When I got down there, though, I walked right into the middle of another Makayla/Jaden fight. Or, rather, a Makayla meltdown. It took me a minute of listening to even figure out what they were talking about.

“Why the hell aren’t you out there more?” Makayla said. She looked just plain bad. Her jawline was sticking way out, all the softness gone from her neck and cheeks. Her eyelids were twitching. It was something I’d noticed before, but now it defined her sunken face.

“What are you talking about Makayla?” Jaden said, calm as ever.

“I mean it, Jaden. There are a million bikes in this place. You ride faster than anybody I’ve ever met, and you let other people go out and do the collecting of all the shit we need. That’s some sienty bullshit. That’s some entitled, sienty bullshit that you think staying in this building when you could be doing the slag that people out there are doing, but better, is okay.”

“What do you want from me, Makayla? I slag hard here. Everybody does.”

“I want you to do more, Jaden. I want you to do better. Get your shit together.”

He looked at her. He probably saw what I did, the hollow eyes, that she was clearly losing her shit as we watched. Since he was Jaden, he probably felt a lot worse about it than I did.

“Okay, Makayla,” he said. “I’ll get a bike. I’ll go out and gather things we need. Does that make you happy?”

“Yeah,” she said. She didn’t look happy. She looked like she was trying to think of something else to say, but couldn’t. Finally, she turned and walked away, back toward the staircase on the other side of the lobby. Jaden took a deep breath and turned around and began walking the other way. He passed by me without saying anything, even though I’d obviously seen it all.

I started to wonder if maybe Makayla needed help that we couldn’t give her. Maybe we needed to get her out of the building and to New Jersey. Not like, commit her or anything bullshit crazy like that, but get her somewhere where she could talk to someone. I wondered what had happened to her before we’d gotten there. It seemed like something bad, maybe. It wasn’t hard to imagine.

After I saw that fight, Jaden started going out in the mornings and collecting food and water. Since we had the in with the Red Cross truck and all the stores around us had gotten so depleted by people scavenging, anyway, it seemed more like he was doing it to appease Makayla than anything. It was kind of uncomfortable how much he still loved her. We all saw it, even if he was living with new people on a different floor. I guess I used to think that sort of thing was weak and weird, but since Lux disappeared I’ve been pretty weak and weird myself. It’s strange how much people can mean to you. I guess I had never really known before that night of the attack, you know? Before then, nobody meant much to me.