I went into the bedrooms one by one. From the looks of things, the kids that had lived in the apartment were a girl and one boy. The girl seemed to be a few years younger than me, probably still in high school judging by the textbooks on her desk and the size of her clothes. The boy’s room was filled with Yankee pennants and jerseys, and model trains of every subway line in the city. I wondered if he’d ever ridden the subway in his life. I went into his closet and found that his clothes were a bit big for the boy we’d brought with us, but would certainly do.

As I was yanking his clothes off the hangers, a dissat feeling rose up in me. I was in some kid’s bedroom. The kid didn’t know anything, didn’t know that his family was filthy rich, or that they were forcing people like me and Jaden farther and farther away. He was just some kid who liked the Yankees and trains and went to school every day, and loved his parents. Here I was, invading his space, tearing apart his room, taking his things. But I only felt like an ori about it for a minute, because we needed to survive.

I laid the clothes out on the bed, then went and got the boy and brought him into the room. I talked to him even though I wasn’t sure he understood me, telling him to get dressed.

“This is all yours now,” I said.

I left the room to give him some privacy and went back into the kitchen. I started taking food out of the walk-in pantry. I kept pulling food out and laying it on the table until finally Jaden came over and stopped me.

“We have to make this last, Makayla,” he said.

“Oh, no, we don’t,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“There are other apartments here that I bet are just as well stocked. And besides, I found something back in the parents’ bedroom.” I lifted up my shirt and showed him the gun. “We run out of food, we go find more.”

Jaden grabbed me and pulled my shirt back down, as if the gun would disappear if it wasn’t in his line of sight. “What are you going to do with that?” he asked, his hands gripping my arm so tight that they made little circles in my skin.

“Make sure we survive,” I said. I pulled my arm away from him.

The boy came back into the room in new clothes, and my grandmother came and joined us at the table. We put the food out on plates and tore into it.

“Caviar,” my grandmother said, eating a spoonful. “And cashmere sweaters. Next thing you know, we’ll be driving a damn Bentley.”