would wake up starving and angry, weak from the sugar and alcohol wreaking havoc on his empty stomach, sad for Peejay. The drinks led him to confessing his crush to Lolo, as well, and in the course of the night, Lolo told Omar about Hamish, how much he meant to Peejay, and his current condition.
For now, though, he drank pleasantly, thrilled to have his sister there. They had learned something new about the other and were now championing the other sibling’s ability to save the world’s reefs and to marry Peejay, respectively.
Omar rolled his eyes. “Who said anything about marrying?” Though he agreed with his words here, his stomach fluttered at the association. Joy and Lolo giggled.
One would think the gym would be filled with laughter just based on that little corner of it. It was built to echo crowds cheering, after all, and no one ever thought to whisper in a gym. But even with the two or three dozen kids using it as their dance floor—here was Zaira Jacobson, her computer down and charging for the time being, her eyes closed and head swaying to the music, taking mental notes of the party’s mood, not for the article she meant to post in the morning, but for herself—or their general party room, their make-out room, Mrs. Wu passed by the gym and sensed nothing out of the ordinary. A bunch of bored teens with unspent energy. She yawned, thinking maybe she should just go back to the poker game in the teacher’s lounge.
* * *
This was how it went until sunrise. The adults went on trying to figure out the demands and how to meet them. Most required phone calls to businesses, a lot of which weren’t open yet. Like with so many aspects of their students’ lives, the grown-ups missed what was really going on, assuming they knew exactly what it was: teenage restlessness. The adults didn’t forget their circumstances, or their hunger, but they didn’t feel the full weight of either.
The kids drank. They danced in the hallways. They hid their joy, which only heightened it. They flirted in the foyer in plain view of everyone but no one noticed because they were busy dancing or flirting themselves with the alluring redhead from class. Could it be? Was this the day something happened to elevate their relationship with this most enticing of classmates? Yes. No room for doubts anymore, no reason to wonder if lock-in night magic remained. The redhead unmistakably moved closer, pressing a knee against theirs. What more could they want?
In hidden nooks around the school, couples professed their love, discovered their love, set the foundations for a love that might come later. Friends who’d fought before lock-in night put their troubles behind, mended the bruises between them with a quick albeit profound apology, the forgiveness just as easy and true as the plea for it. Then the friends didn’t lose sight of each other the rest of the night, sharing in the joys together.
They felt as if the whole world was made for them, not just theoretically, but in practice. This night was literally just for them. They forgot about their friends on the outside, forgot about all that was out of reach, enthralled like Diego Cuevas usually was only with what was in front of them.
Diego himself, as might be expected, was in some back corner of the soccer field, hidden in the shadows, dancing to the music, at the very edge of the Bluetooth signal’s capabilities. Unlike those inside CIS, Diego did not need to contain himself.
14
6:00AM
At 6:00 a.m. the first signs of sunrise colored the sky over the rooftop. Nadia, who loved sunrises and was constantly aware of when dawn broke, even if she didn’t always get up to watch, put the music on autopilot—a playlist of sweeping, cinematographic droning songs that perfectly suited the kind of sunrise you stayed up to watch (as opposed to the kind you woke up for, which called for quiet, gentle, pretty music). She went up to the roof garden, which had already drawn in a few more partyers ready to wind down the night.
The first few yawns broke out in the crowd just as golden orange bursts of color appeared on the scattered clouds. Kids gathered by the glass enclosure, looking out at the city coming alive in the morning light. Some laid down on the ground or on blankets leftover from the movie marathon, exhausted from hours of nonstop dancing. Subdued though