I’m working on a theory Mom is a scientist who is always using theories so why shouldn’t I My theory is we are all of us right now living in a dystopia Sure our dystopia is maybe a teeny less obvious than the ones in some stories But think about it do the people in the backgrounds of the books and movies even realize they’re living in a place that is off A few of them sure But not most There’s a constant low-key dread in the air It feels like the world is holding its breath as if the bottom bottom could fall out at any moment as if something important is permanently broken My best friend Olivia is trying to talk her parents into letting her be homeschooled from now on She says she feels safer when she doesn’t have to leave the house too much She says she’s happiest in her room Think about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch It’s this enormous churn of plastic and other trash f loating in the ocean between California and Hawaii The whole disaster is in international waters so no government is doing anything much about it The Patch is twice the size of the state of Texas and very difficult to clean up because some of its particles the ones getting eaten by sea life are extremely small There are something like 1.6 trillion pieces of 4
plastic out there swirling swirling swirling around in the waves The Great Pacific Garbage Patch isn’t unique either It’s just the biggest of five Imagine you’re a fish who usually lives deep in the ocean You swim toward the light above for a nice big meal You power yourself through the water toward the promise of the sun and some delicious looking morsel catches your eyeball You swim and swim straining to reach the light and that yummy morsel You gulp it right down But it’s not food It’s a broken plastic container Or forget about the fish It’s not like humans don’t have our own problems Think about the glaciers glaciers you’ll never get to see Think about f loods and power grid failures Are you an animal lover Sorry to hear that since hundreds of species of animals are about to disappear forever Dystopia Last semester one of my teachers Mr Arnold who teaches sixth-grade concert band did kind of help me when my stomach knot was getting a lot worse after the latest mass shooting I talked to him sometimes in my clarinet lesson during f lex hour I explained my dystopia theory and his eyes crinkled up like he was about to laugh Then he coughed and 5
apologized and said he could definitely see my point Mr Arnold didn’t talk about my obsessive worrying worrying like it was some huge deal He said he felt concerned concerned a lot too about the state of the world and that the only thing that ever helped his anxiety was when he did something He encouraged me to fix one tiny problem I worried about Mr Arnold said this was all we could do and that if everyone on Earth worked on one problem we’d all be just fine Probably And if not I should practice my instrument anyway anyway because we had a concert coming up Toward the end of the school year I researched and wrote a feature for my school paper about plastic and why it’s so bad for the ocean We only use most plastic items once and throw them out but a lot of things like bags and water bottles and stuff are never recycled They pollute the Earth for years and years I spent a long time on that article even though no one told me to Everyone liked my story Olivia said she would never touch a plastic bag or plastic water bottle again 6
for as long as she lived She was already using a metal water bottle but I appreciated what she said anyway Mom lost her mind telling practically everyone everyone she knew about the article She kept saying See Abby Doesn’t it feel great to do something positive It was super annoying I could make a whole list of Mom’s YOU CAN DO IT sayings but I’d rather not because I hear them more or less constantly My mother looks like a gymnast like a small bundle of muscle and energy with her hair kept short because it’s more efficient that way I’m completely different long-limbed and awkward with dark thick long hair that always clogs the shower drain Anyway after I wrote that article every time I saw a piece of plastic trash outside I stopped and picked it up so it wouldn’t find its way to the ocean Picking up garbage kind of became my hobby It felt good until I googled What actually happens to our recycling Some questions have not-great answers which is why being able to ask them anywhere anytime isn’t always the best 7
