Now, with the minutes until the showcase ticking away, Kenji watched his fellow CISers (Go, Sea Cucumbers!) and felt a deep appreciation for every single one of them. The ones who hadn’t heard him as they passed and the ones who absolutely had heard him but didn’t pay attention alike. Those few who trickled in with full intent to watch the showcase as well as those who passed by in groups, who heard Kenji enthusiastically beckoning them inside, looked at one another with a shrug, then went to take a seat. Kenji loved every single one of them.
Here was Ludovico, fellow improv lover, who walked through the hallways not as if he had hordes of underclassmen gawking at him, but as if he was still exploring the tiny Sumatran island he’d spent six years growing up on. Ludo moved barefoot through the school, a beatific smile always on his face, like a handsome blond yogi blessing everyone in his path.
And here was Peejay Singh, speed-walking through the hallway past Kenji, headed toward the back staircase near the green room. His friend Diego Cuevas had just texted saying the door was locked, which it definitely should not have been. The back staircase was one of the keys to Peejay’s whole plan. It, along with the basement, was the entryway for the booze, the hundreds of earphones, the DJ equipment, the DJ himself.
* * *
For decades, the CIS lock-in night had traditionally come with a clandestine party organized by a single student. Each year, the previous year’s Partyer in Chief would pick out the one person they believed could best carry on the tradition with both secrecy and flair. If the transient nature of CIS’s student body proved this impossible, it was put to a school-wide vote. That had been the case this year, and Peejay Singh had won overwhelmingly versus fellow senior Jordi Marcos.
Every student knew about the party, and everyone was invited, though many chose not to go, either because they were busy or too frightened of the possibility of getting caught. This despite the fact that no lock-in party had ever been discovered, and no single student had ever faced consequences or questioning related to their nefarious absence. Oh, the faculty had heard rumblings, of course. And each year the teachers bet money on whether the party would be discovered, and by whom, and in which room (like a CIS-specific game of Clue). Usually, the gambling ring itself would be discovered, and the organizing staff member was always the only one to face ramifications. Higher-ups in the administration didn’t condone the partying, and wanted teacher efforts to focus on keeping the students from harming themselves and the school’s reputation, not on profiting off illicit activities.
Regardless, Peejay didn’t want to risk being the first host to get caught. Though he did want to be remembered. In fact, Peejay wanted to throw a party so great that every single CISer attended. He wanted even the teachers to attend, without them knowing it. He wanted the party to set the standard for future hosts, wanted it to be all people could talk about once the night was done.
He looked forward to the winks and high fives he would get at 6:00 a.m. when the doors opened and the buses and parents arrived to take the kids back home for the day. He fantasized about the text messages that would flood his phone throughout the weekend, if not the rest of the year. (Maybe the rest of his life? Peejay sometimes let these fantasies get carried away, imagining a time twenty years or so from the night when he would be contacted by people like Zaira Jacobson or Omar Ng, people who would clearly go on to live not just good lives but impressive ones, remarkable lives full of remarkable parties. “My partying days are coming to an end, and yours topped them all,” they would say, and Peejay would look back on his days of partying and be hard-pressed to find a night that compared to this one.)
Peejay had been waiting three years for his opportunity to host, ever since he was a freshman and his brother, Hamish, had been the Partyer in Chief. That year, Hamish had somehow managed to throw the party underwater.
He never revealed how he did it, not even to Peejay, but by the day of the party, a secret room had appeared beneath the koi pond at the campus’s main entrance. It must have been under cover of night and involved some hefty bribes to the school’s security guards, with dozens of workers needed to finish it all up from one school day to the next.
The large rocks beside the pond had been replaced with fake ones that could be easily moved, and which served to hide the trapdoor, which led into the room that allowed about twenty students at a time to party, and which those who knew about it still occasionally used to skip class and smoke cigarettes. The ceiling of the room, somehow, was the glass bottom of the pond itself, and the night of that party the moon had been full and the light refracted through the water, making the room softly shimmer, like something out of a dream.
Peejay had already been in awe of his brother, and he had ignored all other lock-in activities to stay at Hamish’s side all night. He hadn’t known someone could be so universally adored.
The joy that had lit up people’s faces when they came down the stairs and found the secret room, the booze and the music and the couch behind a curtain for couples to make out on. It had been a masterful party, no doubt, but by nature of the room’s size too exclusive. Hamish had said so himself, regretting the fact that no one wanted to leave the secret room to make space for others to experience the party, and because of that, not everyone had been able to attend.
Peejay had been dreaming of his chance to host well before Hamish’s accident a week earlier, which had turned Peejay’s brother into a rag doll lying in a hospital bed, his nights accompanied by the fitful snoring of people who loved him sleeping uncomfortably at his side, by the gentle whir of machinery keeping him alive, the occasional squeak of a nurse’s comfortable white sneakers going past in the hall, the rhythmic beeps of monitors.
Peejay had considered skipping the party and staying at his brother’s side. But it had been four straight days of just that, and Peejay’s parents insisted that he take a break, distract himself. Hamish, too, likely would have agreed. And after all of the planning he’d done, much of it with Hamish in mind, it would’ve been a waste not to attend the lock-in. This way, he’d be able to give Hamish a story when he woke up.
A locked door would not come between Peejay and this dream to throw a party that would honor what Hamish had done three years ago, and maybe even rise above it. A party Hamish would be proud of.
He expected this door thing to be no big deal. Diego, bless his pretty little heart, was a kind and beautiful boy who often had problems with doors. It’s not that Peejay thought Diego was dumb. Diego was Marisa Cuevas’s brother, so on genes alone it was unlikely that he’d come out completely inept. But Diego’s intelligence was not rooted in mechanical things.
However, what Peejay found was no small mechanical issue.
It was sophomore Malik Harris, who played on the school’s rugby team and was not small at all.
Malik, for some reason, had a heavy steel chain wrapped around his torso and through the double doors leading out to Peejay’s staircase. Three large padlocks hung off the chains, and though Peejay (rightly) guessed two of them were purely ornamental, it still gave the impression that Malik meant to stay put for a long while. Even more troublesome: next to Malik was a five-liter jug of water, something wrapped in tinfoil (presumably a sandwich), two books, assorted snacks, an electronic tablet, a phone charger and a bucket. Surrounding Malik and staring down at him were a gaggle of freshmen, that American girl from Peejay’s art class, Ludovico Rigo (swoon) and the improv team’s mentor and notoriously lenient English teacher, Mr. Gigs.