remembered classes were about to start. They shuffled away to their rooms, calling out halfheartedly for their students to follow. It’d felt like madness when the board had told them to continue to hold classes during the extended lock-in, and this was even more absurd. Few had actually come, and those who had only did so out of boredom. Mostly, the teachers worked on lesson plans to post online, for those students on the outside, who had never been timelier with their work.
That morning, though, the students followed their teachers. They wanted to sit, take their mind off this disappointment, despite how brief their hope had been. They’d known Marisa was committed, they’d known she was strong. They hadn’t known just how much.
“We’re going to be in here forever, aren’t we?” Guillem Kim said to no one in particular, though his voice resounded in the stairwell. No one cared to answer him, not even Jordi Marcos, whose plan had somehow failed. He briefly considered running at Marisa full force, breaking her other leg, screaming at her to produce the key. The rage refused to move his legs, though, and he ended up getting caught up in the crowd shuffling away, wondering how he’d explain to his dad what had just happened.
The students filed into their classes, sat at their usual pre-lock-in spots. They looked out the rain-streaked window blankly, like they had so many times throughout the year out of mere morning fogginess, out of the vague dread of being at school yet again. They couldn’t see the outline of the city, nor the ocean off in the distance. Everything was a blurry smear of gray. The teachers shuffled through their papers, clicked around their computers, trying to find the lesson plan they’d prepared out of sheer habit.
* * *
The only ones remaining in the foyer were Nurse Hae and Marisa’s Protectors, or at least the core group.
They, too, felt the atmosphere’s leaden shift. No one said a word, though their eyes kept flicking from one to the other and then to the floor, to Marisa, who was taking measured breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth, her teeth gritted as if this was just another cramp that would soon pass. Nurse Hae had immobilized the leg, and placed a few stools in a row so Marisa could have some support for it, but it was an imperfect setup, and every movement pained her. The three sienna pills she’d been granted might as well have been candy.
* * *
Peejay watched through the pashmina. For some reason, the tension almost made him want to smile. Almost. Maybe it was because it had nothing to do with Hamish. Or maybe it was because Hamish would smile at this unlikely group being all tense together.
That had been the best part of lock-in night for Peejay. Remembering the real reason he’d been so driven to throw the party. It hadn’t been for the glory, hadn’t been to outdo his brother. It had been to provide joy to others, the way Hamish had. To honor him that way.
But Hamish was gone now.
Peejay turned his attention back to the tension in the air.
* * *
Kenji played with his shoelaces, raising his eyes less than anyone else, distracting himself by wondering why he was even bothering to wear shoes. He kept wanting to make jokes, if only to forget the heaviness, but his inability to think of anything seemed to only add to it. He wished he hadn’t pushed through the crowd and seen Marisa’s leg. It was impossible to “Yes, and...” the unnatural protrusion, impossible to carry the story forward. It ended thoughts, that leg. A damn shame it hadn’t ended the lock-in and absolved him of the talk with his dad.
* * *
Celeste was chewing her bottom lip, hugging a knee close to her. Marisa stared resolutely across the room, her chin up, daring someone to speak, to say she was wrong.
It was Amira who broke the ten-minute silence. “You have to go, Em.”
Amazing when a nickname for someone else first slipped past your lips. Amira had been thinking of Marisa as Em for days now, and though she didn’t know why this was the moment she chose to give in to the urge to say it, it felt lovely leaving her lips. A touch, of sorts.
“I’m not gonna die or anything,” Marisa said. It was a wonder she had it in her to speak so resolutely. Anyone else would be whimpering