We began to fight about little things—who got the last of the cereal bars instead of a protein bar, who had used the last tissue. We were beginning to run out of food and toilet paper. The water still hadn’t gone down.

At around three o’clock the third day after our break-in, after we’d spend hours on the roof, gone back downstairs to eat and come back up, we heard the distinctive sound of a motorboat. It came into view, the waves caused by its wake splashing up against the sides of buildings. We leaned over the edge of the roof, waving our arms and screaming. The two men in charge of the boat must have heard us, because they pulled up close to the building. We motioned them toward the alleyway.

We began climbing down the ladder toward the boat. Besides the two men, there were several people in the boat. On one side of the boat was a teenager who looked partly scared and partly annoyed. With her was presumably her family, a mother and a father. They were arguing with each other in a language I didn’t understand. Near them was a girl in her early twenties. She didn’t look scared at all, but rather looked like she was having the time of her life. She was dressed in a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off despite the chill in the air, and her arms were long and thin and the veins stood out. She was leaning over the side of the boat, looking ahead down the alley. Then, all alone in the middle of the boat was this kid. He had short dark hair cut into a little mohawk and brown skin. He looked shocked. He was bent over at the knees, holding his feet and staring down at them. He didn’t look up.

“Swing over and lower yourself down,” one of the men in fatigues called up as we reached the second-floor fire escape.

I went first, swinging one leg over the railing on the edge of the fire escape. Then I swung the other over, and was clinging to the outside of the structure. I slid my hand down until they were at the bottom of the railing and stepped off, one foot at a time. For a frightening moment I was hanging there above the boat. I didn’t want to let go. I could feel my hands loosening their grip as the full weight of my body hung from them.

“It’s okay, Makayla,” Jaden said.

I let go. The boat shook as I dropped the last couple of feet. The family near the side of the boat grabbed them, but the young woman in her twenties just laughed and rode the rocking boat like they were the undulations of a rushing subway car and she didn’t have a bar to hang on to. The little boy in the boat didn’t move an inch even as the boat swayed from side to side. Jaden followed me, and I hung on to the sides of the boat as he dropped down.