Chapters (19)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Part One Makayla—November
- Part Two Evann—November
- Part Three Jesse—November
- Part Four Makayla—December
- Part Five Evann—December
- Part Six Jesse—December
- Part Seven Makayla—January
- Part Eight Evann—January
- Part Nine Jesse—January
- Part Ten Makayla—March
- Part Eleven Evann—April
- Part Twelve Jesse—May
- Part Thirteen Makayla—May
- Part Fourteen Evann—May
- Part Fifteen Jesse—May
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
I slapped his hand away. “We need to have a meeting. The whole building. Get everyone in the lobby.”
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We gathered in the lobby, but as we stood there, people started to congregate outside our building. At first it was just the kind of people we saw every day, the stragglers, the ones left behind. Then the camera crews and the TV news stations showed up. After that, it was people like Kristen but worse—disaster tourists who didn’t want to help, just wanted to snap their pictures and go back to their comfortable lives. José joked that we should start charging them an entrance fee. Jesse said we should just jack them.
We relocated into a rear-facing apartment. There were about fifty of us, and it was like being at a really crowded party. José called for everyone’s attention, and reminded people of the hand signals he had introduced us to back when he got to the building.
“Times like these are when it’s most important to use them,” he said. “When we’re all worked up and there’s so many of us here. Makayla, you’ve been here longest and I think you have a lot to say, so do you want to start us off?”
“No,” I said. “Everyone knows how I feel.”
That kid Jesse started taking what they called “stack” of people who wanted to speak. They suggested that we do “progressive stack,” which they said meant people who generally don’t get to speak go first. Then they looked around and laughed.
“I mean, I guess that’s everyone. I guess none of us are exactly the ones behind the bullhorn.”
It broke the tension for a minute, but then José, who was first in line, got to jawing.
“It seems like one of two things has to happen,” he said, serious as fuck. “We stay and fight or we leave, go to the shelters in New Jersey, give up the building. I can’t say which is best. I personally want to fight. I’ve never had anything like this, and I don’t know if I ever will again, if any of us will. I think that’s worth fighting for.”
An older woman spoke up, out of turn. She was about my granny’s age, but was hunched over. “Some of us been fighting our whole lives,” she said.