"Minyoung!" I turn to see my best friend, Trisha, running up to me with a plastic bag in her gloved hands. "There you are," says Trisha, puffing slightly. "Where are you going? It's clean-up day today, remember? Everyone is already down at the bus bay!"

"Oh," I wave a hand at her dismissively, "I don't want to go..."

"Whaaat?" Trisha whines, tugging my arm. "But it's National Ocean Day! We're going to the Hudson!"

I don't really have an appropriate response to that, so I let Trisha drag me outside to the front of the school by the arm, where our homeroom teacher is taking attendance. National Ocean Day was established in 2078, when world leaders decided that we needed to take a day to clean up our plastic-filled oceans. For some reason, in the United States, there's a lot of emphasis put on reducing pollution in our waters. Growing up in Korea, however, I was pretty sheltered to the western world's obsession with National Ocean Day. I received quite a culture shock when I moved here three years ago.

As we pile on to the bus class by class, Trisha says to me, "Isn't it exciting? Maybe we'll see a dolphin—I've never seen a dolphin before, you know."

Neither have I, actually. I'm pretty sure they're almost extinct by now, but I don't tell Trisha that. The smile on her face, meant to coax and encourage, disheartens me.

Last year, we went to the Delaware. The year before that, it was Saint Lawrence. I recall that the state of everything was just... sad. It's why I don't really like clean-up day. I've never seen the Hudson before, but my hopes aren't high.

I'm not sure how long the bus ride took, but before I know it, we're there, and kids are whooping loudly as they hop off, dashing toward the shingle.

I frown as I regard the murky, dark green river. It's just as I expected.

"Come on," Trisha takes my hand, "let's go save the environment!" Jokingly, she slaps my back and leads me down to the river. A long time ago, I remember, a plane crashed in this very river. But I don't much about it. All the history books just talk about how our ancestors let the water pollution problem go on for too long.

I feel my heart sink into my stomach as we get closer to the river, a rotten stench filling our nostrils. Nobody's really smiling anymore. Well, they are, but they're faked, and strained. Deep down, we know that our expedition's not going to help the Hudson. We've known that since the day the field trip was announced. We just can't admit it.

"We can save the Hudson," Trisha insists to me as she starts tossing dirt-covered rubbish in her plastic bag, a sort of searching desperation in her chocolate brown eyes.

The wind blows, and the rancid smell becomes more pervasive than ever.

"No," I say. "It's too late for that."