away and closed her eyes, of course, but that didn’t always result in a complete lack of seeing. Sometimes Marisa said she was ready before she really was, as she slipped a silver glinting thing beneath her waistband. Sometimes Amira only tilted her head a little, so she could still see the movement and blur of flesh just beyond her line of sight. Guilt flooded through her in these instances, not just at the looking, but at the wanting to look. A girl should not, she thought to herself in her mother’s voice, still, but without much of the conviction.
“Seriously, girl,” Celeste added. “How much can one duffel bag really hold?”
Marisa frowned, looking down at her bag. “What do you mean? A regular amount, I feel.”
Anyway, their guesses were wrong. Marisa and her cronies, as Amira had known for a while, had hid the keys on them the entire time, fastened in hidden pockets they’d all spent an evening stitching into their underwear—the pairs they’d planned on wearing on lock-in night, as well as at least a week’s worth of changes.
Back to the unfurling plan:
One of them would leave the building through the basement to minimize the chance that others would be tempted to storm out when they saw the door cracking open. Once out, they’d go to the nearest Wi-Fi hotspot and post a message from Marisa’s social media accounts (which had gained tens of thousands of followers). 2:30 p.m. deadline. One way or another, it ends today. 24 demands to go.
“Wait,” Marisa protested, “I’m not opening the doors, though.”
“Yes, you are, Em,” Amira said, her hands still on Marisa’s back. “It’s going to end. If not today, then soon.”
“She’s right,” Celeste said. “This way you at least control how it ends. Inspire some more people into action, or scare them into it. Get a few more demands crossed off.”
“Yeah,” Kenji said, his voice breaking. He fumbled with his phone in his pocket, thinking: I should, I should, I should.
* * *
The ambiguousness of the post would surely send some into a panic, especially all those who agreed with Jordi that Marisa was nothing short of a terrorist, that protesting in this way was no more valid than protesting violently. Hell, many of them said, it was violent. It fed right into Jordi’s plan, though they didn’t know this.
Fine. Let their speculation bring more attention. Let them believe what they would about Marisa. In the end, what mattered were the demands, and how many of them fell.
“Which one of us goes?” Kenji asked.
“Whoever can get to the coffee shop down the street fastest,” Celeste said, which was a long, roundabout way to say Amira. They all listened to the rain, to their peers asking each other if the Wi-Fi had gone down for them, too.
“How do I get back in?” Amira asked. No one said anything, which was a long, roundabout way to say she wouldn’t be coming back in.
6
10:55AM
Jordi couldn’t decide if he wanted to stand over the banister and watch all his sad, sorry classmates mope about his stroke of genius, or if he wanted to drag a beanbag out from the library and plop it in front of Marisa to watch her unlock her damn chains. He wanted to see the look on her face, the look on all their faces, when they realized it was him who defeated her little plan, who’d granted them freedom. Too bad Peejay was hiding now, because his was the face Jordi most wanted to see give in to anger and disappointment. And maybe just a little admiration.
All these people would be free soon, not on Marisa Cuevas’s terms. And look at them. Were they thankful at all? Were they pleased? He hung around on the second floor waiting to see some joy or gratitude. He fiddled with his phone, wanting to brag about being behind the outage, but of course unable to because of it.
Then someone was beside him, and before he could turn to see who it was, the phone had been smacked out of his grasp, bouncing a few times on the floor, that terrifying noise when it landed facedown and you couldn’t see whether it was cracked. “Why?” Peejay yelled, suddenly inches from Jordi’s face. “Why the fuck did you have to get in the way? Why are you always like a cat weaving between people’s legs as they walk? Don’t you get that people would actually like you if you didn’t try so hard to