board decides. Peejay said they should give you what you want.” She didn’t mention Jordi’s opposition, for no other reason than she found it distasteful.
“Is everyone pissed at me?”
Amira leaned back to rest against the door. She thought of Omar, and whether she would get the opportunity to dunk on him, sweet though he was. She thought of the decathlon’s cancellation, and though part of her was, yes, filled with anger, part of her was relieved, too. To not have to hide the plaque or trophy or whatever she’d win from her mom. To not have to lie about how she’d spent lock-in night. It was a silver lining at least. For now, the anger didn’t direct itself at Marisa. She knew why Marisa was here, after all, had heard the murmurings in the auditorium, had read the demands on the poster. She couldn’t fault Marisa for raising her voice. After all, Amira had fantasized about doing just that countless times. “I think right now they’re just nervous,” she said.
Marisa didn’t have to ask what they were nervous about. She looked over at Amira, reading her body language. She suddenly recognized how long Amira must have trained for the decathlon. All those hours Marisa had spent researching, planning, thinking; Amira had spent those hours and more, likely, honing her skills. And Marisa had ripped it all away from her.
“Are you pissed at me?” Marisa asked.
Amira crunched on a pita chip, then handed the Tupperware back. For a moment, Marisa took this as Amira’s response, and her muscles relaxed slightly (though they were already tensing with the strain of moving beneath the chains), but then Amira turned to look at her, her expression not changing. “Not yet.”
* * *
Back in the auditorium, most of the 276 students locked inside the building were talking about one of two things. They were either discussing everything they wished they could be doing at lock-in night, or they were picking sides. Peejay or Jordi—it seemed like everyone fell into one camp or the other, swayed by who knew how many societal factors to land at an opinion even before this situation arose.
The only two people, it seemed, who were entirely quiet were Kenji and Celeste. Celeste looked around at everyone speaking and thought if she was seated next to anyone else, anyone at all, she would find the exact same silence. Part of her wanted to shout, “No! This isn’t how Things Will Always Be.” But the truth was that part of her had been wrong so many times before, and it was getting exhausting to fall for hope time and again. She had no lines anymore, no place in this world.
Celeste didn’t care if lock-in night ever resumed, because it had changed nothing.
“God,” Kenji said, “this has changed everything, huh.”
His voice still cracked with puberty, accented in a strange place, somewhere between the adorable lilt British children had and the charming accents men grew into.
Celeste wasn’t entirely sure he was speaking to her, even though there was absolutely no one else he could have possibly been speaking to. “I wish I could be playing right now,” he said. On further inspection, it was completely possible he was speaking to himself.
Then he turned to Celeste and raised his sparse eyebrows over his large, clear eyeglass frames, making it undeniable he was indeed talking to her.
“Playing what?” Celeste asked, picturing video games or wooden blocks, childish things. She had learned to think of her manner of speaking as having an American accent instead of lacking an accent, the way she’d said a few times in her first weeks at school, drawing eye rolls from several people. Her ignorance, she felt, could fill this auditorium.
“Improv,” he said, smiling as if the word were the very act itself. “We call it playing.” He looked at his phone, confirming to himself the showcase should’ve started by now. “Have you ever done it?”
Celeste shook her head, wanting to pull her legs up onto the seat, hug her knees and draw into herself, bracing for the end of the conversation.
“Oh, man, you should definitely come. We meet Tuesdays in the green room after school. My friends and I also play on Fridays at Lindsay’s house. Then most Saturdays, too, but that’s usually just because we’ll get bored wherever we are, the mall or waiting for a movie to start or whatever, and playing is just always more fun than not. I won’t freak you out by telling you you should come