Island was her only focus. Then she realized if she was going to chain herself and make demands, she should ask for more than just one place to shut its doors.
The problem, after all, wasn’t just this one construction site. It was the increased human activity once the resort was built, the boat traffic, the people slathering on their sunscreen every two hours, rinsing it off into the water, those tiny particles of titanium dioxide bleeding out, further harming the reefs.
It was all the construction sites on all the coasts of the world. It was emissions warming the air and acidifying the water, killing off the reefs that were the breeding grounds for so much of the ocean’s biodiversity. Some of which humans depended on for food, too. Whole communities relied on the ecosystem of the reefs. Not to mention the protection those reefs provided from storm surges. Human beings, the only animal stupid enough to believe that destroying their way of life wouldn’t kill them.
* * *
She looked back at her list, wondering if she had gone a little overboard. She’d thought it was a wise strategy to hide her main demand among a series of others. But now she worried it would get lost, that they would seek to negotiate and merely grant the easy ones.
It all depended on her ability to stay strong, to believe this was what mattered most.
Marisa needed now only to wait. She popped open a Tupperware full of pita chips and hummus and watched as Amira Wahid exited the auditorium, running.
* * *
The girl was a blur. She sprinted the length of the hallway, down and back, her feet barely making a sound, as if she only needed to touch the ground with the tips of her toes. Then Amira stood with her hands on her hips, catching her breath for just a moment before taking off again. She seemed to get faster with each sprint, as if she knew the limits of her body were distant, but was nevertheless committed to one day reaching them.
A few weeks ago, Marisa had caught wind of Amira’s dismantling of gendered categories in the decathlon, and it was one of the few repercussions in her plan that gave her pause. She hated ruining things for other girls. It didn’t help that, all school year, she’d become increasingly intrigued by this hijabi girl with the green eyes and the jaw that seemed always set in determination. They were in the same AP Composition class, and Marisa had grown to