Marisa, met by Kenji and Celeste, wobbled forward on unsteady leg(s).
* * *
God, it felt so good to stand again.
Terrible, actually, uncomfortable and so painful it was as if Marisa was learning how to do it all over again, even with Kenji and Celeste holding her up. But good, too. When it became clear no one was going to apprehend her or throw anything, the three of them hobbled over to the gym mats by the side of the building. Amira had waited a minute for the fire truck to come and raise the ladder to make her descent easy, but had tired of waiting for them and thrown herself down on the mats.
The reporters snapped from their trance and chased after her, shouting questions, trying to get the crowd to make way for their cameramen. The paramedics, too, tried to make their way to Marisa, but the reporters were a little more strong-headed, and anyway, Marisa wasn’t ready to get pulled away.
Kenji and Celeste eased her down onto the mattress by Amira, right as their parents rushed in their direction.
* * *
The Rollinses embraced their daughter, putting a week’s worth of lost embraces into their arms. It wasn’t lost on them that she’d walked out in someone else’s company. “You smell,” her mom said into her hair.
“Shut up, I showered every day.” Celeste laughed.
“I just meant in general,” she shot back, thinking she wasn’t ever going to let go of her daughter again.
* * *
Arthur Pierce, too, to the surprise of everyone who’d heard him speak—and especially to Kenji—wrapped up his son in a hug. “It’s done,” Mr. Pierce said softly, like he was letting out a breath. Kenji thought he was talking about the lock-in, the whole ordeal. Mr. Pierce meant the construction project. They wouldn’t figure out the misunderstanding until the next day, when Kenji would wake up from a sixteen-hour sleep and the story was on the news. He’d learn of his father’s change of heart, piece together why he’d been on his phone. “You did it?” he’d ask.
“Yes,” his father would respond. “And I’m sorry I didn’t do it earlier.”
Now he let himself be held, feeling something was different between them, though not yet sure what. The hug itself, maybe, which Mr. Pierce was not wont to give.
* * *
Rifta Wahid approached her daughter on the mat, not sure what to say. There was too much, not enough. Amira met her eyes, and they looked at each other for a long while. Amira did not feel any one emotion more than the other. They all swirled around, anger and guilt and shame and relief. There was going to be a reckoning, and Amira wasn’t sure what would happen, how her relationship with her mother would change, just that it would. Somehow, she felt ready for it.
“Are you okay?” her mother asked, her eyes flitting to Marisa, and back to Amira. Amira could only nod her head, and then the crowd surrounded the mat, engulfing Rifta.
* * *
Celeste wanted to keep holding on to her parents forever. She wanted to go home with them and change into pajamas and eat her dad’s mac and cheese and play board games with them as if it were a Christmas morning back in Illinois. Instead, she pulled away from them and said, “Mom, Dad, I want you to meet my friend Kenji.”
* * *
Amira and Marisa sat on the mat, surrounded by shouting and bodies. Marisa kept her leg floating above the wet grass, and somehow no one bumped into it, despite the frenzy on the lawn. It may have been noteworthy that the paramedics and the reporters were kept at bay if it weren’t for the fact that, at the moment, it felt like no one else was near them.
“I’m sorry,” Marisa said.
“What for?”
“I’m not sure, really. Ruining the decathlon for you. Not telling you how much it’s helped having you there with me. You can tell me anything else I need to apologize for, but before that, can I, like, hold you for a second?”
Amira laughed, happy that the rain might obscure the welling in her eyes (though Marisa knew that was no raindrop). She looked around the crowd for her mother, wondering if she was ready for that to be a part of the reckoning, too. But she couldn’t spot her, and anyway, there was nothing she wanted more right now, reckoning or not. She nodded. “Shouldn’t you be going to a hospital?”
But Marisa was already