I thought about all those people in the dark, in the cold. I thought about them dying. I thought about how we’re all going to die, maybe not right now, maybe not as a result of this storm, but all someday. That one hits me every now and then. Sometimes, when I’m alone and it’s late and I’m very tired, or when I’ve just spent twelve hours at the 24/7, that thought hits me in the face and makes me feel like giving up. I just think of life as shoveling food into your face and shitting it out, people as weird beings who do strange, destructive things to each other and the world around them. And it all seems so senseless and foul, like people are just huge intestinal worms on the face of the earth. I think about my mom and my dad, who I loved, who checked. And it’s so much pain that I try to make myself angry about something instead, because I know that’ll keep me alive so much longer than the pain would.

But other times, I think about dying and I think about nothing being forever, and it makes me feel determined to do something good with whatever time I have left. I mean, I know where I stand. I know I’ll never be president, or a doctor, or anything like that. But even to do things like my mom and dad did, to put on stupid, sienty block parties for my neighbors—even those things seem good enough.

I started to catch my breath. “We have to get to the emergency shelter. They’ll need us there.”

“We’ll get there,” Jaden promised. He loosened his grip on me, holding me at arm’s length. “Makayla, about yesterday—I’m sorry. We’ll forget all about it. We’ll get to the shelter today.”

We got dressed and boiled ourselves some water for instant coffee and ate. We were down to one gallon of water. After we drank our coffee, we went back up to the roof. The cold up there was no longer a deterrent; the apartment was freezing as well.

At around noon, we heard birds overhead. We ran back into Kyle’s room and stripped the bed of all its sheets, and then did the same to all the beds in the apartment. Up on the roof we pulled the sheets longways and twisted them up, then taped them down to form the word “help.” Every time a bird went overhead, we waved our arms as widely and wildly as we could. It didn’t help. Nothing helped.

After a while we went back downstairs. We decided to drink some of the slurree and eat protein bars because it didn’t take water to make. We opened the last gallon jug of water and took small sips out of it, tipping it back carefully. A trickle of water ran out of the side of my mouth and down my neck in a little rivulet, and I rushed to stop it with my hand that wasn’t holding the jug. I handed the jug to Jaden.