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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 found picking up a pop bottle and putting it in the blue recycling bag she carries, tied to a belt loop on one hip, then picking up a paper drink cup and placing it in the black trash bag tied to the other hip. She’s developed a rhythm after hours upon hours of practice. All on her own, she can clean an entire schoolyard in a day. The best pickers among her followers take at least two. With the help she’s gained 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 picks along a chain-link fence demarcating the perimeter of the high school yard in Spruce Grove, Alberta. It’s a rainy, chilly day, but that doesn’t deter Sunni and her ever-growing following.

“Sunni,” I say to 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, as she refused the day before and the day before that. She watches me out of the corners of her eyes, and a tiny smile tugs at her lips. She’s toying with me like she has the journalists and reporters who approached her before me. Her enigmatic silence draws me to return each day, looking for an answer. It is one of the most interesting public interest stories my station has assigned me to cover since I began working for them a year ago.

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

What was Hogeston’s justification?  Sunni was truant from classes and disobedient to teachers and school officials. She created a troublesome sensation among Pryde CHS’s student population; she inspired other students to join her in cleanliness.

Sunni’s parents, Grant and Shirley Miller, couldn’t convince her to put down the scrub brush and pick up the pencil again. After privately speaking with their daughter, they claimed understanding and gave her their blessing. They refused to tell me why they supported Sunni’s peculiar behavior. They even occasionally joined in the cleaning ritual and drove her to locations to work 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 top topic of gossip around 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 valiantly to get a quote from the young activist for her paper but failed. She notified editors from more influential papers in Spruce Grove and Edmonton about Sunni as a professional courtesy. That was 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 had expected Sunni to move beyond the boundary of Pryde with her garbage-picking, but she did. A handful of her supporters returned to classes, but they were quickly replaced by disciples from other schools. Interestingly, Sunni didn’t pick trash from just anywhere—she and her team stuck solely to schoolyards and playgrounds, again without explaining why.

Once Sunni and her team moved on from Barrhead to Spruce Grove, I drove to the small city west of Edmonton, found her at the school she’d chosen, and offered her the opportunity to transmit her message to the audience of Edmonton and the area. After watching her work and interacting with her helpers, I sensed that these acts of cleanliness held a meaning that went beyond woke activism and concern for the environment. There was something too specific about the locations they cleaned and the periods each day they worked—only during school hours—for it to simply be about the cessation of littering or a plea to save our natural spaces or anything as trite as that.

So why did she do it? What had been the spark that lit her enigmatic movement?

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

According to Annabelle, who had been best buds with Sunni since kindergarten, Sunni was bullied for her intellect and quiet, sensitive nature throughout her school career. She refused to follow the crowd or be a servant to fashion or other social trends.

“She’s quiet, smart, and, well, just different from most other people,” 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 in 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 forced Sunni to stay after school until she’d scrubbed away 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 pulled at her expense,” I commented.

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

My instincts told me I was on the trail of discovering the secret behind Sunni’s behavior. Next, I questioned the principal behind the unusual and seemingly unfair punishment, Tony Hogeston. When I called his office to arrange an interview appointment, he had his secretary inform me that he had meetings all day, all week, and had no time to speak to me. I knew a runaround when I heard one, and my cameraperson, Taryn, and I confronted Principal Hogeston on his way out to his car from the school 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 pulled at her expense and for which she held no responsibility? Shouldn’t the perpetrators have been the ones to clean her locker, not Sunni? Is this normal 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 drove away at considerable speed.

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

“Sunni was asked to produce proof that someone else had glued the clippings to her locker,” the plump administrator said as she ate her sizable 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 had a basketball game to prepare for, and asking our janitor to go to the extra work wasn't fair. And since it was Sunni’s locker—”

I didn’t listen to much more that she had to say. I located Sunni at her current cleaning location with the information I gained.

“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 continue 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 know the truth. Parents of other students bullied like you will demand change.”

Sunni studies me long and hard. The camera is rolling. Taryn makes the hand signal urging me to say something, but instead, I wait.

The young woman puts the chip bag in 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 resist the smile that wants to cross my face.

“Did you get that?” I ask Taryn.

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

“Okay, let’s finish this off 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 tell me 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 lesson to be learned when relating with people.

I remove my earbud and hand it and my microphone to Taryn.

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

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