And meanwhile there were girls at the passenger elevator door trying to crowd into the elevator, too many of them, and it was smoke everywhere, and the windows were breaking on both sides and there were girls with their hair on fire and their dresses on fire—screaming, screaming like you can’t imagine, like animals, not like people anymore—and they were standing in the windows screaming and then they were jumping and the girls watched the ones who jumped, and then they were in the window after them, and then they jumped, in rows, it was like they waited their turns, it was just so terrible.

I never thought about jumping, to tell you the truth. I don’t know why, I just somehow thought I could escape this and live some more. I was foolish and so young I didn’t know that it was almost impossible and so I thought I could try to keep alive. But other girls were just as young with their lives ahead of them too, like me, and they didn’t see a way to get out like I did, so maybe it was just I was lucky. Because it was then I saw Mr. Jacobs, he was the contractor my sister and I worked for, I saw him with a waist around his face so he could breathe with all the smoke and all you could see were his eyes, they were red from the smoke, and he was coughing like everybody, and I saw him go to this other door I mentioned, the door by the freight elevators to the stairs we aren’t supposed to use on weekends, and he had a key and my sister was right behind me, and I saw him unlock the door and I went to follow him, but my sister wasn’t right behind me anymore.

I should have held her hand tighter, but I didn’t, because I thought she was right behind me, and then she wasn’t there, and I saw her, she was going through the flames the other way, because the flames were everywhere now, and you couldn’t tell which way was which, and where she was going, I found out, even though I didn’t know it right then, where she was going was to my fiancé, that was Sam, Sam Gottesfeld, he was twenty, and like I said, we were going to be married, and he was at the corner window on the Washington Place side, and he was helping the girls.