And indeed she had. Hours earlier, while everyone was distracted with the opening ceremony, Marisa and her cronies had collected every tool that could be used to force their release before her demands had been met.
The fact that they looked for tools inside showed they had no idea what they were up against. They thought Marisa had done this on a whim, was simply throwing a tantrum that could be resolved by picking her up off the floor or letting her tire herself out.
For weeks, Marisa had been sneaking into supply closets, snooping in teachers’ desks, making an inventory of hammers and chisels, the blowtorches locked away in the kitchen for when the advanced cooking classes made crème brûlée, and yes, the bolt cutters. The chains and locks Marisa had bought were top of the line and advertised a resistance to the kinds of bolt cutters thieves (and probably janitors) might use. Still, Marisa had taken the extra steps of gathering all these tools while everyone was busy with lock-in night excitement and hiding them in a duffel bag, then tossing it in the bushes by the elementary school’s yard.
* * *
The minutes passed.
The rumor deflated, less like a cartoon balloon farting its way around the room, and more like an inflation vest used in scuba diving: the bubbles rose to the surface and disappeared, leaving the students alone to sink to the bottom of the murky ocean.
They checked the time against the schedule, and started, alas, to cross things off the list of possibilities. There went the food fight, which could no longer happen without changing the schedule of the cooking competition, which would alter the fort-building challenge, all to take place in the cafeteria, beyond the locked doors.
* * *
A few students, Jordi Marcos and Dov Nudel leading the pack, started discussing that the locked doors should not have any bearing on the course of the evening. If they couldn’t leave in the morning, that was up to someone to figure out later, a solution to be found in the light of dawn. For now, shouldn’t they be allowed to at least huddle on the roof and watch movies? Or learn how to spray paint, showcase their improv skills, have a highlighter war in the chem lab? Sure, the decathlon would be hard to complete without access to the track, the field and the pool, and it was an outrage not to have the water balloon fight. But did they have to lose it all? Couldn’t they salvage some of the night?
The teachers wanted to say yes. God, that would have made it so much easier. Keep the students busy while the teachers tried to solve the problem. But the president of the school board, Nigel Appuhamy, had passed along his ruling: more kids might join the protest, they might (a good guess here) take it upon themselves to break down the doors or the chains, harming others in the process. The board couldn’t stand for that. No, the students were to be kept in sight until further notice.
* * *
Meanwhile, the students stuck outside the building sprang to attention when a van pulled up. Even those who’d never encountered a locksmith before, had never heard the word in any of the languages they spoke, understood what it was there to do. They grabbed at each other’s shoulders to get a better view, or to contain their excitement. They were getting back in.
Men piled out of the van, holding tools. There we go, the CISers thought, stepping closer to the doors, wanting to be there as soon as they opened. One of the food truck employees looked up from her phone, the only entertainment she’d had in the past hour or so. She wasn’t sure why the business had slowed so much, but this offered a clue.
The food truck employee waited for the sound of the tools. Lindsay waited, too, hoping she could still play improv tonight, still hang out with Kenji. Her other team members waited. A hundred or so people waited. But instead of buzzing or hammering, instead of some special tool they had never heard of which made a sound they wouldn’t be able to identify, they saw the crew inspecting the doors for about five minutes. Just looking at it. Muttering. There was one tease of a clang, the sound of a wrench accidentally banging against the door handle.