that she had. Marisa’s eyes lingered longer than necessary on this girl who’d come to sit by her side, this classmate she’d been looking to steal a few moments with in the hallway.
“So I shouldn’t expect you for breakfast,” her mom said. It wasn’t a question. Marisa was sure her mom could see the range of outcomes, and she would know, better than anyone in the building, Marisa would not be home for breakfast. Her daughter had the strongest convictions of anyone she knew.
“I don’t think so.”
Her mom cleared her throat. It might have been to hide tears, though Marisa wasn’t sure if they would be tears of pride or concern.
“Good luck, honey. I love you.”
* * *
Celeste’s mom was not as understanding. For starters, like every other parent, she understood less. “Wait, is this a local thing?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Celeste answered.
“Was it on the schedule? Selena from the embassy called, and I did not understand a word that woman was trying to say to me. She sounded like someone was ripping a brunch mimosa from her hands.”
“Um,” Celeste said, switching her phone to the other ear so Kenji couldn’t hear. “Well, what happened, I think...” She lowered her voice, thinking there was a chance she herself didn’t understand the situation, and speaking what she thought would bring ridicule her way. “It wasn’t planned or anything. Or at least not by the school. It was some students.”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“They are, uh, I think, um...” Celeste was trying to explain the situation in a way that wouldn’t completely freak her mom out. “I’m fine and all, there’s no violence or anything.”
“Celeste, baby, you’ve got your ‘I don’t wanna scare Mom’ voice going. I can hear it a mile away. And the longer you go on with it, the worse I’m gonna think things are. You know how good my imagination is. So, just say it, baby. It’s okay.”
Celeste took a deep breath, looking for a place to step away. But the crowd, busy though they were with their own calls, was still right in front of her, Marisa only a few steps behind. At that moment, Kenji was reaching for his phone, too. Celeste could almost feel the vibrations across the little space between them. “We’re kinda sorta being held hostage. I think.”
There was a long pause on the other end. Then her mom spoke, almost under her breath. “I thought we’d left this shit behind in the States.”
“No, Mom, it’s not like that. I’m okay.”
Celeste’s mom sighed into the phone. There was a ruffling sound, and Celeste’s dad’s sleepy voice in the background. Her mom spoke to her again. “And it’s not a local thing?”
“Local thing” had become the Rollinses’ term for any bit of culture shock they experienced, good or bad, fascinating or incomprehensible. They had a family chalkboard set up in their kitchen, and each day someone added something new—a slang word, or some transportation taboo, or an observation about the local people, how they all seemed to place a hand over their bellies as they laughed, young or old, a chuckle or a breathless, cackling breakdown. “No,” Celeste said. “It’s for the environment, I think. A climate protest. It’s not violent or anything.”
This time there was a pause on the other end as her mom took in that it was a protest. She’d been a community organizer back in Chicago, and had been involved in a handful of strikes and marches. “Are they harming anyone?”
“No. They’re just chained to the doors and won’t let anyone out until their demands are met.”
Another deep breath. “Good for them, then.” She said something away from the phone, presumably to her dad. “If you’re safe, then I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens. We’ll try to figure out what we can from here. Just let us know if anything changes, and don’t go disappearing into yourself. In stressful times we need other people. Find someone good and stick with them.” Celeste turned to Kenji, who was speaking in such a quiet, clipped voice she knew he wasn’t talking about improv. His cowlick somehow stuck out even farther.
She assumed he was talking with his parents, and for some reason, it felt like this voice, muted, un-Kenji-esque, was the voice that came out when he spoke with them. It was an assumption, just a hunch, because it sounded so different from how he’d been speaking to her the last few hours, because it’s what she sounded like at school, wholly