more to Kenji than to Matias.
But Matias gave her a look, as if just now considering the possibility that something could go wrong. He looked back down and, suddenly dubious, called to his friends to find a mattress.
“I think you may have just saved his life.”
“I know I’m new here, but is all this normal?” Celeste said.
“I mean, I haven’t heard about stuff like this happening. I know it’s supposed to be unpredictable and a little kooky, but no one’s ever protested on lock-in night before, from what I know. So I think we’re in unexplored territory.”
They turned the corner to go down the stairs, and saw two boys sitting at the landing weeping into each other’s shoulders.
“That’s Cory and Shem,” Kenji whispered. “They do cry pretty often, though I’ve never seen them do it on the stairs, so that’s inconclusive vis-à-vis all this being normal.” They kept walking, almost tiptoeing to give the boys space.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they found about a dozen students hauling a mountain of chairs out of classrooms. A crowd had gathered to watch. This time Kenji tapped someone on the shoulder. “What’s happening?” he asked.
The girl who responded was Ceci Torres, who Kenji’d had a brief crush on at the start of the year until he realized she was not an adventurous eater. She seemed to have a pretty fresh nose-piercing, although Kenji couldn’t remember her having one before, or if there’d been any piercing booth set up before Marisa’s lock-in took effect. “Building a bonfire!” she shouted, a little too excitedly for comfort.
“Yeah, I don’t think this is normal,” Kenji said to Celeste, backing away from Ceci with a tight-lipped smile.
“What do we do? Should we, like, tell someone?”
At that moment, a kid near the mountain of chairs started shouting out for matches, right as Ms. Florgen, the gym teacher, came bounding down the stairs. It looked like she’d been running around for some time now, sweat gathering at her hairline and sticking to her chest. The wild look in her eyes told Kenji that, though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, this was only the latest in a long line of unbelievable sights the poor woman had been subjected to.
Several bonfire builders scattered when she yelled out, but others just kind of eyed her up. The same kid who’d been asking for matches asked nonchalantly if she had a lighter they could borrow.
“What?” she screamed. “No! No, I do not have a lighter, Mr. Strovanoff. You are not allowed to set these chairs on fire.”
The kid, Karl Strovanoff, as it turned out, rolled his eyes as Ms. Florgen yelled that a lot of people would get hurt. Karl was already walking away, as if she were ruining his fun for no reason. Across the foyer, Marisa watched with a bemused smile.
“I’m so conflicted right now,” Kenji said. “This is everything I’ve dreamed of. The world is saying yes to every conceivable situation. But it’s not improv, and I’m kind of scared.”
Ms. Florgen took her phone out of her pocket and called someone. After a moment, she said, “I have to stick around here. They’re trying to set the whole place on fire.” She took a few deep breaths, making brief eye contact with Kenji. “No, I don’t think intentionally. I think they’ve just lost their minds. Just be on the lookout for flammable materials is what I’m saying.” She paused. “Yeah, sure, whatever, I’ll do research on meeting demands. But I’ll do it from here.” She eyed the pile of chairs suspiciously, although since it reached about fifteen feet in height, not without some admiration.
* * *
This was not lock-in night.
What Celeste and Kenji were witnessing was 276 students waking up to this realization. They might have been free to roam the halls, free to eat hot sauce and make out in the dark, but they had lost what was, in that moment, most important to them. The magic was absent from the few activities available.
No amount of unsupervised spray painting, or throwing chairs at windows, or general Lord of the Flies behavior was going to change that.
The chains weren’t budging, the hinges were resisting any tinkering they attempted. Someone had even knocked over Joy’s bucket and sifted through the clumped sawdust with the tip of their sneaker, looking for a key. Joy hid her face, quietly thankful that it had only been pee.
They hadn’t wanted to believe it was true. That whole time in the auditorium,