It was Ms. Duli alone whose suspicions were roused. All of this in succession—the fall, the lights, everyone standing around as if it’d been previously agreed upon, it was too much to be coincidental. Something was afoot. She put her phone, as useless as everyone else’s, in her back pocket and took a lap around the building, trying to suss out if the kids knew why the power was out, and what, exactly, it had to do with Marisa.
* * *
It was strange for the Protectors now that Amira had gone. They couldn’t even pretend she was simply in the gym. The air felt too different. A door had opened, Amira had stepped out and the door had closed again.
Kenji and Celeste hadn’t seen this happen, but they knew it had, as deeply and unquestioningly as they knew their birthdays. Now it was clear: they would leave. This wasn’t how the rest of their lives would go. They would return home.
“Do you get along with your parents?” Kenji asked. He and Celeste were closer to the library, sitting by some chargers under the guise of checking to see if the power had returned, though they were really just giving Marisa some space. Celeste was resting her chin on her knee, refreshing her phone. For a moment she was going to answer Kenji without much thought, just an “Of course” or a “Sure.” But then, remembering his confession, and weighing it against the relationship she had with her parents, she decided to be more candid.
“I think they’re actually my best friends.” Even after all this time with him, she expected Kenji to laugh at her. Hearts were so irrationally sensitive, so insecure.
“That would be so cool,” Kenji said. “Friends with money and cars and access to booze.”
Celeste snorted. “I mean, to be fair, they’re kind of my only friends.”
“Not anymore,” Kenji said, so casually, as if he’d known all this time they’d end up here. He took his glasses off and cleaned them on the hem of his shirt, though they were still smudged when he put them back on. Celeste looked at the ground, hiding her smile.
“Even if that were the case—” now Kenji made a pointed effort to meet her eyes “—and it’s not, I’d still prefer that to what I have with my parents.”
“They’re not good at improv, are they?”
Kenji instantly became animated, his eyebrows raised high above his glasses’ frames. “Oh my God, they don’t do it at all. They don’t even improvise their coffee orders.” He thought for a second and corrected himself. “Okay, that doesn’t make them the worst—people have much harder situations than I do. But it’s not exactly fulfilling to have parents that don’t want me to be me. Which I get, to an extent. People have expectations, especially for their kids. I’m sure if you spend a good portion of your life dreaming your kid is going to turn out one way, it feels shitty when they end up being someone wholly different. But is that my fault?”
“It is absolutely your fault, Kenji. Stop being silly.”
Kenji knew she was joking, but he sighed and hugged his knees to his chest, looking at the scene around him. A dozen or so people sat around the foyer, looking helplessly at their phones. A few others walked around aimlessly, leaving and entering rooms. In her chains, Marisa looked lost in thought again, every now and then twisting her body to try to find some sort of relief. Kenji couldn’t help but feel time was ticking away too quickly, and he could do nothing to stop it, or even make it pass meaningfully. Even improv, if it came to him now of all times, could do nothing. The one thing he could have done to at least be a good friend to Marisa—call his father—he hadn’t.
7
11:58AM
The parents were back, the media was outside and the world had heard Marisa’s promise/threat. The students felt as if they were back at lock-in night.
The buzz in the air. The hands clasped together, the hope, the fear it would be taken away from them (not the night itself anymore, but Marisa’s protest, which now felt just as much theirs as hers). Instead of itineraries and schedules, they looked at Marisa’s demands and wondered if there was a way they could rearrange time and space and their previous efforts in order to accomplish every single one.
As the bell rang for fourth period, the parents arrived