bucket of water. “Whatever,” Marisa said. “So I’m feeling a little defeated, what of it.”
“Well, my problem with your defeat lies mostly in the timing. We’re in the final stretch here.” He walked over to the nearby window, and if there were blinds to push apart with two fingers the way they did in movies, he would’ve done exactly that. Since there weren’t, though, he just looked out. “It’s going to end soon. At which point I’ll be happy to make room for you beneath my pashmina and we can both tailspin into the darkest places our minds will go. We’ll grieve together. But to do so now would be silly, and not in the way the esteemed Mr. Pierce says it, but a true waste of your herculean efforts to save the world.” Peejay stepped toward Marisa.
All around, students who’d just been trying to glance outside or refresh their phones were tuning into Peejay’s speech. He’s back, they thought, feeling the old familiar stirrings of the spell he’d cast over them.
Peejay brushed Marisa’s hair out of her eyes. “You and the others have fed me over the past week. You’ve given me reassuring touches that kept me tethered to my sanity and helped me avoid the worst of my grief.” Grief? Those who’d heard shared looks, wondering what he was referring to. The few who knew about Hamish’s accident felt a tightness clawing at their chest. “You kept me inside your circle. You’ve kept me from sinking.” He looked at Omar again, so he’d know Peejay included him in this. “I’m not going to let you sink now.”
Maya Klutzheisen and Michael Obonte gave each other a look. Shit, did they love Peejay now, too?
Then Peejay turned to Kenji. “Grab Marisa’s megaphone out of that Mary Poppins bag. Let’s talk to your father.”
Again, Kenji reached to find a joke to distract Peejay, and the dozens of people whose attention had turned toward him. “Do I have to?” he said, but he was already shuffling over to Marisa.
“You don’t have to do anything, party-saver. But if you’d rather sit here and chat, then I’ll still go yell at him, and you’ll have to spend the rest of your life knowing you didn’t do all you could to slow the planet’s death. You’ll have to sleep every night knowing Marisa chained herself to a door and kept it shut while she slowly bled to death and you did nothing.”
“I’m not bleeding,” Marisa interjected.
“You’ll have to explain to your children when they have food shortages and are living through extreme weather phenomenons—”
Kenji raised the megaphone to his lips, “Coming, Father!”
Peejay smiled and gave Marisa a wink. As he started to follow Kenji toward the nearest classroom, he looked at the other people standing near, by now at least half of those locked in. “Let’s get to it, my darling Sea Cucumbers.”
* * *
What exactly Peejay had meant was ambiguous. Some believed it was just one of those snappy remarks he was known for, that he was announcing in his patented style Kenji’s talk with his father. Others believed he’d just bound the school in their common goal.
Sure, they’d been trying with the demands for a few hours before the power went out. Some longer than that. But, like Marisa, they’d been feeling useless, like doomsday was too close for them to do anything about it. In the end, what would it really matter? The doors would open, or the planet would die.
That throwaway phrase, though, that casual parting remark, struck much deeper than even Peejay had intended. Let’s get to it. By which he’d meant: let’s talk to our parents, let’s shout out the windows at the reporters, do what we can to meet these demands. His classmates, though, felt the words crashing over them, big sweeping waves of emotion like few they’d felt before. The words were about the world itself, and that its saving was in their hands. And they could do something. Right now. They could raise their voices to their literal and figurative loudest.
Although that wasn’t exactly right. The power was in others’ hands, like Kenji’s father’s, like the board’s, and they had to rip it from them. That, at least, was in their power. It wasn’t just one or two who wanted to. It was all of them. Nearly all, anyway. If they’d been moved to action by Peejay’s email earlier that morning, now they felt the urgency full-on. Let’s get to it.