When their child’s voice came on the line, and rather than panicky pleas for help, they simply said, “Can you come pick me up?” their heartbeats slowed and they nearly cried with relief. Then they furrowed their brows and thought, Wait, what?
As they pulled on pants and made a quick pot of coffee, they reached out to their friends, other parents at the school. Some were likewise hauling themselves out of bed, confused over the circumstances, but thankful there was nothing tragic afoot. Others answered the phone midlaughter. They had gathered at one person or the other’s house, using their kids’ absence as an excuse to sit and drink and generally behave more like they had when they were younger. This, too, was a lock-in night tradition, even though parents who’d been around before never had to suggest it. Minds of parents freed from their teenagers think alike.
But these parents answering the phone now, happy drunk, hadn’t heard of anything happening. “What, is Roberto sick?” they would ask, equally confused by the prospect of someone getting sick on lock-in night as they were to receive a phone call informing them of that at midnight. Then they cupped their free ear shut and pressed the phone closer, motioning for the other laughing parents to shut up for a second.
“Something’s happened?”
“I don’t know. I guess. It didn’t sound like an emergency, but he called asking me to pick him up. Felipa is getting the twins, too. Something’s up.”
So it was around midnight the students gathered in front of Marisa began to answer their parents’ frantic phone calls. Even while the kids told them what they knew, and all they didn’t, they marveled at the fact they hadn’t thought to call before, at how lock-in night or even the hope it would still happen had shaped their behavior.
Some students felt that, of course, getting the parents involved was the solution. (Amazing how the human heart latched on to any hope it could invent.) Others, embarrassed as they were to have not even thought to inform their parents, knew this parental involvement would change nothing. If Marisa didn’t yield to Peejay, if she didn’t yield to or even respect lock-in night, what chance did the parents have?
Sure, CIS parents could make a fuss like no other group in the local country, or even in the many countries familiar to CIS students. They’d gotten the ugly linoleum flooring changed and the hand-sanitizing dispenser installed. And God knew the poor board members were going to really get it for failing to notify the parents before their kids did. The board had known, of course, it wouldn’t go over well. But they were trying to solve the issue before panicking the parents. The only ones they’d called were Marisa’s and the cronies’, but they hadn’t managed to reach anyone but Malik Harris’s parents (who took the phone call to be a scam of some sort and promptly hung up).
Nevertheless, the parents were here to yell. Marisa’s chains, surely, would stand up to even the fiercest yelling.
What Marisa was counting on was that the board would not.
* * *
This is what she was telling her mom over the phone. Marisa knew her mom, knew she could forgive any crazy idea if it was well thought out. She’d come close to telling her the plan, but even her mom went around saying it was better, sometimes, to ask for forgiveness rather than for permission.
“How sure are you about this?”
“Well, Mom, it’s a little late now.”
“That’s not what I meant. How sure are you that what you’re doing is worth it all? The pain you’re causing others, the potential pain you’re bringing on yourself. The nuisance of it all. The consequences, hun. Because there will be some. At school, with your friends, later in life. This will stick around. Is it worth it?”
Marisa didn’t hesitate. She was still woozy from the backpack to the head, could still see people in front of her wanting to tear her apart. But if the construction stopped, if she could bring back just a little color to the reefs, if she could save something... Just the thought was enough for her to want to tighten the chains. “Absolutely.”
“Okay,” her mom said. “How long do you think until they give you what you want?”
“It’ll take more than the night,” Marisa said, leaving it at that. She glanced over at Amira, to see if she’d heard that bit. But Amira gave no indication