he ran a hand across the glass. It was almost imperceptible on the soft tiny ridges of his index finger. But it was there. A little drop of water squeezed through. A crack.
* * *
Below, Amira saw the figure sprinting back and forth, heaving himself over and over again at the glass. She didn’t know who it was, but she had her guesses. “I have to get back inside,” she said, the words leaving her mouth unintentionally, but leaving all the same. They carried on the wind just enough to cause the woman to her left to turn.
* * *
“I guess he’s done talking, then?” Kenji said, looking out the window at his father staring blankly, his phone in his hand, the megaphone at his side.
“What would you do in improv if someone doesn’t go along with the game like that?”
“You would just keep going until someone yells ‘scene.’”
“So—” Peejay gestured “—keep going.” Behind Peejay, Celeste gave what she hoped was a reassuring nod.
Kenji sighed. He wished he had a scene partner. No, he wished that, for once in his goddamn life, his dad would be that for him. Someone willing to go along with the world Kenji presented him with. He stood there for a moment, thinking they wouldn’t be here—they being the Protectors, those locked in, the media, everyone—if his dad weren’t so dead set against jokes. Laughter! As if it were the most terrible thing in the world. As if he couldn’t imagine a worse fate for his son. He was just about to raise the megaphone to his lips when he saw his dad put the phone up to his ear to make a call, right as the cops were pulling him away.
* * *
Yes, the cell phone company had finally figured out the problem and fixed it, opening up the cell tower for the several hundred people gathered at CIS (more were accruing by the hour, drawn by social media, word of mouth, television and the irresistible human urge to join a crowd).
Word inside the building spread quickly, barely needing actual words, since the students’ phones came alive with notifications again. They learned that while they’d been disconnected from the world, fear and hope had grown, almost in equal measures.
There were those certain Marisa was going to blow up the school, and they were on the internet and TV calling on the administrators and the government (they rarely specified which government, or how the one they’d named had anything to do with the CIS lock-in) to act to keep other children from fighting for causes.
People were holding preemptive candlelight vigils, prayer circles. Some for the students, others for the reefs, for the oceans, for the death of the world, which so many had witnessed and, even when it took center stage, had only discussed instead of acted.
The reef mourners worshipped Marisa and her Protectors (no one really knew how the term had made it out) but felt resigned. If children failed to cause change at their school, what hope was there?
Others said no: that’s exactly where hope lies. Look at the children fighting. Look at the passion they could garner, the attention they drew. There were, as it turned out, many Ms. Dulis out there. People who’d always believed they had the necessary drive to do real good and had only been waiting for a strong enough push to give in to their better, albeit more passive, natures. They saw others acting and said, Yes, I will join them.
Marisa had no qualms with late adapters, bandwagon-jumpers. She cared little about intentions, only results. And in the last few power-and signal-less hours, these were the results, soon confirmed by a phone call Ms. Duli received from the board: the school was going to pay legal fees associated with breaking a contract with their fertilizer supplier, since they used it merely for pretty grass on their fields, and the runoff was further choking the reefs (demand number nineteen on the list). Similarly, they were breaking contract with the caterer that ran the school cafeteria after it’d refused to promise to get their fish from sustainable sources (demand number six). Alumni donations had poured in to help pay for all these fees, plus the new solar panels that would be installed on the middle school’s rooftop (demand number twenty-three).
After a social media campaign went viral, a major detergent company had immediately halted production on any detergent they used containing phosphates, citing a responsibility to life over profits (not