We are dragged in single file, down a path between crumbling buildings and melting cars, each of us bound to the one in front and the one behind. Baby’s cries are muted by the container they put her in. There can’t be much air. Save it, little one. Sleep if you can, in the quiet, in the dark.

Ash, thick as rainclouds, hides the sun. Only fires, dancing in the growing wind, light our way. Eyes stream with black tears, nose and lungs filling with smoke and debris. Ahead, a building, somehow preserved. A banner hangs from its entrance canopy, singed at the edges but bright in the middle.

Tenth Annual Wishing Well Gala

The children’s charity. I remember the first.

They march us straight towards it.

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