Lila Santiago was currently engaged in a staring contest with a plate of lukewarm spaghetti, and the spaghetti was winning.
“Lila, please,” her mother said, blowing past the kitchen island in a blur of floral perfume and nervous energy. “Eat. We leave in ten minutes.”
“I’m eating at a historical pace,” Lila said, poking a meatball. “The Romans ate lying down. It aided digestion.”
“We are not Romans, and we are late,” her mother said, stopping at the hallway mirror to smooth hair that didn’t need smoothing. It was the same brittle, overcorrected energy she got whenever the school was involved — like if she just looked put-together enough, nothing tonight could go wrong.
“It’s a PTA meeting, Mom, not a coronation.”
“School board open forum. And you’re coming because I’m not leaving you home in a thunderstorm.” Right on cue, thunder cracked against the kitchen window. The sky outside had gone a bruised, unnatural purple, the air thick with the kind of static weight that made the hair on Lila’s arms stand up.
“Shoes,” her mother said. “Now.”
Ten minutes later they were fighting the storm across the parking lot of Oak Creek Middle School, Lila’s yellow raincoat plastered to her sides, the gym looming ahead like a building bracing for a siege.
Inside smelled like floor wax and damp wool. Rows of folding chairs faced a table where three school board members sat looking like they’d rather be anywhere else.
“I need to find Mrs. Henderson about the arts budget,” her mom said, already scanning the crowd. “Go sit. Read. Do not correct anyone’s grammar.”
“No promises.”
Her mother kissed her forehead and vanished into the noise.
Lila found the bleachers and started climbing, her book on Pompeii tucked under one arm, hunting for a spot far from anyone who might want to discuss school funding.
She wasn’t the only kid who’d been dragged here.
Near the water fountain, a boy stood with his arms crossed like he was personally holding the wall up, jaw tight, ignoring a smaller kid who was trying to get a drink around him. Marcus Rivera — eighth grade, the kind of kid people stepped out of the way for without quite deciding to.
A few rows into the folding chairs, a girl sat bolt upright, a color-coded binder open on her lap, highlighting a worksheet with a precision that had stopped being about studying two highlighters ago. Her foot tapped an anxious, uneven rhythm against the floor that didn’t match anything she was reading. Emma Li, from history class.
In the back row of the bleachers, almost swallowed by shadow, a boy in a faded hoodie sat with his hood up, watching the room the way other people watched weather — like he was waiting to see which direction it would break. He wasn’t on his phone. He wasn’t reading. He was just watching.
Lila climbed toward a spot a few rows below him.
“Look. More refugees from the world’s dumbest meeting.”
She nearly dropped her book. Underneath the bleachers, cross-legged on the floor with a half-eaten bag of chips, sat Jack Mercer — the kid who’d once convinced a substitute teacher the school was built on an ancient burial ground, and had gotten two full days out of it.
“What are you doing under there?”
“Surviving,” Jack said, popping a chip in his mouth. “If they can’t see you, they can’t hand you a stack of budget pamphlets.”
Lila sat down on the bleacher above him instead of answering.
Five kids. Scattered across the same gym, six feet and a thousand miles apart from each other.
Outside, the thunder rolled in closer, and closer, and closer.