Mr. Gigs, so used to joking around with students, so much more comfortable being real with them than he was with many of his colleagues, thought again of some faraway beach (not even; the nearest beach would do) and said, “Fuck if I know.”
* * *
On the soccer field, a different kind of mayhem. Glass from above had rained down on the unsuspecting crowd before they’d even heard it smashing. The cops furrowed their brows and inspected the window they were attempting to break, wondering where the shards had come from, since this one was still holding strong. The paramedics who’d been stationed at the school all week suddenly found themselves having too many patients to deal with and radioed for backup. The injuries were mostly minor—only a couple of people required major stitches, the others were just panicked—but there was enough blood around to make the scene ghastly, like a disaster movie. Parents shrieked at the sight of a boy, two? dangling above.
* * *
Not far from where Amira stood with her mom’s hand clasped around her forearm, a school board member watched the glass and the boy and the blood and thought, We’re really screwed now.
Rifta Wahid was the only person not looking at Jordi, whose limp, dangling arms made him look like he was dead already (indeed, a few people believed he was, and a deep sorrow squeezed their guts at the thought. Their eyes welled with tears and they moved a hand up to their mouths to grip their chin as they stared at the swaying body).
“Amira, what...” Rifta didn’t know how to finish the question, but it worked well enough on its own. She looked toward the building, then back at Amira, not understanding anything.
* * *
Amira, meanwhile, felt her mother’s grip tighten around her forearm in direct proportion to how much she wanted to get away. She needed to be inside, needed to deal with the roof garden, needed to escape her mother. How was she this strong?
They might have stayed looking at each other like that for hours if it weren’t for another shout from the crowd as Jordi slipped an inch from Omar’s grip.
Just like that, Amira found whatever spell her mother still held her under had dissipated, at least for this moment, and she untangled herself from her mother’s grip. “I have to go,” she said, looking at the roof again. This time, her mother followed her gaze and gasped. Then she turned back and studied her daughter’s face. How had this happened? Her little girl, now this strong-jawed woman, her muscles bulging as if her body was struggling to contain them. How had the years passed so quickly?
“You can’t,” Rifta said simply.
What Amira heard this time, though, was something that sounded like waves crashing on the shore. The sound of the padlock gently tinkling against Marisa’s chains. The little snores that signaled Marisa had fallen asleep. She thought of that list behind Marisa’s head, and what Marisa would do if someone told her she couldn’t. She thought of Marisa being herself, loudly, unapologetically.
“Watch me,” Amira said, and she tore away.
* * *
Amira maneuvered her way against the current of the crowd, toward where the shattered glass lay twinkling in the grass. She was close to the back staircase, which led up to the green room, more or less below Jordi and Omar and the occasional CISer who dared to lean over the edge of the shattered window to look below. The cops were still trying to break into the building, though a few of them were staring at the spectacle overhead and speaking into their radios. They didn’t notice Amira, or Lindsay, who stepped toward her, feeling, by proxy, like one of the Protectors, too.
A beat passed, Amira half thinking of a plan but half in awe that she’d walked away from her mother like that. Something glinted in the sky, and Amira hopped back, grabbing Lindsay as she did to avoid a six-inch shard of glass that had come loose and crashed where they’d been standing.
“We could tell Malik to open up,” Lindsay offered.
Amira looked at the time. It wasn’t 2:30 yet. She knew how irrational it was, but it felt wrong to make the decision to open the door. That was Marisa’s choice, and hers alone. Plus, the only thing opening the door would do in that moment was get more people inside.