Short Story: Trash

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Hi all! I have a new short story for you, something I wrote a while back as a lark. I hope you enjoy it, and please share it as well as leave a comment! God bless!

Trash

It’s a beautiful day today, but come rain or shine, Sunflower Miller can be seen picking up a plastic bottle and placing it in the blue recycling bag she wears, tied to a belt loop on one hip. Then she picks up a paper cup and puts it in the black trash bag tied to her other hip. She has perfected a rhythm after hours of practice. All on her own, she can clean an entire schoolyard in one day. The top pickers among her followers take at least two days. With the help she’s received over the past six weeks, the schoolyards of seven central Alberta villages and towns have been cleaned.

My cameraperson and I follow her as she walks along a chain-link fence marking the boundary of the high school yard in Spruce Grove, Alberta. It’s a rainy, cold day, but that doesn’t stop Sunni and her growing audience.

“Sunni,” I ask the Grade 12 student from Pryde, Alberta, “why are you doing this, day after day, week after week? What message are you trying to send to people?”

But Sunni refuses to answer, just as she did the day before and the day before that. She watches me out of the corner of her eyes, and a small smile strains at her lips. She’s teasing me, like she did with the journalists and reporters who approached her before me. Her mysterious silence makes me want to come back every day, hoping for an answer. It’s one of the most intriguing public interest stories my station has tasked me with since I started working here a year ago.

It started six weeks ago. The 17-year-old girl skipped classes to clean the doors of every locker at Pryde Composite High School, located in the village of the same name, forty-five minutes’ drive northwest of Edmonton. Despite her teachers and the school administration pleading and cajoling, Sunni refused to return to her classes; she chose to clean every interior surface of the school until it sparkled and shined. Taunted by most of her peers and threatened by the school principal, she persisted—until Antony Hogeston, the principal, expelled her and forbade her from re-entering the building.

What was Hogeston’s justification? Sunni was truant from classes and disobedient to teachers and school officials. She created a troublesome scene among Pryde CHS’s students; she encouraged others to join her in rebellion.

Sunni’s parents, Grant and Shirley Miller, couldn’t persuade her to put down the scrub brush and pick up the pencil again. After privately talking with their daughter, they expressed understanding and gave her their blessing. They refused to tell me why they supported Sunni’s unusual behavior. They even sometimes joined in the cleaning ritual and drove her to places to pursue her vocation. Once banished from the Pryde high school yard, Sunni and her followers moved on to other schoolyards and playgrounds in Pryde before branching out to other communities. 

Sunni and her fellow trash-pickers became the main subject of gossip in her community of 450 people and beyond, including the editor, publisher, and chief journalist of the county’s “Community News” newspaper, Sylvia Stewart. Sylvia tried hard to get a quote from the young activist for her paper but was unsuccessful. She informed editors from more influential papers in Spruce Grove and Edmonton about Sunni as a professional courtesy. That’s how my assignment editor learned about Sunni and assigned me to get a sound bite and a few seconds of video for the evening news.

Of course, nobody expected Sunni to go beyond the boundary of Pryde with her trash-picking, but she did. A few of her supporters returned to classes, but they were quickly replaced by followers from other schools. Interestingly, Sunni didn’t pick up trash just anywhere—she and her team stuck only to schoolyards and playgrounds, again without explaining why.

Once Sunni and her team moved from Barrhead to Spruce Grove, I drove to the small city west of Edmonton, found her at the school she had chosen, and offered her the chance to deliver her message to the audience in Edmonton and the surrounding area. After watching her work and interacting with her helpers, I sensed that these acts of cleanliness held a meaning beyond woke activism and environmental concern. There was something too specific about the locations they cleaned and the times each day they worked—only during school hours—for it to be merely about littering or a plea to protect our natural spaces or anything as trivial as that.

So why did she do it? What was the spark that ignited her mysterious movement?

I found the answer by talking to her friend, Annabelle Wong, one of her most loyal supporters and helpers.

According to Annabelle, who had been Sunni's best friend since kindergarten, Sunni was bullied for her intelligence and her quiet, sensitive nature throughout her school years. She refused to follow the crowd or be a servant to fashion or social trends.

“She’s quiet, smart, and, well, just different from most others,” Annabelle said. “She’s just… Sunni, and that bothers some people. I’m not sure why.”

“What started her cleaning spree?” I asked Annabelle.

“I’m not sure what, but I can tell you when,” came her answer. “Lori Pearson and her jerk friends decided to torment Sunni by covering her locker with crude porno photos clipped from magazines and sealing them with super glue while Sunni was in class. The teachers blamed Sunni for the mess instead of the jerks who pranked her. Mr. Hogeston made Sunni stay after school until she scrubbed off every photo and filthy word written on her locker. It was completely disgusting and unfair.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Annabelle shrugged. “Neither do I, but that’s when it started. Come to think of it, since kindergarten, the teachers were never there to protect Sunni from the abuse she received. They just looked away from the bullying, which they did this time. Some people get away with murder, you know?”

It seems very odd that Sunni was punished for the cruel prank played at her expense,” I commented.

Annabelle nodded. “Welcome to Pryde.” She turned and went back to her garbage picking.

My instincts told me I was close to uncovering the secret behind Sunni’s behavior. Next, I questioned Antony Hogeston about the unusual and seemingly unfair punishment. When I called his office to set up an interview, his secretary told me he had meetings all day and all week and had no time to talk. I recognized a runaround when I heard one, and my cameraperson, Taryn, and I confronted Principal Hogeston as he was leaving the school to get into his car one afternoon.

He refused to stop long enough to speak with us, but we followed him and peppered him with questions regardless.

Sir, why was Sunflower Miller punished for a prank that was played at her expense and for which she had no responsibility? Shouldn’t the perpetrators have been the ones to clean her locker, not Sunni? Is this standard disciplinary policy at Pryde High School?

“We had no witnesses who saw the obscenities being glued to Sunni’s locker,” Hogeston said, lifting a file folder to hide his face from our camera. “For all we know, Sunni did it to herself.”

“Sir,” I said, “she was in class when the act was perpetrated.”

“You have proof Sunni was in class at the time?”

“The teacher marked her as present, according to the school’s attendance logs.”

“I can’t comment on information I don’t have in front of me,” he said, climbing into his SUV. He slammed the door and sped off.

I had better luck getting answers from Pryde High School Vice Principal Dorothy Schulte, although they were still far from satisfying.

“Sunni was asked to provide proof that someone else glued the clippings to her locker,” the plump administrator said while eating her large lunch in front of the camera and me. “She failed to do so.”

“Where was she supposed to get this proof?” I asked. “She’s a seventeen-year-old student. Does the school have security cameras that would have captured the vandals in the act?”

“I don’t know of any security video evidence of that kind,” Mrs. Schulte said. “But she accused the captain of our basketball team of the crime on the day of the playoff game, upsetting her. And without evidence. They lost the game as a result. We don’t appreciate or encourage that behavior at our school.”

“Did you at least investigate? Try to find the true vandals?”

Mrs. Schulte swallowed her bite of her Twinkie and sniffed. “We’re educators, not detectives. “We asked for witnesses to come forward, but nobody did. Regardless, we were forced to take appropriate and adequate action.”

I echoed her with incredulity. “You call punishing the victim ‘fair and adequate action?’”

Well, someone had to clean that filth off the locker. Lori needed to get ready for her basketball game, and it wasn’t fair to ask our janitor to do extra work. And since it was Sunni’s locker—

I didn’t pay much attention to what she had to say. I found Sunni at her current cleaning spot using the information I had.

“Sunni,” I say to her, “I think I understand what happened. And it wasn’t fair. For the sake of my viewers, can you please tell me why you keep doing what you’re doing after being forced to clean somebody else’s vandalism off school property?”

Sunni stops, bent over, almost in suspended animation, with an empty chip bag in her fingers. She straightens, a frown creasing her brow.

“You know?”

“I know,” I say.

“Who’d you ask?”

“Annabelle. Mr. Hogeston. Mrs. Schulte. Will you talk to me now?”

Sunni shrugs. “Will it change anything?”

“I think it might,” I say. “If nothing else, it might make you feel better.”

“How?”

More people will learn the truth. Parents of other students who were bullied like you will demand change.

Sunni studies me carefully as the camera rolls. Taryn signals for me to speak, but I choose to wait.

The young woman places the chip bag into the black trash bag and then sighs. “My entire life, I’ve been treated like garbage by everyone at school. But I wonder… who are the ones who look like trash now?”

With a final glance, Sunni wanders away in search of another piece of litter to capture.

I don’t fight the smile that tries to cross my face.

“Did you get that?” I ask Taryn.

She smiles and nods knowingly. “I got it.”

“Okay, let’s finish this up and submit it on time,” I tell her. Taryn aims the camera at me as I formulate what I’ll say.

She counts silently from five to zero, then points at me to signal that I’m on.

“This has been the story of a tormented young woman who cleans up our schools as an example to teachers and administration that, as far as controlling bullying in our schools is concerned, it’s time they clean up their act. Sarah Thompson, from Spruce Grove, Alberta.”

“And we’re done,” Taryn announces. I watch Sunni and her handful of followers as they faithfully clean up what others have discarded as waste. It’s a valuable lesson to learn when relating to others.

I remove my earbud and hand it, along with my microphone, to Taryn.

“I think I’m going to help pick up some trash.”

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