when Marisa relayed the update via group text was a bathroom. A proper bathroom, with a locked door and a nearby sink, the tangy smell of disinfectant in the air, maybe a single sunflower and a candle for decoration. Oh, to sit and not worry about where her urine was going, to be able to flush it all away (or let it sit to save water, even) instead of scooping sawdust over the semiabsorbed puddle in her bucket. To stand at the sink and wash her hands, then leave and not dread the next time the urge would come.
Joy thought that everyone in the building must have had a similar fantasy, not of a bathroom, of course, but of one particular thing they’d been denied the past week (though she could only imagine every girl who’d gotten her period was dying for a private bathroom, despite all the menstrual products Marisa had brought into the school). For most people this was true—a bed, a friend’s company, one goddamn moment of solitude—but Omar’s mind seemed to land only on collecting plastic and on Peejay.
“Can I know what you’re doing with all of that?” Joy asked.
Omar grinned, scratched his patchy beard. “Not yet.”
“Then when?”
Omar shrugged. “We’ll see. I’m gonna go take another lap, though. You won’t believe how much still is out there.” He practically ran from the gym, the reused garbage bags trailing behind him like deployed parachutes.
* * *
It was true that, when he heard the rumblings of how things had changed, Omar’s mind didn’t turn toward anything outside the building. That life, the one he’d had before lock-in night, with basketball practice and homework, family time at dinner and on weekends, hangouts on Saturday afternoons at Ping Xe’s house playing video games, Sunday walks with Joy and their dog, Rye Bread, it all seemed left behind. What there was now was sweeping for plastic, and checking on Peejay. Being near him, in case whatever was ailing him needed an ear, a shoulder, whatever Omar could provide.
Ever since he’d told Joy the truth, an act he thought might unburden him from his crush, he’d been wholeheartedly consumed, as if speaking it out loud had somehow made his feelings for Peejay more real, more cemented within him. The fact that Peejay was now part of Marisa’s crew only made him feel justified in the intensity of his feelings. Omar couldn’t fathom leaving this building and not having Peejay nearby, couldn’t fathom his life the way it used to be—several water or sports drink bottles before practice, not knowing if there were phosphates in the detergent his mom used.
Now he came down the stairs and entered the foyer, thinking classes must be going on, and glad to see Peejay not hidden beneath his pashmina.
* * *
Sensing eyes on him, Peejay turned and looked at Omar. He’d seen him through the pashmina so many times now, always with those empty garbage bags trailing behind him like a wedding dress. Peejay assumed Omar was looking at Marisa, or at Amira, maybe. He loved a good enemies-secretly-in-love-with-each-other storyline, and wondered how the decathlon would’ve turned out if the lock-in hadn’t gone the way it did.
* * *
Yes, Omar wanted everything Marisa did now. Wanted all those demands met because Joy did, too. But he didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to get any farther from Peejay Singh. And he had no idea how to approach Peejay, no idea how to close the space between them. He couldn’t even find a way to ask him about Hamish, if he was okay, if that had something to do with his descent into the pashmina. So he didn’t try to help in any other way than to be near, to collect the plastic at CIS and ensure it wouldn’t end up floating in the Pacific.
* * *
Kenji watched the rain come down at a slant against the window, beautiful long streaks that muddied the image of the soccer field beyond. It was funny how much like a normal day of class it could feel if he just listened to the rain and sat at his desk letting his mind wander.
They were supposed to be doing a geometry worksheet, but geometry was such a drag; the proofs and steps felt so rigid and yet so slippery to understand, like instructions on how to build something in a language he didn’t speak.
That, or everyone was rereading Peejay’s email, grouping together to discuss it, whispering about what they could do. Whatever