servers in good spirits. The movie currently playing was About Time, one of Eli’s favorites, so he tried to read the speech in a considerate, quiet voice. Still, he was being shushed, and though he hated being shushed, and hated disrupting movies, too, he believed in the cause and read on.
* * *
Downstairs, chained to the secret basement entrance Peejay was hoping had been forgotten, since it was supposed to be unknown to students (everyone knew about it), Lolo Dufry was taking a nap. She figured that people would be down there soon enough. They would open the unassuming, unmarked door by the library, thinking Marisa had forgotten about the exit, and they would rush down the steps two at a time, believing they were about to escape. But Marisa was smarter than everyone at school, and Lolo was sure that if Marisa’s life had turned out differently and she decided to hold hostages at gunpoint rather than at chainpoint, she would actually get the money, the plane to freedom, whatever she desired.
In Lolo’s lap, the three keys that corresponded to the padlocks hanging off her like menacing Christmas ornaments rested in a pool of melting butter. Soon, the butter would attract some nearby ants (here was one now, already sniffing out the golden ambrosia and ready to report back to the colony) and Lolo would wish she had skipped the theatrics and just completed that step of the process, crowd or not.
* * *
Back in the green room, Peejay had granted Malik permission to finish reading. He was just about to reach the speech’s climactic (and climatic) conclusion. Malik removed the keys from the tin foil envelope at his side, each dripping with butter. His mouth went dry. He had hated this part of the plan all along, and had tried to talk Marisa out of it. “People don’t understand anything but melodrama,” she’d said. “We need to put on a show.”
“Dear God, please tell me you’re not about to do that,” Peejay said.
Malik swallowed hard. If Peejay directed the word don’t at Malik, he might have to listen. This was Peejay Singh, this year’s host, Partyer in Chief, the guy who basically ran the school with charm. Earlier that semester, Peejay had come to the play Malik had acted in, and personally delivered congratulatory flowers to every member in the cast.
“I have to,” Malik said. Then there was enough of a pause to serve as Malik’s window. He examined the keys: small, sure, barely an inch long and thin—but still, in the end, keys. Peejay said nothing. Mr. Gigs gasped. The freshmen cried out in delight and disgust. Malik swallowed all three at once. Someone thought they had seen him chew, which for some reason felt particularly brutal.
* * *
Eli took the keys one at a time, imagining they were popcorn kernels. Moments later, he realized he could ask for some actual popcorn from Master Declan, the head of the school, who was just now noticing Eli and his chains and furrowing his brow. Eli waved him over.
* * *
Joy took hers with chugs of water, coughing them up several times before she finally felt their bumpy surface work their way down her throat. Marisa’s words ran through her mind about melodrama, and Joy played up the cough to the best of her ability. People in her vicinity winced, then craned their necks so they wouldn’t miss too much of the action happening on the court.
* * *
Marisa, who had the largest crowd by far, held her keys up in the air for effect. Butter glinted in the white light shining over her head. She looked out at her audience. All these people who contributed to the sad state of coral reefs around the world, whether knowingly or not. Whose home, however temporary it may be, was being destroyed by the gray-brown water of construction runoff. One of the last remaining spots where underwater beauty could be found was about to be wiped away, and none of them cared, none of them even knew.
She made eye contact with every single person in front of her, not blinking the whole time, so they would know just how serious she was. In that prolonged eye contact alone, she won over at least three of her fellow students, who had barely ever thought about reefs before, much less cared whether or not they had deteriorated. They, plus two teachers who would silently root for Marisa throughout the whole ordeal, though their