Peejay saw the title on the poster, Instructions to Exit, and rolled his eyes. He tapped Marisa on the forearm so she would stop fiddling with the tape. “I heard the spiel from your—” Peejay stopped, searching for an appropriate term “—adorable, subservient lunk.”
“Malik’s big, not a lunk,” Marisa cut in.
“So you knew who I meant,” he shot back. When Marisa started to protest, he waved her off. “Fine, then, adorable, subservient hunk. Whatever. Point is, I got the spiel. You’re fighting for something you believe in—go, Mother Earth, I’m with you.” For this next part he leaned in, aware that people were paying attention to them, having momentarily forgotten all about the joys of lock-in night. (Although most of them, still, were thinking this was part of the joy of it all. Drama and intrigue and excitement. What if their lock-in night extended far beyond regular hours? What luck! The longest lock-in night ever.) Among the eavesdroppers, Peejay knew, would be teachers, and discovery was not in his plans. “You know this kind of interferes with my—” he leaned in closer still “—party.”
“I know,” Marisa replied. She resisted the urge to add that she was sorry.
“I need a way to get a few boxes and a person inside. If that happens, you can count on me to rally people for your cause.” Peejay resisted the urge to say please.
The windows should have been an easy solution. In most buildings they would be. Open a window or break it if you had to, and taste freedom. But Marisa, like Peejay—like everyone in the high school after their first sweltering day when the sun shone in through the windows and heated the classrooms in a surprisingly efficient way the eco-friendly fans could do nothing about—knew the windows didn’t open.
Out of paranoia, perhaps, the school board had made sure they never did. They were afraid of kids climbing out from the top floors and falling, they were afraid of letting the air-conditioning out, they were afraid of paper airplanes being flown all day. Who knew why the board did the things they did.
The only openings in the windows were these slats, three inches long and one inch wide, near the top. They allowed only the hottest of the air to come out, and kept the classrooms about as ventilated as a coffin. Peejay would check to see how much could fit in through them, though he wasn’t about to hold his breath. God, he wished he could talk to Hamish.
Peejay’s offer was a tempting one for Marisa. When Peejay spoke, people listened. He had a strange pull on CIS. Like a charming hypnotist, Peejay would say, “Raise your hands up,” with a smile and CIS would reach for the sky. But he’d shown his cards too early: he needed the doors to open. She couldn’t have that.
* * *
“The doors are locked,” she said. She looked deep into Peejay’s dark brown eyes to show him his hypnosis would have no effect on her. They were beautiful eyes, and that wasn’t the only reason Marisa wondered if she was right to turn him down.
“Think about what you’re doing,” Peejay said, still whispering, less out of a desire to not be heard, more because he didn’t have the oxygen to growl. Hamish had gone through obstacles in throwing his party, but never sabotage. By a fellow student no less. Peejay felt betrayed, appalled.
If only he knew how long she had spent thinking of this, how thoroughly. Lately, it felt as if Marisa could think of nothing else, as if the lock-in was her mind’s natural resting place, and any moment when she wasn’t actively thinking of something else, it instinctively veered itself back home. A chuckle escaped her.
Shocked, Peejay took a step back. He wondered if she would react differently if she knew about Hamish, if he told her what, exactly, was at stake. But it felt wrong to dangle him as a bargaining chip, to use his bedridden state to inspire pity. So he kept quiet, not knowing what bargaining chips he held anymore.
The rest of the audience held their breaths, and one by one the realization dawned on them. Lock-in night no longer belonged to them. The chains, maybe, should have said that. But this was the moment they knew it wasn’t all some hoax, some performance piece. This was not a performance of a protest. This was the protest itself.
Clearly, the night belonged to this girl who could look Peejay Singh in the eyes and tell him no. Even if they couldn’t hear what had been said, they understood that much. And then when Peejay asked again, the girl had the stomach to laugh at him. If she could do that, what else did she have the stomach for? They didn’t want to find out.
* * *
Elsewhere, another audience held its breath for an entirely different reason. Omar Ng had advanced to the finals, and Amira Wahid was only one point away from finishing off her opponent. Normally, this would have elicited cheers. But they held their breaths because Amira was about to score that last basket.
She was in the air, clearly on her way to dunk.
Her defender, a member of the boys’ team named Ping Xe, still had his feet planted firmly on the ground. He wasn’t even looking up at Amira, but rather at the space Amira had occupied a moment before. She’d planted her left foot down and lifted off so quickly that for weeks later Ping would look at video footage taken from the crowds to make sure she hadn’t merely disappeared from sight and reappeared on the rim.
No one knew Amira could dunk. That was by her design, though she’d meant to show off the skill earlier in the competition. She wanted this exact breathlessness from the very start, just hadn’t found the opportunity. Forget building up to a climax; Amira wanted it known as soon as possible, long before the final whistle of the decathlon, she was the superior athlete.
The most popular sports at CIS were soccer and rugby, so they garnered the attention of the best athletes. Basketball was a distant third, so few of the players in CIS history had ever been capable of dunking. Basketball wasn’t a very popular sport locally, either, and the competition was likewise mediocre. Few dunks had ever been witnessed in that decades-old gymnasium. Certainly, no one had heard of a female dunker.
Which, of course, Amira knew. She knew the psychological impact that would ripple through her opponents as soon as she slammed the ball through. As momentous as it was for everyone else, it was now routine for Amira; it had been months since the act had lost its sheen of newness.
It was within her body’s capabilities, and since her body was entirely in her command, it now felt second nature to her. What she was still getting used to, though, were the angry images that flashed through her mind when she dunked.
Mostly, the thoughts were of her mother. It was as if every dunk represented an opportunity to scream at her mom. To yell, “Yes, girls can,” since Rifta Wahid was the person who most often told Amira they couldn’t. Not even that girls should not be athletic, muscular, competitive, but that by sheer fact of their chromosomes the ability was beyond their efforts. Her mother never yelled it, but the repetition was loud enough.