Kidnapping on Kaua'i (featured by Wattpad 2014)

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Wednesday

I'm not doing great this morning. My eyelids feel like they're trying to hold up rocks, and my stomach feels like a dryer tumbling with hot acid. But, I'm standing up in front of the classroom anyway, ready to give my presentation on GMOs. Might as well get it over with.

"Aloha, class," I said, lifting my chin. I smiled at everyone, trying to start things off on a good note. What I really wanted to say was: Aloha, class, I can't sleep anymore because I'm having terrible dreams, like I'm stuck in the past.

I blinked my eyes hard, trying to force together my distracted thoughts. C'mon, Lani. After shuffling my notecards, I angled toward the left. I didn't want to face the side of the room where Sofie sat. "Ummmm, today I'm going to be talking about GMOs, short for genetically modified organisms. You may be wondering, what's a GMO?"

I could feel Chad staring right at me, like he was fascinated by my words. A flush hit my cheeks and I cleared my throat. "So, like, um...the best way to understand GMOs is to imagine you're editing film. If you have a video and you want to add in a caption, you cut the film and insert the caption you want. That's called splicing. Now imagine that, instead of film, you want to change the DNA sequence in a seed, which is like a strip of instructions for a plant. So, you cut the DNA sequence and splice in the desired trait. The resulting plant is a GMO, and you can patent its seed."

I looked up to see if I'd gotten my point across, and then continued. "Now that you know what a GMO is, you probably want to know why they're made. GMOs are usually created to resist certain strong pesticides. This way, an entire a field can be sprayed with strong pesticides and all the plants except the GMO plant will die."

A hand went up. "What do they splice into the plant?"

"Scientists can splice in anything, but usually it's bacteria. At one company, employees noticed a bacteria was still growing in a chemical dumpster outside their building, so they knew it could survive the company's pesticide. Scientists also splice termination technology into plants, so seeds can't reproduce on their own. They become what's called 'suicide seeds'. This way, farmers have to buy new seeds every planting season, which makes GMO corporations more money."

I waited to see if there were any other questions. The class was silent, so I moved on. "There are four big problems with GMOs: first, scientists don't know what the long-term effects are on humans resulting from eating the spliced gene and the stronger pesticides used with GMOs. Second, weeds and pests may develop a resistance to the stronger pesticide, creating super weeds and super bugs. Third, all crops, organic and non-organic, are vulnerable to contamination from GMOs, because insects, birds, and even the wind can spread GMO pollen and seeds into neighboring fields and beyond. This makes it impossible to maintain uncontaminated non-GMO farms. Finally, GMOs can actually hurt the farming business, because GMO farmers have to buy more seeds, and non-GMO farmers can be sued for patent infringement if a GMO cross-pollinates their crops, even if they didn't know about it."

I decided to end my list there, without mentioning that Sanbello's headquarters on the mainland is a Superfund site, a site so contaminated with hazardous waste that it's tagged for clean-up by the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund. I didn't want to embarrass Sofie.

"GMO corporations are the big guys," I continued. "These companies have big budgets for public relations and lobbying the government. We need to make sure their marketing doesn't drown out the story being told by the little farms that don't buy GMO seeds. If not, our health and our local farms may be at risk."

A movement outside the window in our classroom door caught my eye, and I was surprised to see Jasper in the hallway. No one else seemed to notice him standing there, except for Sofie. Jasper's gaze slid from me over to Sofie. Her eyes widened and her hand shot up. "I have a question," she said loudly. "Haven't farmers been modifying plants for decades by selecting seeds that have the traits they want?"