“So one of us goes up there,”I said. “And we find out for sure.”

“And what if we find out she did?” Jaden said. “What if we find out she stole all that stuff ? You wanna kick her out, Makayla?”

“I’ll do what it takes,” I said.

“Aren’t we all here stealing?” Jaden said. He came walked down the hall, closer to me.

“We’re not stealing from each other!” I shouted. “We’re just picking up the pieces other people dropped. She stole from all of us!”

“What about her kids, Makayla?” Jaden said. He was still walking closer to me. The room grew silent as he came up in front of me. Everybody looked at each other for a long time. I looked at Jaden. His breath was coming in jagged; he was upset like I hadn’t seen him before. “You want to throw them out in the street? This kind of street where people are roaming around killing each other every day? Where there’s no place else for them to go?”

We all stayed really quiet for a minute. My heart was pounding and I didn’t know what to say. Finally, I said, “The kids have to go, too.”

Jaden stared at me, like he had been since that day when I told him how I felt about Jesse, José, and Sebastian. He shook his head from side to side once, twice, real slow.

“When did you become so heartless?” he asked me.

“The minute she decided she was more important than the rest of us,” I said.

Jaden looked away from me, disgust on his face. “We’re in this together,” he said. “All of us.”

“That,” I said, “is my motherfucking point.”

The guards were standing over by the door. I motioned to them.

“Come on with me,” I said. “The minute I find that extra food and water, I want her out of here. I’ll need your help.”

The people guarding the front door came toward me cautiously. A few people’s faces in the lobby had shifted to looks of confusion and hesitation.

“Makayla,” Jaden said. The disgust on his face was gone, replaced by the kind, sensitive person I had known all my life. A person who had sympathy for both Drusilla and me. I loved him so much right then. But I knew he was wrong. So I pushed that love somewhere away, somewhere I push all the things in my head that don’t keep me moving forward. “Don’t do this.”

“I have to,” I said softly.

He shook his head again from side to side. “When you get back up to our apartment, I’ll be gone. I’m going to stay in an empty one. I don’t think things are working out between us.”