1 I couldn’t sleep at night. Things were real dissat, all the time. I walked through sunlight hours in a daze, trying to figure out what was real, what was upswing, what was distorted by my insomnia. People seemed to give each other looks that meant something I couldn’t decipher—but how do you tell what a look means anyway? Or if it’s even real? It was so hard to figure out what was real and what was in my head.

When I did sleep, which wasn’t often, I had nightmares about the boat and Peter. Or about Jaden leaving the building or checking like my parents had. He was gone now, I knew that, and there was nothing I could do to help how angry I was at him. I yelled at him all the time. But what I really wanted to say all those times I was yelling was come back, come back. I wanted back my friend from the neighborhood, wanted back the guy who had made me feel safe and calm again after all the shit that went down on my way to Gravesend. But I’d hoddered it all up, I’d hoddered everything up.

Even Alejandro started backing away from me. He still stayed in our apartment, but he constantly asked where Jaden was, and ran to him when he saw him. It just felt like everything was falling apart.

Then came the morning where Ale came into my room late at night. I wasn’t sleeping, I was awake reading one of the zines I’d gotten from José, a photocopy of a real old book called The Anarchist Cookbook or some stupid shit like that. It was about all I could focus on. Ale came bursting into the room without knocking. He had smears all over him, I could see it even in the dark. They were on his face and hands and clothes. I lit the candle next to my bed and pulled him closer. I could see that the smears were paint.

“Where the hell did you get those all over you?” I asked. José and Sebastian, who could communicate with him in Spanish, had started teaching him English, too. He didn’t speak it so well yet, but he understood what I was saying.

“Outside!” he said. He started pulling on my hand.

I walked with him down the dark stairs, carrying my candle. Flashes of shadow leapt all around us, and I was even more on edge than usual. He pulled my hand down the stairs, through the lobby, out into the strange, surreal night.

I stood across the street and looked up at the building in terror.