then glanced around the foyer at all the faces she’d made so miserable. Behind her, the list of demands remained uncrossed save for one. Mr. Gigs hadn’t come around in half an hour, which meant either the board was working on the next demand or they were patting themselves on the back and waiting for her to yield. She felt for a moment like none of it was worth it, like this had been some temporary insanity and she should end it right away. Lokoloko was going to fall apart in front of her eyes.
Then she remembered her call with her mom, and the sight of reefs in all their true splendor, and she shrugged. “No reason for me to do that. Truth be told I’ve been having fun, too.” She slipped the earphones in, undid her ponytail so her curly hair fell over her ears. Everyone had been watching the exchange. Even those still irate at Marisa, not wanting to concede anything to her, not even an acknowledgment of the power she held over them, understood the gesture for what it was: the emperor’s thumbs-up. The party would live.
Peejay smiled at her and gave a slight bow. Then he looked across the room at Nadia and nodded. She moved her finger across the keyboard, and CIS exploded with music.
* * *
It remained perfectly quiet, of course. Or, at least, as quiet as it normally was in the groggy weekday morning preamble before classes started. There was chattering and some laughter. Maybe a little more laughter than could normally be heard on a school day, but that could easily be attributed to late-night looniness, to sleep deprivation and the madness of their circumstances. Footsteps still echoed in the hallways, the clang of a locker opening and closing still resounded on the opposite end of the building. If a teacher focused enough, they could hear the water fountains churning into action, liquid bubbling through the pipes. Whenever they did happen to catch the sound, though, the teachers would shudder with the thought of those unchanged filters. Maybe we should tell them, some teachers thought, but then another teacher would read their minds and say out loud, “Let’s not give her another battle to fight. Some other time.”
There began a general shuffling-about. People moving from one room to another. The adults were surprised it hadn’t started earlier. The kids were just stretching their legs, loosening their stiff joints. Of course they were. The teachers themselves were starting to feel some cabin fever, a weariness in their muscles from all the inactivity. They saw lines of students gather at water fountains and they checked their reusable water bottles and saw they were empty. They started to gather in the teacher’s lounge, hiding from the students, hiding from Ms. Duli and Master Declan, who kept assigning them little tasks they didn’t know how to achieve. Someone made a fresh pot of coffee, laugh-complaining about the call they’d been told to make to a manufacturing plant that made the rubber bands the school used in order to check their environmental qualification. Mrs. Wu brought up the possibility of a party, wiping her lips after a long drink of water. No way, the other teachers said, standing in the doorway and looking out at the second-floor hall, and below into the foyer. Sure, there was some more movement than before. But a party? Please. There wasn’t even any food in the building, how would there be booze?
You really think there’s no food in the building? those who’d eaten only a sad PB&J asked. The conversation tilted in that direction, leaving the party behind.
* * *
For the next few hours, at least, everything was fine. More than that; it was special. After all that time hoping, mourning, raging, pleading, waiting—the waiting may have been the worst of it, waiting for something good to happen, waiting for the night to be over—here it came, a morsel of good luck, a helping of joy. Not that everything was forgotten, nor that they suddenly believed themselves to be free. But some amount of fun amid all of this; what a gift to receive.
The music! How had they forgotten how good music was. It had only been a handful of hours, but it felt like months.
They danced. Obviously they couldn’t dance the usual way, pressed together, letting their bodies do whatever they pleased, at least not just anywhere. This sort of dancing still happened in unsupervised corners of the library, beneath