“Twenty-four in, six headed to the firehouse with Ms. Patel,” Zoe said. “No one’s lips are the wrong color. Liam says the cocoa is interesting.” She lowered her voice. “It tastes like marshmallows that learned to swim.”
“High praise,” Doc said from behind us, deadpan.
Parents poured in waves, not surges. Some cried and laughed with the same breath. Some forgot phones and then remembered them and lifted them to show faces to faces on other screens. The earlier bad headline was already being elbowed aside by new videos—grainy, rain-streaked frames of a rope line and a girl counting and a big man bracing under a window. It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was closer. Under one clip someone had typed Names, not labels, and the words were taking root.
Mr. Hines sat on a folding chair near the heaters, blanket tucked like a winter coat, eyes on his hands. A little boy in a dinosaur hoodie parked himself beside him and offered a paper cup with two hands like it might spill otherwise. “Hot,” the boy announced.
