Kenji smoothed out the wrinkles on his pants while he listened to his dad ramble about things that were unacceptable. He felt the urge to do an impression of his dad’s posh, stiff-upper-lip way of speaking. “I don’t know, Father, they haven’t given us much information. I believe they don’t have much to share.”
“Why are you speaking like that?”
“Like what?” A pause on the line while his dad tried to figure out if Kenji was being silly at an inappropriate time. The way the word silly was used at the Pierce household was similar to the way Jordi Marcos’s dad used the word protestor.
“What are these damn criminals asking for?”
Kenji found himself gulping again. Was he a gulper? He hadn’t known that. “Um, a bunch of things,” he said.
“Well,” his father went on, “for the tuition I pay, this is absolutely ludicrous. I’ll be making calls, of that they can be certain. You will be home within the hour, and that is final.” Kenji said nothing, waiting for his father’s incredulity to run out. He’d heard Celeste chuckle at something her mom said, and he wondered if he’d ever laughed at anything his father said. Well, yes, he had. But in secret, after the fact, laughing at him in his mind or with his friends. He wondered what it would be like to have the kind of relationship with his father that looked more like a friendship and less like docile student–severe teacher.
When the conversation ended—thankfully without Kenji accidentally blurting out that his dad’s company was mentioned in the demands—he put his phone away and took stock of the room, wondering why he was standing where he was, and how his father would react when he found out Marisa was coming after Lokoloko.
* * *
Then the parents came.
They arrived in droves, a caravan of SUVs and minivans and luxury sedans. Lupita Minji—the administrative assistant who’d been posted at the little booth by the parking garage entrance to attend to the various vendors who would come and go through the night—woke from a nap to the sound of horns. Dozens of cars were waiting to come in, and she wondered if she’d slept through the whole night before raising the barrier and waving them in.
They climbed out of their cars wearing pajama pants and hooded sweatshirts, or they were let out by chauffeurs and wobbled forward on high heels and dress shoes, popping mints to hide their boozy breath from their children.
Some were already crying; the rumor mill had been working furiously ever since the first phone call from CIS came, and now they weren’t sure if they’d ever see their children again. Kidnappers, some had heard, spreading the story as if they’d seen the ski-masked perpetrators with their own eyes. A bomb threat, others believed. Some giggled as they took the elevator up from the garage to the soccer field, having heard there was merely some malfunction with the doors and the night had been canceled. They greeted each other as they crossed the field, casually or with deep, sobbing embraces, depending on which rumor they’d heard.
Some had already spoken to Master Declan or Ms. Duli or one of the board members (whichever one they were best connected to), and though they’d been told exactly what was happening, they didn’t understand. They gathered in front of the entrance, waiting for some school representative to come and meet them. A lucky handful spotted their children right there on the lawn, and managed to convince them to come back home.
Lindsay’s parents (pajama-clad variety) found her cross-legged on the soccer bleachers, using her phone’s camera zoom to try to sneak glances through the building’s windows. Lindsay saw them out of the corner of her eye, but pretended not to. She and her mom had fought again right before the lock-in, and her dad never understood what they were fighting about, thinking everyone was always blowing things out of proportion, which of course only angered both his wife and daughter. So right now they were all mad at each other, on top of Lindsay’s anger at being on the outside. Lindsay’s mom nudged her husband. He rolled his eyes and greeted his daughter, who said, “Hi,” back because she didn’t yet know how to tell them she wouldn’t be going home with them until the school doors opened.
* * *
Surprise, surprise, it was Jordi Marcos, Sr., who pushed past patiently huddled