Around us, the argument raged on. The heat rose and rose.

“Granny, I just think . . . I can’t let you stay. You’re the only one I have left. I have to know you’re okay. Please. Please go to the shelter before things get bad here.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. She could feel me shaking. For a minute, she softened. I had never seen her that way before, and suddenly she looked old, so old.

“Will you come with me?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I stay here, Granny. I’ll probably die here.”

The voices around us reached a crescendo, and then I heard José’s cut through all of them.

“We don’t all have to stay. If you don’t want to stay, now’s the time to leave. Just go and be done with it. The rest of us will stay here and fight.”

3 When we made it back to the lobby, there was a line of cob rollers outside the door. One of them had a bullhorn and was yelling through it. They knew we were in there, they said, making it sound like we were robbing a bank. If we came out calmly, they would help us to the shelters. About half of us had decided to leave.

Mo was among them. So was my granny.

“I’m never going to see you again,” I said, hugging her in the lobby. I felt so sure. It had been my idea, and I still wanted her to go. But this moment was too much.

“You don’t know forever,” she said, and at first she said it harshly, like I was a numptie for even saying it. Then her voice softened. “You don’t know forever, Makayla.”

“I just want it all to work out,” I said. Tears were starting to leak out of my eyes.

“You don’t let them take it, Makayla,” she said. “You, you haven’t been fighting as long as some of us. So stay and fight. And don’t you let them take away what you made.”

People were lining up at the door, saying their goodbyes to people they had lived with, worked with, built their lives around. But in the end, those things were not enough to keep them here. For them, whatever was waiting in New Jersey was the lifeboat that had never come, the rescue helicopter they had waited on their roofs for, the house farther inland. I said nothing. I hugged them and kissed them. They took my face in their hands and thanked me for everything. But they did not stay.

The rest of us stood our ground. Ale had clung to my leg, refusing to leave if I wasn’t leaving. Outside, the cops kept yelling through the bullhorn. They knew we were there. They knew we had stayed. They gave us one last chance to come out. But we did not move.