to the roof garden, though few had seen him go, and fewer had seen him arrive (just Eli, really, who’d tried to start a conversation with him, to no avail). The rest of their group had fallen quiet, seeing what the rest of them were only now learning.
Those touched by Peejay’s words had greater numbers. There was power in that. They all went to find windows, pushing chairs or desks right up to them so they could stand and speak into the slits, yelling out to their parents. Some begged and pleaded for their parents to help. To sign petitions, make phone calls, move investments away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources. Others didn’t beg, but demanded this of their parents, as if they were threatening to stay inside even if the doors opened, as if they had this whole time been on Marisa’s side. Never mind whether they’d been before. They were now.
* * *
Arthur Pierce approached a window, Asher struggling to keep up and protect him with the umbrella. Beyond the glare in the window (in which he could see himself, looking put-together enough, and his assistant less so, the crowd shuffling about behind him, police lights, all those signs, at least one of them with the name of his company), he could just barely make out his son’s face. He was standing next to another boy, older, darker-skinned, who held himself with the kind of presence Arthur often wished Kenji could hold.
There were others in the room, too, but Arthur couldn’t see them and, either way, wouldn’t have noticed their presence, struck as he was that he hadn’t seen his son in person in a week. They’d of course chatted on the phone, but while his wife came down to pass clothes and other belongings through this very window slit, Arthur himself hadn’t found the time. It hardly felt like seeing him through glass would be better than seeing him through a screen. “Son,” he said now, some of the bluster gone from his voice. A whole week had gone by without him being in the same room as his child, and he hadn’t quite noticed. He cleared his throat. “Kenji, I’m worried. What is this girl planning?”
* * *
Kenji turned to Peejay, knowing he had to speak, knowing he was going to, but needing the words, or at least the breath. Rather than telling him it was all just like improv or insisting he knew what to say, Peejay only gave him a little nod, as if he were granting him permission to speak what he already knew he was going to say. Kenji swallowed, then raised the megaphone. How was he supposed to do this?
His hand dropped again and he looked back, but instead of Peejay’s gaze, he looked farther behind. As he’d guessed, Celeste was there, too. She smiled her shy smile and he thought about the way she could laugh on the phone with her parents.
“Dad,” he said, comforted by the squint in his father’s eyes, which meant he couldn’t exactly see through the glass. “Have you heard about the demand to stop construction at your site on the coast?”
“Of course, it’s my company. You know that. Don’t be silly.”
“If you knew it would help get me out, why haven’t you scrapped it?”
Mr. Pierce scoffed, then tsked. Thoughts of the week gone by without Kenji faded. “Why are we talking about this? Answer my question. What is she planning?”
No acceptance of what Kenji was saying, no willingness to answer the question, to add to the conversation. Just rejection. For the first time he could remember, Kenji turned the word he so hated hearing from his father back onto him. “No. You answer mine first. If you knew, why hasn’t it been done yet?”
Arthur Pierce’s hand, the one holding the megaphone, dropped to his side. Rain splashed off the umbrella onto his fingers, scurrying down the megaphone. Had that really been Kenji’s voice?
* * *
Somewhere in the crowd, Rifta Wahid, who hadn’t yet spotted her daughter skirting around the edges of the field, trying to stay hidden, shook her head. “A boy should not speak back to his father like this,” she said to no one in particular.
* * *
Embarrassed by Kenji’s question and how long he’d been silent, Arthur Pierce spoke again. “Because multi-million-dollar companies do not yield to the cries of a petulant child terrorist,” he said, keeping his tone light and airy. “If she has some suggestions for us,