For the first time, I got a good look at our rescuers. One was white and one was black, but they wore matching fatigues and stony looks. They looked at me like they were looking through me, both of them. I tried to be friendly, anyway.

“I’m Makayla,” I said, “and this is Jaden.”

“Why the hell didn’t you evacuate when you had the chance?” the man at the back of the boat, the white guy, barked at us. I didn’t like that. A look slid over my face, I could feel it.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was invited to your house,” I said, all venom.

Jaden stood up from the crouch he was in and put his hand on my shoulder.

“She’s upset,” he said, trying to smooth things over. The two guys looked through him, too. All the other people on the boat just stood back and watched.

The man at the front of the boat said, “Well, you’re stuck here now. We’re taking them,” here he pointed over at the other people in the boat, “to the rescue shelter. We’ll take you there, too, if you want.”

For the first time I noticed all the voices echoing down the alleyway. Other people. Other people who would have given anything to be in this boat, even with these two ories. I made a promise to myself, for Jaden’s sake as much as my own, that I would keep my mouth shut, no matter what they said.

A gust of wind kicked up and blew the water into a little whirlpool right in front of us. The wind had died down since the superstorm hit, but it was still strong and cold as blades. I turned away from the soldiers to where Jaden was kneeling down next to the little boy.

“What’s your name?” he asked him.

The stared down at his feet, at his little black sneakers. They were the kind that project holograms onto the sides if you step down on them, and every time he rocked back and forth, his little shoes lit up. He didn’t even glance up at Jaden or me.

“Do you know his name?” I asked the family at the back of the boat. I kept myself from shooting the man in the back of the boat a dirty look.

“No,” they said.

The man at the back of the boat spoke. “We found him alone on the roof of a building. Don’t know where his mother and father are, if he has them. He was just up there alone, doing what he’s doing now. We found some bodies down the street, floating nearby, but if they belonged to anybody he belonged to, he didn’t react one way or the other.”

I reached down toward the little boy. He jerked away as if my hand was made of fire. Moving a few feet back, he resumed his crouched stance, his eyes down.