(February, 612)

Elizabeth didn’t know what to make of David’s sit-in and tried not to think about it. It wasn’t relevant to her, she decided. David’s militant idealism was none of her concern even if they did share some common goals.

Elizabeth had almost convinced herself of this until Isra told her Akeem would be there.

“Wait, I thought Akeem didn’t like David,” said Elizabeth.

The two black-haired girls sat side by side and watched their Math teacher enter the classroom and sort through his things. Akeem was Isra’s little brother and Elizabeth had known him since elementary school when he’d tried his best to tag along with Elizabeth and his deeply irritated older sister.

“Where did you get that from?” asked Isra, “They’re thick as thieves.”

This made Gloria’s story of Akeem getting the class to vote for David a lot more heart-warming. Elizabeth told Isra so.

“I don’t even know why you listen to anything Gloria says anymore,” said Isra.

Someone opened a window and a strong wind blew Mr. Watkins’ notes off the table. Isra barely suppressed a grin and twisted her long, silky ponytail around her middle finger. Elizabeth stretched to see what was going on as a few students in the front row jumped up to help their frazzled teacher gather his papers.

“Why do you think David’s so passionate about vegetarian meals?” asked Isra.

Elizabeth turned her attention back to her best friend.

“I thought he might be one of those militant vegans,” said Elizabeth.

Isra shook her head.

“I think he became a vegetarian out of solidarity or something,” she said.

David’s activism for a better vegetarian meal option suddenly became a lot more sympathetic. Isra and Akeem’s family adhered to a mage tradition that had adhered to a strict vegetarian diet for centuries. The challenge Isra faced with her diet was the reason why a ninth-grade Elizabeth had also proposed reforms to the vegetarian meal plan.

“He does kinda look like someone who would show you pictures of dead pigs for a political statement though,” Isra mused as Mr. Watkins finally regained his bearings and levitated his papers into a neat pile in front of him.

Neither of the girls had any intention of joining the sit-in. Nevertheless, they decided to drop by the teachers’ lounge in their free period and see how David and Akeem were doing. After Math was over, they grabbed their bags and headed over to the administration building. As they approached the teachers’ lounge, Elizabeth’s eyes widened. While she hadn’t expected a crowd, she also hadn’t expected to find only three people attending the protest. Ollie, David, and Akeem sat cross-legged in front of the teachers’ lounge. Mrs. Davison greeted the boys as she walked past them and Ollie returned the greeting.

“Don’t say hi to people, Ollie,” said David, “This is a protest.”

“I didn’t want to be impolite,” said Ollie, sheepishly.

“You don’t have to be polite during a protest, dude,” said Akeem, lying down on the hardwood floor.

The black-haired boy turned his head, spotted his sister and Elizabeth, and smiled.

“Hey!” He called out.

David was about to admonish him when he caught sight of the two girls. Isra waved three sandwiches she bought at the overpriced campus coffee shop as they came closer.

“We brought sustenance,” she said.

Akeem’s face fell.

“Ah, David actually suggested we add a hunger strike to the protest,” he said, “Y’know, for more impact.”

Isra looked scandalized.

“You’re not going to survive that,” she said, “Imagine what Mom and Dad will say when I tell them little Akeem died because he became an activist. Eat the sandwich, moron.”

Akeem looked over at David, who wore an amused expression and shrugged. Isra’s brother took a sandwich before Isra passed the other two to Ollie and David and sat down. Elizabeth followed suit and craned her head to see if anyone would pass by. She found herself trying to figure out how she could explain this away to any student council members who spotted her.

Within minutes, Isra had gotten Ollie and Akeem to laugh and joke around with her — even David threw in the occasional quip. Most people walked past the protest looking confused. Isra would call them over, tell them what was happening, and why they were doing this. Nobody joined them but Elizabeth saw that Isra’s positive attitude made a good impression. After a while, David asked Elizabeth what she thought of his flier.

“It was nice,” she said.

She didn’t quite convince herself with that answer and David’s expression made it clear she hadn’t convinced him either.

“It’s a bit… intense,” she said.

“Intense?”

Isra, Ollie, and Akeem were busy talking to some passers-by so Elizabeth wouldn’t be embarrassing David in front of the others if she honestly critiqued his flier.

“Well, you wrote it like it was a call to revolution,” she said and pulled out the flier.

“’We have to fight back against our administrators, who have languished in their ignorance and selfishness far too long’,” she read. “Are you trying to sell them vegetarian quiche or a communist uprising?”

David shook his head.

“But they are ignorant and selfish,” he said.

“Maybe,” said Elizabeth, “But they’re not your enemies. They’re potential allies.”

David snorted. Elizabeth put the flier down. It didn’t seem like David was alienating people on purpose — He was naive and idealistic, but those weren’t necessarily faults. Elizabeth swallowed down her irritation at his reaction.

“Look, David,” she said, “I really appreciate what you’re trying to do but this isn’t the way to do it. If you want to see change you have to work within the system. Get people interested. Not throw around fliers about how those you’re trying to convince,” she picked the flier up again, “’spit on other cultures and our environment’. It’s a valiant effort but it’s going to be as ineffective as fighting with Jake.”

David averted his gaze and glared at a nearby student-made poster about the Evrichian uprising of 14 BA.

“Believe it or not, I want to see this happen as much as you do,” she said, “I wrote a whole proposal for it last year.”

“’Vegetarian Meal Options and Their Potential Impact on BISM’,” he said, “I read it.”

This surprised Elizabeth. She hadn’t even thought that last year’s student council presidenst, whom she had handed it in to, had given it more than a glance. She had slaved over that proposal, researched to find proper evidence, and made all of her friends and her English teacher proof-read it for her.

“It’s good,” he said.

His eyes met hers with an intensity in his gaze that Elizabeth had never seen in anyone else’s. It seemed ever-present in his eyes. Before Elizabeth could utter so much as a ‘thank you’, David spoke up again.

“But how far did it get you?” he asked.

That stung. Elizabeth had been hopeful when she’d handed the proposal in. She’d even been hopeful the next week, when she had asked the student council presidents if they’d read it and been turned away with a friendly ‘not yet but soon’. Elizabeth had been too shy to ask again after that, not wanting to annoy her upperclassmen and lead them to approach it with a biased eye. Every week it wasn’t addressed, her hope had dwindled until she’d grown resigned to the fact that it wasn’t ever going to come up in the agenda.

David’s glare lost some of its fire.

“I think this is an important cause,” said David, “And I’m not giving up until we get somewhere with it.”

Elizabeth nodded and didn’t say much else until Isra looked at her watch and decided it was time to leave.

Elizabeth felt sullen from the moment she’d left the boys in front of the teachers’ lounge to when he arrived at her dorm room in Aracelis Hall. Isra was busy at practice and they hadn’t gotten a roommate this year, so Elizabeth had some freedom to sulk by herself. Driven by a masochistic urge to make herself feel even worse, she grabbed her laptop and read her proposal again. After her fourth time rereading she decided that while there were things she would change about her report now — she felt that with age came wisdom and with wisdom came better grammar — her writing could not have been the reason why her report was never brought up in the meetings. She thought back to David’s proposal on alternative energy and remembered that he also wrote a report that nobody had read. She refrained from marching over to Jake and demanding a copy of David’s proposal and instead opted to wallow in her misery.

David had accused the student council of not doing anything, not changing anything. Perhaps he was right — Maybe the student council and its methods were really just a way to give symbolic power to students that evaporated the minute a decision had to be made. Maybe her resignation to this had only fueled that development. What had they achieved in their last meetings? Their Mad Hair day, as trivial as it was, had been turned down. So had their slipper policy, which could have decreased the amount of cleaning students had to do in winter.

She wondered if David had it right all along before snapping out of her self-pitying mood. Screaming at people until they agreed with you only worked when you had strength in numbers. David didn’t have that because he was too busy shouting at people until they agreed with him. No, there had to be a third way — somewhere between David’s and hers. She opened a new document on her laptop and began brainstorming.

The next day, Elizabeth got up an hour earlier than usual and headed to the teachers’ lounge where all three guys were asleep on the ground. Akeem lay spread-eagled on the hardwood floor, Ollie had leaned his head against the wall, and David was slumped forward in a position that gave Elizabeth sympathetic back pain.

Elizabeth gently shook the boy, whose wavy hair had flopped over his face, until he woke up with a dazed expression.

“Good morning,” said Elizabeth.

“G’Morning,” David grumbled.

“I have a step-by-step plan on how we’re going to get the administration to listen to us,” she said.

This seemed to properly wake him up and he sat up straight as she gave him a printed out version of what she had worked on the day before.

“Bad news first,” she said, “Give up on Meatless Mondays. There’s no way we’ll ever convince anyone of those.”

He opened his mouth to protest but she continued.

“Now, obviously we first have to plead with the student council for the majority of these ideas,” she said, “But they’ll work so we’ll survive the humiliation.”

David went down the list and his expression grew a little pained.

“Are you in?” asked Elizabeth.

David’s expression didn’t change but he nodded. He scooted over to Ollie and Akeem and shook them awake to tell them the protest was over.