fire had been extinguished within Peejay, he still had the ability to light it in others. Pok Tran suggested they find more chains and chain themselves to the closet doors. Nouth Shapiro suggested that junior year be replaced with a year of cleaning up the oceans or volunteering at sustainable farms or protesting (Nouth was really not looking forward to junior year and its academic workload). Someone unironically suggested staging a walkout, drawing two groans, five prolonged stares and one smack on the back of the head.
Either way, it seemed like Mrs. Wu wasn’t paying much attention to them. Online poker again, Kenji guessed.
How are things out there? Kenji texted Lindsay, since it was what he always did when he was in Geometry, before the lock-in and after.
Her response came immediately. Rainy. Is it true? Marisa’s leg is broken?
Yup.
We got the email here, too. Everyone’s talking about what we can do from out here. What’s it like in there?
The same. Mostly people have terrible ideas, but I guess they’re just trying to help. He turned back to the window, trying to catch sight of Lindsay in the rain. There was a lot of activity already, and Kenji wondered if his father had heard the news yet, if he was laughing, thinking Marisa wasn’t going to get her way. The relief he’d felt from telling Celeste about his dad was still there, certainly, but every tidbit of conversation he overheard made him feel like sooner or later someone was going to confront him.
Lindsay texted again. Which demand are you trying to help with? I’m trying to get celebrities on social media to tweet the president of this detergent company.
Wait, which demand is that?
None, just felt like a fun thing to do.
Kenji chuckled. Ha.
The voices in the classroom kept rising, suddenly so urgent to come up with ways to help Marisa (“Why didn’t they do that from the start?” she’d ask later, they’d all ask themselves). Mrs. Wu barely looked away from her computer for more than a cursory glance. Outside, Lindsay tapped her phone against her leg, not wanting Kenji to fall back into silence.
He didn’t answer her, though, or get caught up in the fever of helping. He wanted Marisa to win, wanted Lokoloko Island to be safe of his dad’s destruction. But that wasn’t going to happen. So what else was there to do, as Lindsay had suggested, but laugh? He slipped his earphones out of his pocket and put on a podcast.
* * *
Nurse Hae had given Marisa a light dose of narcotic painkillers. She’d refused the full dose because she wanted to stay lucid to negotiate, but the morning had taken a lot out of her, and now she dozed, her legs propped up on the chairs that had been placed in front of her, her head resting on the door, cushioned by Amira’s folded-up hoodie.
To Amira, she looked almost peaceful, just the slightest furrowing to her brow. Yes, her hair was greasy, and her clothes wrinkled, a few pimples popping up at the corner of her chin and on her forehead. Even now, though, under all these circumstances, Amira’s body continued to rebel against her, craving not a run or a workout, but simply to reach out and brush Marisa’s cheek. Marisa’s strength astounded her.
* * *
Olaf Padilla, whose mom owned a hotel a few hours down the coast, called her and asked her to switch to tertiary sewage treatment, a phrase he didn’t understand whatsoever, but which Marisa had written on her list.
Maizey Krokic had her father, the ambassador from Croatia, wrapped around her finger. He instantly gave in to any and all of his daughter’s requests, from permission to spend the night with a friend to: “I need you to talk to your political friends back home. Get them to implement stricter controls on fertilizer runoff and incentivize techniques that use lower amounts of nitrogen, as well as more targeted application.” Of course, darling, he’d responded, understanding none of what she’d said but making sure his assistant had written it down. He cleared his schedule for the rest of the day so he could figure out how to do what his daughter asked.
Ludovico Rigo, who’d already taken it upon himself to compost all the school’s organic waste, having learned the nuances when he was younger on his island, posted a video online encouraging other kids around the world to do the same. His gaggle of freshmen immediately shared it with all their friends, and