I froze. Here were Jaden and I, who needed help as much as anybody else. Jaden was my friend and had been for as long as I could remember, and I wanted him to be safe. But I couldn’t get Samuel and his kid out of my head. I didn’t even know what the kid looked like, whether it was a baby or a toddler or a teenager. Did I make a decision for some thought of a kid, or did I let my friend save himself?

“Go back up,” I said again.

Jaden listened to me, and in a minute we were back up on the roof, calling down.

“Did you take the people across the alleyway? Samuel? He and his wife and his kid need to go.”

“We can’t fit them and you,” the guy in the camo said. “Do you have enough food to stay here a little while longer?”

I looked over at Jaden. He didn’t even look mad, and again that feeling like new lights flickered in me.

“It’s the right thing, Makayla,” he said. “I’ll be hoddered if I want to do the right thing, but we know it’s right.”

“Yeah,” I called down. “They’re probably inside. You should go in and get them.”

One of the men in camo started climbing up the fire escape across the alleyway, and disappeared inside a window. I stood there and watched. I looked down, not saying anything to the guy still in the boat, until Samuel appeared at the window, then climbed out onto the fire escape. Then his wife appeared, a tiny lady holding an even tinier kid who couldn’t have been more than five. We watched them go down the fire escape, the boat sinking lower into the water as each one climbed in.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said up to me. I didn’t say anything back. I sat down on the roof wondering what I’d just done to me and Jaden. As I heard the boat start back up and power off, I wondered if they’d ever be back, or if I’d killed us both.

4 Hours later, the boat still hadn’t come back. Jaden and I sat on the roof waiting, but we didn’t even hear a boat nearby.

“Why didn’t they leave with a kid that small?” Jaden asked, sounding angry.

“You don’t know him,” I replied. I was mad, too, mad at Jaden for thinking the worst about the guy, that he’d been irresponsible or a bad parent for staying. I climbed down the ladder and walked back into Kyle’s room. I slammed the door behind me, because I wanted to hear it shake the walls. In the kitchen, I looked around for something to break. I found a coffee cup and threw it to the ground. It broke in two neat halves, and I felt a little better. This anger happens to me sometimes, rises up in me like heat out of the subway grate when it’s winter. I grab something, break something, slam something. When I was a kid, I used to get in fights, grab people by the hair, punch their faces, feel them punching me back. I don’t do that anymore, not since I’ve gotten older. Maybe I still don’t have a lot to lose, but now I know better than to hurt people for no reason, or my own lousy reasons that have nothing to do with them.