There were many questions swimming around in Peejay’s mind, and he didn’t know why, out of all the things he wanted to ask, he chose the one question he already knew the answer to. “Malik, what is that bucket for?”
2
7:55PM
The crowds finally gathered at four of the five main exits of the school building. It was not so much that they had noticed the people chained to the doors, or had a sense that they meant to disrupt the evening, but rather that they had places they wanted to go to, activities to participate in, friends to meet.
Marisa watched their faces as they approached, watched as they suddenly understood their joy was facing an obstacle.
Good, she thought.
When she felt the tug behind her of someone trying to make their way in, she knew it was time. She reached into her duffel bag and pulled out the megaphone.
Most people in the crowd assumed it was a shtick. Performance art of some sort. It wasn’t unusual for one of the artsy kids to stage their magnum opus this way. The teachers, especially, assumed it was just One of Those Lock-In Night Things. Marisa fired off a quick text to her cronies. Deliver the speech.
She turned on the megaphone, a sharp whine of feedback making everyone cringe. Marisa cleared her throat. “Attention students and faculty of CIS.”
“Go, Sea Cucumbers!” someone shouted from the back. The people who couldn’t yet tell this was going to ruin their night laughed.
Marisa continued. “We are all murderers, or at the very least accomplices to the atrocities committed to our oceans and our reefs.” Someone groaned. The faculty gave each other looks, trying to suss out what exactly was happening, and what their responsibilities were. At three of the four other exits, Marisa’s cronies read the same speech she had memorized.
“Until this school and its community members commit to take the following steps toward rescuing the reefs from the brink of extinction, especially the ones in our backyard, everyone within this building will remain inside.”
Now that it had been spelled out for them, a murmur started growing in the foyer of the high school building. Marisa continued to enumerate her thirty demands. Single-use plastic was to be immediately banned at CIS. Everyone present would sign a petition to ban it worldwide, and all CIS family members would be encouraged to sign, as well. All diesel boats were to switch to biodiesel. A radius of fifty meters around any coral reef was to be designated a Marine Protected Area. Construction of the planned resort on Lokoloko Island was to be canceled.
* * *
“I’m sorry, did you just say diesel boats?” Peejay Singh asked Malik, who had just reached that part of the speech on the electronic tablet from which he was reading.
“Um,” Malik said. Marisa had told them to ignore any hecklers or interruptions, but she had never said anything about how to handle Peejay. And here was Peejay Singh, asking Malik a direct question about the list of demands. “Um,” Malik said again, and his eyes flicked back down to the screen, trying to find his place.
But Peejay snapped his fingers and said, “Don’t keep reading. Are you holding this door hostage over diesel goddamn boats?”
Malik started to say no, then explained that it was much more than just boats, and on that note, it wasn’t just this door. It was every way in and out of the main building. He explained that they were following Marisa Cuevas’s lead in order to enact real change.
“Every way in and out?” Peejay barked, an unpleasant thought forming in his mind, the mild beginnings of anxiety.
Malik nodded.
“Name them,” Peejay said, certain that Marisa—albeit better at doors than her brother was—had overlooked something. Instead, frazzled by nerves, wanting this part to be over so he could relax against the door and read, Malik started naming his co-conspirators, figuring it wasn’t snitching when getting discovered was part of the point.
“No, sweetie, name the doors.”
Well, there was the gym.
* * *
Joy had gotten further along in her speech than Malik, since there were few people paying enough attention to interrupt her. Omar and Amira were easily dispatching their opponents in the basketball tournament, setting up what everyone watching was hoping to see, ten times if possible: a head-to-head encounter. Whoops and cheers emanated from the stands, drowning out Joy’s reading, so the three people actually gathered around her, interested in her whole situation, could no longer hear the demands.
* * *
Upstairs, Eli Mbele was feeling lucky to have been assigned the roof garden’s exit to the back staircase. Not only was it a beautiful night with stars overhead and just enough of a breeze coming through the vents high up in the glass enclosure, but it was also the location of the movie marathon. All over the tennis courts and picnic tables, people huddled together, requesting more popcorn from the teachers who were fulfilling their roles as servers in good spirits. The movie currently playing was About Time, one of Eli’s favorites, so he tried to read the speech in a considerate, quiet voice. Still, he was being shushed, and though he hated being shushed, and hated disrupting movies, too, he believed in the cause and read on.
* * *
Downstairs, chained to the secret basement entrance Peejay was hoping had been forgotten, since it was supposed to be unknown to students (everyone knew about it), Lolo Dufry was taking a nap. She figured that people would be down there soon enough. They would open the unassuming, unmarked door by the library, thinking Marisa had forgotten about the exit, and they would rush down the steps two at a time, believing they were about to escape. But Marisa was smarter than everyone at school, and Lolo was sure that if Marisa’s life had turned out differently and she decided to hold hostages at gunpoint rather than at chainpoint, she would actually get the money, the plane to freedom, whatever she desired.
In Lolo’s lap, the three keys that corresponded to the padlocks hanging off her like menacing Christmas ornaments rested in a pool of melting butter. Soon, the butter would attract some nearby ants (here was one now, already sniffing out the golden ambrosia and ready to report back to the colony) and Lolo would wish she had skipped the theatrics and just completed that step of the process, crowd or not.
* * *
Back in the green room, Peejay had granted Malik permission to finish reading. He was just about to reach the speech’s climactic (and climatic) conclusion. Malik removed the keys from the tin foil envelope at his side, each dripping with butter. His mouth went dry. He had hated this part of the plan all along, and had tried to talk Marisa out of it. “People don’t understand anything but melodrama,” she’d said. “We need to put on a show.”
“Dear God, please tell me you’re not about to do that,” Peejay said.