“You would be okay with leaving your partners behind?” Mitch asked. I could almost feel him taking notes. I didn’t like how we, the runners, were looking in his potential report. I didn’t want him to think this was how we all were. Surely JP was the exception to the rule of community and common decency in an uncommon world?

The older man shrugged. “Why not? It’s every man for himself out here.”

Suddenly, I didn’t feel quite so bad about bringing this moron in to the school. And I agreed with him; it would be easier to do what we had to do without the other two with us. Maybe if they just disappeared with the storm…

We waited out the weather this way, crouched, intermittently choking on secondhand smoke, listening to JP, who used to be a long-haul trucker and lived in a place called Timmins. A few times, I jumped when a felled branch crashed onto the roof. Once the ground shook, and I knew that meant the lightening had turned to bolts and one had hit close by. I wondered if Therese and Sunny were okay.

Eventually, the rain put down its dukes, and the wind stopped howling. The silence that followed was haunted by trauma.

“Shall we go see if the world still exists out there?” JP crawled to the door.

I didn’t want to go see. I wanted to delay the very movement of time itself. I wanted to stall the inevitable for as long as I could. But then the door was open, and Mitch was pushing me to move from behind.

They would be taken in sooner or later anyway, I told myself. They’re so close to the school. So loud and oblivious. If not you, some other person would’ve found them.

The air was wide, blown to expanse by wind and water. But at the edges, you could feel a thick humidity starting to creep in. Weather was impossible to predict, and even harder to survive. I thought about what my family would be doing right now if they were close enough to have been in the storm. Miig would have made sure everyone was safe and together. They had tarps and knowledge. They would be fine. He’d probably used the time they were huddling to tell part of Story, the entire history of us and how we came to be here:

We ran, but not away. We were—we are—running toward. Because running only works when you are running toward something. We are running toward community, toward safety, toward a future centered around what we know and understand to be the good life.

Miig had a gift for making us feel empowered even when we were hiding in the bush and whispering for fear of being heard.

“I think we should pack up and get out of here before nightfall.” It was Mitch’s voice that brought me back.

“Now? Boy, are you crazy? It’s wet out here, and no one wants to be trekking through the mud.” JP lit yet another cigarette. I wondered where he was keeping this giant stash that allowed him to be so free with his supply.