to come home, that it would all be over soon, that they were silly and unreasonable. So many parents had been there on the soccer field the morning after lock-in, still begging their kids to leave, finally going to the store to buy the tents, sleeping there with their children, even, trying to convince them hour after hour that there was nothing to stick around for) and gave each other looks that said, I don’t know anything, do you?
The early arrivals who’d come on the buses before The Snooze ran to the high school building, their umbrellas turning inside out in the wind. The middle school kids raced over, too, as did all those poor souls who’d been locked out a week ago, and who since that day had felt strangely absent in the world, as if they were watching a movie of their lives instead of actually living it. They gathered by the windows, something they’d tired of quickly the first day back, since there didn’t seemed to be anything of note going on, just kids sitting and wandering the halls. They’d kept doing it in the days since, of course, but it’d been boring. No one had screamed before. The elementary children had stayed away entirely, not quite understanding what was going on in that building, terrified of it. The cameras, the reporters, the world’s prying eyes, too, had turned away a couple of days ago.
The story had hooked the public right away, especially when Zaira published her piece that first Friday morning after the lock-in, when the parents were all still gathered in their evening wear, their voices gone hoarse from screaming. Major media outlets syndicated the story, and around the world people tuned in, CIS on everyone’s lips. The world waited for a dramatic conclusion—police storming in, a major environmental revolution, the parents rioting? Who knew how it would turn out. But the days went by and nothing happened—the school changed its motto to reflect its newly adapted environmental curriculum, big whoop—and people turned their attention elsewhere.
Local stations and some major international outlets still sent an affiliate junior reporter to update the story. And of course, scientists, who had much longer attention spans, continued to be riveted, rooting for Marisa and knowing that to wait a week, in the long stretch of time, was a brief snap of the fingers. Not such a big deal to wait for actual change.
Soon, like Lindsay and the other free CISers, the reporters would be standing back in the shrubs surrounding the building, pressing their faces against the glass to peer in and see what was causing those screams.
* * *
As Marisa breathed through her pain, wavering on the edge of consciousness, listening to Dov’s incessant and dramatic screams, she thought about her list. Three demands had been met in total. She’d received so many emails from environmentalists commending her on the school’s single-use plastic ban, or the petition to extend that ban beyond the school’s perimeters, which had by now been signed by most students and parents (Jordi Marcos and his father were two notable holdouts), on turning the world’s eyes to the cause. However briefly, their attention mattered.
But there was still so much left to do. She still had to save Lokoloko. Marisa let her body go limp against her chains, which were still taut, even if she sometimes managed to forget they were there at all (other times they were all she could focus on, as if all her nerve endings other than those in contact with the chains had gone numb). She put all her weight on her stool, not knowing if she should let her leg hang limp or if she should strain herself by raising it.
Amira wasn’t around to tell her what was best. None of the Protectors were around actually, save for Peejay, who couldn’t possibly still be sleeping through the noise, but who hadn’t stirred at all.
* * *
The crowd, at first, rushed toward Dov, wondering how they could help, what had gone wrong, no one having seen the way he’d intentionally swung off the rope, or his relatively safe (for him) landing. Eventually his screaming stopped, though, and they saw Marisa.
They had no idea what to do. Give her room to breathe? Pop the leg back into place? Step forward and offer a reassuring hand on her chained shoulder? Anything they could think of felt equally useless, ridiculous. So they stood on the edge, alternately looking at her and turning away.