we have a comment form on our website and a customer service hotline she can call.”
A few chuckles in the crowd, mostly from adults. Mrs. Cuevas rolled her eyes. “How refreshing,” she said, “an adult dismissive of a teenager.” She didn’t bother yelling. Publicly defending Marisa, standing up for what she’d done, could come at another time, and would, over and over throughout the upcoming months and years, but right now she’d let Marisa’s actions speak for her, would let Marisa raise her voice if she felt the need to.
Now his father was joking? Kenji clenched his fists, the megaphone giving a whine. “That’s a great answer for a press conference, Father, but I wonder how much comfort it would provide if you never saw me again.”
Arthur Pierce staggered backward, nearly knocking into Asher, who had to step into some bushes to avoid the contact.
“Was that a little harsh?” Kenji said off-mic to Peejay. “It definitely makes it sound like she’s going to murder me.”
Peejay smiled. “Let him sit with that image for a second. Who cares if it’s true or not.”
Arthur didn’t sit with it long. “None,” he answered, trying to power through the shift in balance he’d felt. “Though surely there’s a middle ground here.” The project up the coast was the largest in the region for his company, and Kenji was right here in front of him, wasn’t he, safe and sound. No need to be rash.
Again, Kenji lobbed his father’s favorite word back up. “No. You’ve been telling me that word my whole life. Now listen to me say it. No. No middle ground. No talking it out. The project is canceled or you never see me again.”
“There are plenty of other factors, though. Thirty demands, aren’t there? Why would I commit to wasting millions of dollars and three years’ worth of time if all the other demands don’t get met?”
“Goddamn it, just pretend. Imagine, for one stupid moment.” He’d yelled the first few words, but by the end, Kenji just sounded tired. Like he was ready for the scene to be over, since his partner wasn’t cooperating at all. He pushed his glasses up the brim of his nose. “Listen to me, for once, will you? Just pretend.”
Almost in spite of his son standing up to him—or maybe because of it—Arthur said, “Fine.” He lowered the megaphone, at which point a bunch of other parents began yelling into theirs, most of them answering their children, who’d been yelling from other windows throughout this whole exchange.
So Arthur Pierce now allowed himself to sit with the image his son had put in his head. The project gets scrapped, or Kenji is gone. His brain, the wonderful, strange contraption that it was, was rather adept at creating new scenarios and treating them, at least for a moment, as real. He pictured an explosion at the school at 2:30 p.m. Or the girl pulling guns out from her duffel bag (that he pictured Marisa having a duffel bag was just a strange coincidence), the way things might happen at an American school. He pictured him and his wife on their knees by Kenji’s body, imagined the terrible pain in his gut, in his throat, filling his entire body for the rest of his life. He pictured his marriage falling apart, pictured his board voting him out of his own company because he was no longer capable of running it adequately, no longer capable of doing anything adequately. He imagined—no, knew—this hypothetical version of himself wouldn’t care about being voted out. He’d relinquish control of the company to have his son back. In an instant. God, even if Kenji lived but remained within this building, his days and months and years wasting away, what would Arthur’s company mean to him? What good would it be without his son in his life? Was that really at stake here? He looked around at all the faces looking at him or at the building, hunching their shoulders forward to protect themselves from the drizzle and the wind, which were both picking up again. How had he not thought all this yet? He swallowed, amazed at how deeply he had fallen into that make-believe world.
Then the police started walking in formation, a moving wall of plastic shields and helmets. They guided the parents away from the building, though they couldn’t help but add a bit of forcefulness to their voices. They may have come with batons and strict instructions to maintain control without force,