Watching this on Celeste’s phone, Kenji thought, if only they had something soft below. Then he recalled a conversation with Lindsay from lock-in night about bouncy houses fashioned from gym mats. He texted her again.
Wait, the gym mats. Are those still outside?
Her response was almost instant. Yup. Been sleeping on one. Why...oh, never mind, I get it! Groupmind!
Within moments, Lindsay had pulled the gym mats she’d been sleeping on from beneath the bleachers. Her parents, who’d waited so long for her to come home with them, saw what she was doing and helped drag the blue mats across the field. Others in the crowd, most of them students who had been out there all week, grabbed the remaining ones from inside tents and from the storage lockers by the bleachers. They made a wide pile beneath Jordi. When they had stacked them high enough, Amira let go.
* * *
The cameras didn’t capture this, but as soon as Omar had been pulled safely in, Peejay swatted away everyone else to come face-to-face with Omar. Dazed though Omar was at the pain and the experience of dangling off the side of a building, he couldn’t help but smile at the sight of Peejay’s magnificent face.
Peejay had a hand on Omar’s cheek, just like that. He was looking into his eyes. Hamish was gone and everything was mayhem, but somehow he’d found this boy who looked at him like this. Who had tried to bring the one person into the building who had missed out on the party.
“I’m sorry about the statue thing,” Omar moaned. “It was really weird.”
“Shut up,” Peejay said, and leaned in and kissed him.
* * *
Now that Amira was safe, and yes, Jordi, too, Marisa put her phone down. She looked out at the empty foyer, with its scattered backpacks and blankets, the garbage that had accumulated over the past week (minus the plastic). How strange, to feel an affinity for this temporary home she’d forced herself and others into. But that was what goodbyes did, she supposed. They made you look back fondly at the things you were saying goodbye to. Even if they’d broken your leg in the process.
With no one inside watching, Marisa reached for the key hidden beneath her waistband. She shifted on her stool, cringing with the pain, nearly screaming with it. But she managed to stand on her good leg, the other one held awkwardly out, throbbing with the effort. As she slipped the key into the lock, Marisa eyed the poster she’d taped up a week earlier, when she’d had no idea how this would all turn out.
* * *
Jordi landed with a rib-cracking thud, right as the fire truck made it through the gate. He was swept up by paramedics onto a stretcher who checked for spinal injury, then carted him away. In the frenzy of those moments, he couldn’t quite tell why the crowd had gone from cheers to silence and back to top-of-their-lungs yelling. He couldn’t understand the shift in the air. The ambulance drove away, and he missed it all.
At 2:05 p.m, with ten demands left to go, and the Lokoloko project still running as scheduled, Marisa Cuevas had unlocked herself, unraveled her chains and opened the front doors to CIS.
10
2:06PM
One by one, the rest of the doors opened. Eli on the rooftop first, as soon as he got the word from Marisa. There were already paramedics waiting by each door, and upstairs they rushed toward Omar, the crowd parting way reverently.
Barely anyone noticed Lolo emerging. After Amira left she’d looped the chains through the handles, but hadn’t been able to bring herself to wrap them around herself again, and no one had been the wiser. Joy peed first, then came out, and Malik was last, waiting until he’d turned the last page of his novel before procuring his key.
For the past week, whenever anyone pictured the doors opening, they’d imagined people running. They pictured the doors bursting open, just as many people coming in as those yearning to break free. A mad rush for freedom.
But it was more of a trickle. Marisa faced the crowd for a moment, her leg screaming for a painkiller.
After their initial shock and relief, and the joy that had caused them to shout, the crowd didn’t know what to do. Rush the building? Did the kids need rescuing? Was Marisa to be arrested? They didn’t know, so they did nothing, just stood in the rain as