holding her tightly, thunk thunk.
* * *
Next out of the building was Omar, on a stretcher. Paramedics were working on him as they walked. He was lucid, watching interestedly as they applied pressure to the wound. When one of the paramedics opened a syringe and was about to toss away its plastic wrapper, Omar reached to grab it from her hands, and shoved it into his pocket. Joy trailed behind him, trying to keep up as well as her legs would carry her.
* * *
A few seconds later, Peejay emerged. His pashmina was dotted with some of Omar’s blood, and he splashed some rainwater onto it and tried to dab it away. “That boy’s gonna have to learn some boundaries,” he said, not really directing the comment at anyone, though Kenji and Celeste were near enough to hear and chuckled in response.
They stood apart from their parents and the other kids who’d come out after gathering their belongings and taking a moment to stare at the foyer, or the roof garden, or the photo lab where they’d spent the majority of their lock-in. They bid adieu, surprised by their emotions, sadness or gratitude or amusement. The reporters, who’d had no luck interviewing Marisa or Omar, now turned their attention to these other students. They didn’t know about the Protectors’ closeness to Marisa, and so they didn’t focus their efforts on them.
Master Declan came out, looking terrified of having to answer questions. Thankfully, Ms. Duli stepped to his side. “I’ll handle the media,” she said, doing so less out of a favor to the feckless headmaster and more so she could frame the story the way she and Marisa had discussed.
Ludovico Rigo was practically chased out of the building by his ever-adoring gaggle of giggling freshmen, who’d finally decided to stop their giggling and just try to talk to him for once. Unfortunately, they all tried at the same time, and Ludo sought refuge amid some reporters, who’d recognized him from his composting video.
Mrs. Wu, Mr. Sanchez, Mr. Jankowski, Mr. Gigs and all the other teachers who hadn’t already rushed to the exit to hail cabs or take the metro back to their significant others or families now took the long way around the school’s perimeters. The last thing they wanted to do right now was face parents. They wanted to find the nearest bar.
Zaira Jacobson, her phone’s miraculous battery life petering out, stood outside the building, signing off for the first time.
* * *
The ambulances left. The fire truck was trying to maneuver out. The cops were high-fiving each other over getting into the building. The crowd had started to dissipate, all those happy, tearful reunions giving way to an anxious desire to beat the rush out of the parking garage. And shoot, there was the 2:30 bell going off now. If they didn’t beat the buses out they’d be stuck in a line of cars for forty minutes. Parents pulled at their children’s sleeves while the kids exchanged parting words with those they’d spent the past week with. Those friendships that had been forged, improved, mended on lock-in night, the loves which had been professed, discovered, cemented throughout the course of Marisa’s lock-in...they all had to be properly seen off. It felt like saying goodbye at the end of summer camp, mixed, perhaps, with the feelings inmates had on the last day of their sentence. It felt like some of them might never see each other again.
The middle schoolers and elementary kids circumvented the soccer field in quiet, reverent awe, heading toward the school buses in the garage or to their parents and drivers waiting in the long queue of SUVs outside the main gate. The rain hadn’t stopped on account of the open doors. Rain didn’t care about such things, so now that it was all over, people scurried for cover, scurried to leave, no longer indifferent to getting drenched.
On everyone’s minds or tongues or social media accounts: after all this time, Marisa had lost. Her list of demands, still taped to the doors, right now a corner curling as the tape lost its strength in the rain, hadn’t all been crossed out.
* * *
The reporters were jostling to ask her about it. They wanted their headlines, their sound clips. Or at least their bosses did, the viewers did. But Marisa’s Protectors had wordlessly gathered one more time to form a circle around her. It wasn’t just the original crew, it was a group of thirty or so