On the news, they were playing and replaying the footage of what looked like an explosion recorded on somebody’s phone. They were showing downtown Manhattan, where the water had surged past the half-built Hesco bastions and was tossing cars around like toys. Pieces of buildings floated by in the dark water, and at the edge of the screen we saw what looked like a lifeless body floating there.

I turned the TV off.

“What are we going to do?” Jaden asked. He wasn’t biting his nails like I’d been, but he looked kind of like a little boy in trouble, his head hanging down from his hunched neck and his hands clasped in front of him. My moment of fear was long from over, but I knew I couldn’t let that show.

“We’re going to sit here and make it through the night. In the morning, when the rain stops, we’re going to get out of here. We’ll go to the evacuation center where they took all the nursing-home patients and old people. But for now, we’re going to sit right goddamn here and pretend we didn’t see any of that shit outside.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

“We’re going to sit here and drink beer and talk.”

Jaden stood up slowly and went to the refrigerator. He opened the door, and it was even darker inside the fridge than it was in the kitchen. He took us out two beers and brought them back to the living room.

“All right,” he said. “I’m always asking questions, and you’re always making up reasons not to answer them. So why don’t you ask me a question?”

“Tell me a story,” I said.

“What do you want to hear, ‘The Three Little Pigs?’”

“No. Just say anything. Tell me about the first time you went to the Museum of Natural History, or had sex, or did something you regretted. Just talk to me, for fuck’s sake.”

“Okay, something I regretted,” he said. “When I was fourteen, all of my friends were going out to do move one night, and I wanted to go with them. But I didn’t have any money. It was before I started slagging on my bike. And I didn’t know where to get any, so I stole a hundred dollars from my mom’s purse. And I went out and split my face off and danced like an idiot, and we went to some party in some shitty old warehouse down by the river, and I thought it was the best night of my life for about ten hours. And then, the next day, the last day of the month, I saw my mom empty out a jar of pennies and start rolling them up into those little paper sleeves. She was counting up change so she’d be able to make our rent, part of which I had gone and shoveled up my fucking nose. She didn’t even say anything to me, even though she must have known I’d taken the money. She just sat there, real quiet, and rolled those pennies and nickels. And that’s just about the most ’trosh I’ve ever felt in my life.”