Breathe in. Breathe out. Don’t nudge the mic. You have to do this. They’ll listen to you. Remember why you’re here. 

3.

…   

When you’re a kid, and a kid like me who cares about the fact that we’re burning down the future of life on Earth, this is how it usually goes:

'How old are you, kiddo? Are you in first grade?'

'No.' You don't need to use that tone of voice.

'Second grade?'

'No.'

'How old are you, then?

'I'm eight and a half. I'm in third grade.' 

'Oh you're eight. My niece is eight, too. Taller than you, though.' 

That's nice. I know I'm short.

'What are you learning in school?'

'We're learning about trees. We made green paint from chlorophyll.'

'That's a big word! Trees are nice. Did you know that trees help give us clean air?'

You don't need to look so surprised. 

'I know that in photosynthesis, trees take in carbon dioxide and give us oxygen. They help with Climate Change. We shouldn't cut so many down.'

'Oh, you know about global warming. Save the polar bears, huh? We should all recycle our plastic bottles, and use reusable napkins.'

'We have to do stuff like start using renewable energy. Like solar and wind. It's about the polar bears, but us, too.'

'That's nice. You've got a smart kid there!'

I'm right here, you know. And not really. Maybe just kids can do more than you think.

This dialogue was repeated to me so many times as a kid (I know I’m still a kid), and I’m sure other people can relate. It gets tiring at times, people thinking you can’t do anything. And I’ve had the privilege of being around people like M, the founder of my school, who let me be who I was and treated me like my voice mattered. People who treated me like I deserved to know about the wrong in our world. 

And showed me how to change it. 

  …  

You know it by heart. You wrote it by heart. This is how you fight, remember. This is how you change the world.

2.

In seventh grade, I was trying to take up life again. I joined my school, Pathfinder’s, QSA (that was fun, led by my English teacher), went to a concert with my friends (also fun, we all love the Indigo Girls), and started to get into things other than my books. But really, I was trying to figure out who I was.

In seventh grade, my English class was doing a public speaking course. A lot of people didn’t like it. Neither did I, really, but I tried it anyway. The first semester, we mostly just sat through 50 minutes of breathing exercises and speaking when we didn’t want to. But in January, something happened.

“So for the next few months,” my teacher said one day, “we’re going to be doing something different. All of you are going to pick an issue you care about, and write a speech about it called your Passion Piece. In May, there’s going to be an oratory competition called Rising Voices, where, if you want, you can enter and present your pieces.”

Just like that, I felt way better about the class. It was giving me a chance, a chance to say something and make people listen. I wanted to write a speech that would do just that. I decided to do mine about the Climate Crisis. 

So I started writing it. I looked up facts from NASA, the IPCC report, my brain, and my heart. I wrote them down and wove them together. I wrote about what it’s like to be a kid growing up in the Climate Crisis, not knowing whether you’ll have a world to grow up in. I wrote about how real it is, how it’s not not a possibility but a reality, how there are still people who say that if we just recycle our plastic bottles everything will be okay. I wrote about how it feels to know that you and everyone you care about’s lives could be in the balance and how it feels like no one is doing anything. I worked so hard on it, I wanted everyone who heard it to feel what I felt.

Over the next few months, I revised it, practiced, practiced, practiced, and practiced reciting it. I had not known there could be so many parts to talking. I recited my speech over and over and over again, just to myself because I didn’t want anyone to hear it yet. I thought about timing and enunciation. I thought about enunciation, pacing, and projecting. Mostly, I thought about how much I wanted a world to grow up in.

 One day, I was ready to jump off the cliff and let someone other than me hear it. My class was going to critique each other’s speeches. I walked up to my teacher. Some of my friends were also planning to compete, and I wanted to be critiqued by someone whose opinion I actually cared about. 

“Can me and May and N. practice together?”

“Are you all ready with your speeches?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, you can. You can go out in the hallway to practice.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I ran over to them and pulled them into the hallway. 

“C’mon, let’s go practice. Are you planning to change your speeches at all for Rising Voices?”

We found a place in the hallway and sat down. The plaster of the wall was cold from the winter cold that blew through the halls when someone opened the door, making me shiver. Or maybe that was my nervousness of talking about this in front of someone. My boots squeaked on the tile floor. 

“You go first.”

I listened to their speeches wash over me, like the spring winds that almost knock you off your feet and at the same time calm you down with the feel of the world breathing around you. The ones that would be there in a few months. When it was my turn, I started without hesitating. Halfway through: “Hey, you might want to take a breath somewhere in there.” 

“Okay,” I said. I took a breath and started again.

…  

Take a breath. Project, be loud, make sure they listen. You’re doing this because you’re scared, every day. Because you don’t know what else to do. Because no one else is. 

1.

On the day of the competition, I didn’t breathe. Well, I probably did, but I was so anxious I felt like my heart was beating on pure adrenaline and the lines of my speech. We drove to the school where the competition was going to be held. It was big, much bigger than my school. The auditorium was ringed by second-floor balconies with the flags of different countries in red, yellow, green, blue. It was also filled with the kids competing and their families, a comforting reminder of exactly how many people would be watching if I screwed up. But I walked in and found May and N like familiar books in a library of languages I didn’t know. 

“Hi, people!” I shouted, running to the row of chairs they’d staked out.

“Hi! We were going to practice our speeches. Want to?” N asked.

“Sure,” I said. I did want to. I hadn’t practiced since the night before. “You can go first.”

“No, you can. It’s your turn.”

“No, May can.”

“Hey! Not me!” May said, laughing. “One of you go!”

“`Kay, fine, I’ll go!” I said, sort of laughing too. 

“Are you nervous?”

“No. Well, yes.”

Honestly, I had never been so nervous in my life. Not when I first jumped off the bridge over Cascade Lake, not when I got caught in those giant ferry waves out in the kayak, not when I did Catchers from 15 feet up the aerial silk, not when I talked to… well, anyway, I was really nervous. I was fairly sure I was going to pass out before I even touched the microphone. 

Somehow I didn’t. During the first round, second round, we paced under the flags, talked, recited our speeches. I listened to Malia talk about gender stereotypes, N give her speech on homophobia. I listened to classmates Edie and Park give their speeches on body image and trans rights, respectively. This was what we’d been practicing for all those months, these were the speeches that we’d put our blood, sweat and tears, our hope and frustration into. They sounded amazing. Between rounds, me, N, and May gripped each other’s hands like they were lifelines and tried not to freak out, with varying degrees of success. At noon, we ate lunch under the trees outside the school, the virescent leaves making patterns against the azure May sky. The cool spring breeze, the one I’d been thinking about when I first said my piece in front of someone, cut through the concrete and steel. Then we went back inside, and it was almost time for the final round. Wait, what? Already? I thought. I once again started to feel like I’d been hit with defibrillator paddles.

Time wasn’t working on its usual lines that day. In the early Summer, the mountain Rivers in the Cascades are flooded with melting snow, and have so much water and energy they pay no attention to rules. Sometimes they go so fast that a leaf tossed in would be in one place one minute and downstream the next time you looked, and sometimes they are so slow that they’re barely moving at all. That day, time felt like that. It seemed to go fast one moment, like the time between rounds, our free time when we could relax for a few minutes. Then it would go slow, like right before the judges announced who had made it to the next round. And I was the leaf in the River, tossed by the current.

“It is now time for Round Three.” 

I sat down as the room immediately went quiet.

“As the final round, it will be held in the auditorium…”

In front of everyone. 

I crossed my fingers.

“Those who have advanced to this round shall be competing for places in the elementary, middle, and high school groups.”

I held my breath.

“And here they are…”

Why does the announcing have to take so long? I thought desperately. I bit the inside of my mouth to keep from screaming.

I tuned in for the last of the middle school category. Come on, come on… 

And then, I heard my name.

Yes, yes, yes! I yelled in my head. I made it to the finals! I took my first breath in about 30 seconds, and with calm I didn’t feel, I walked to the side of the stage. I wasn’t first, so I lined up and tried to calm down. I let the speeches wash over me, listening to other kids speak. In my head, I recited my speech. I would be giving it in front of everyone out there. Everyone. Plus the judges, coaches… 

Be quiet. I told myself. Not helping. 

“Here, you’ll be wearing this.” One of the coaches said, handing me a headset. It had a transmitter with lots of buttons and dials, an earpiece, and the mouthpiece, a small microphone on a thin black wire that held it to my mouth. I liked it. I put it on. Adjusted the wires. 

 The feel of the cold, smooth metal against my face, the sight of the small microphone ready to help me speak louder, the transmitter that was bringing my voice to the corners of the room; they made me feel different. They almost made me forget I was just a 12-year-old girl, short for her age, who’d practically never been on a stage in her life. 

They made me feel, somehow, powerful.

“Go for it,” The coach told me. I took a breath and walked out onto the stage. 

It felt even bigger looking out from it than looking at it. The judges’ table was right in front of me, and beyond that, the audience. I couldn’t see my family, or N, or May, but I knew where they were. Everyone else, I didn’t know, and they didn’t know me. Scared rose up in me like black vines gripping my heart, but I pushed it back down. I couldn’t freak out, not now. This was my chance. To make everyone understand, to make them listen. Everyone was counting on me. I was counting on me. I was on the stage, in front of everyone. But another wave of fear blocked my throat. Headset or no, I was just a kid. No one was gonna listen to me. Who did I think I was? I closed my eyes. 

And I saw my family. My friends. N, May, M. Everyone whose future was being burned to the ground as I was standing there. All of theirs. The Orcas and Wolves I’d learned to love. Mine was, too. I could do something. I had too. All those times I’d known that I could and other people said I couldn’t. Anger pushed away my fear. Well, I can. I thought. 

I’m me. I’m a kid who reads in class, crushes on other girls, stays up late to look for the Barred Owls that live in the woods. I’m a kid who cares that my future is being burned before my eyes. I’m a kid who’s going to change the world. 

0.

I opened my eyes and began.