shouts no one heard, scoffed. The two teachers who’d joined ranks as protectors pretended not to hear.
Marisa shrugged. Lacking the energy to dig deeper in that moment, Ms. Duli filed the thought away, grabbed the megaphone and went to the nearest classroom. It, too, was in disarray. Chairs on their sides, and one in the window itself, as if someone was trying to rearrange physics to fit the chair through the tiny opening. Ms. Duli freed the chair leg and pulled it down, standing on it so she could angle the megaphone out the little window slit.
Ms. Duli cleared her throat and spoke to the parents huddled out on the soccer field in front of the building. “Welcome, parents. We’re sorry you’ve had to come all this way, but we’d like to make it perfectly clear that everyone inside is safe. There seems to be a little confusion, from what I hear. A group of students have chained themselves to the doors and have effectively blocked all ways in and out of the building. They have some demands, and the board is working to meet them in order to release the students as soon as possible. That is all the information we have at this time, but I will personally deliver any updates as they become available.”
Since it seemed like she was done speaking, Jordi Sr. reacted exactly like the man Jordi had learned his behavior from, and shouted into his own megaphone. “Open the goddamn doors right now, by any means necessary.”
Ms. Duli had started climbing down from the chair, but now stopped and spoke again. “Sir, the exits are blocked. We have no tools to open the padlocks or break the chains. Ways in and out of the building have been explored, to no avail. For now, we have to assume that the doors will remain closed until the board meets the students’ demands.”
Someone else outside grabbed hold of the megaphone.
“Well, how many demands have you met so far?”
Those weasels on the board should be answering this, Ms. Duli thought. “We’ve been attempting to find other ways to deal with the situation.”
“How many?” he repeated.
Ms. Duli would have pressed, too. “None.”
A roar of murmurs sounded out, and Ms. Duli thought how much these parents were like their children. Kind and concerned but expecting the world to bend to their will.
A few back-and-forths later, they agreed a copy of the demands would be emailed to the parents, as well as posted on the school website. Someone else grabbed the megaphone and begged Ms. Duli to “bcc” everyone or at least for the other parents to not hit “reply all,” which, of course, many would. Parents stood around, dumbfounded that their kids could be in a building they couldn’t access. Some whose English skills weren’t great were thinking they hadn’t really understood this whole time the lock-in would be literal.
Arthur Pierce now grabbed the megaphone. “This is ludicrous!” he barked. “I pay too much money in tuition to abide this behavior. Release the children at once!” If Kenji’s mom were around, she might have placed a calming hand on his forearm, but she was away on business.
Ms. Duli once again explained the situation, the way she would go over the many reasons why World War I began when a class couldn’t wrap their minds around the subtleties of the situation, how wars began for complex reasons, not over one tidily summarized cause. Except now more parents wanted to echo Mr. Pierce’s sentiment and were either shouting out their agreement or phoning chauffeurs or significant others to go down to the hardware store or whatever establishment sold megaphones and buy them one.
* * *
Now that the student crowd had calmed and didn’t seem on the verge of attacking Marisa—Ms. Duli had commanded teachers to post up in the area—Peejay’s mind left his unexpected interference on Marisa’s behalf and returned to the party. He chewed the tip of his thumb. He wasn’t lamenting having wasted his time and efforts so far, all those hours spent planning for the perfect lock-in party (not quite as many hours as Marisa had spent, but many of them had happened at the same time. Marisa and Peejay had sat in their respective rooms in different neighborhoods, no TV on, phones resting facedown on their laps, used only intermittently to look up something crucial to the plan. Outside, similar sounds of the city welcoming in the night: honks from cars directed at scooters buzzing haphazardly around; steel