She saw the one whose father had reportedly been pushed under a bus by his mother, and he grimaced at her. "What we gonna do now?" "I don't know," she said. "Are you all right? Is your family all right?" "Don't got nowhere to sleep, nowhere to go," he said. "Don't even have a change of clothes. My moms won't stop crying." There were tears in his eyes. He was all of fifteen, she realized. He'd seemed much older on the roof. She gathered him into her arms and gave him a hug. He was stiff and awkward at first and then he kind of melted into her, weeping on her shoulder. She stroked his back and murmured reassuringly. Some of the other shantytowners looked at the spectacle, then looked away. Even a couple of his homeboys -- whom she'd have bet would have laughed and pointed at this show of weakness -- only looked and then passed on. One had tears streaking the smoke smudges on his face. *For someone who isn't good at comforting people, I seem to be doing a lot of it*, she thought. Francis and Lester and Perry found her and Francis gave the boy a gruff hug and told him everything would be fine. The fire was out now, the firefighter hosing down the last embers, going through the crowd and checking for injuries. A TV news crew had set up and a pretty black reporter in her twenties was doing a stand up. "The illegal squatter community has long been identified as a problem area for gang and drug activity by the Broward County Sheriff's office. The destruction here seems total, but it's impossible to say whether this spells the end of this encampment, or whether the denizens will rebuild and stay on." Suzanne burned with shame. That could have been her. When she'd first seen this place, it had been like something out of a documentary on Ethiopia. As she'd come to know it, it had grown homier. The residents built piecemeal, one wall at a time, one window, one poured concrete floor, as they could afford it. None of them had mortgages, but they had neat vegetable gardens and walkways spelled out in white stones with garden gnomes standing guard. The reporter was staring at her -- and naturally so; she'd been staring at the reporter. Glaring at her. "My RV," Francis said, pointing, distracting her. It was a charred wreck. He went to the melted doors and opened them, stepping back as a puff of smoke rose from the inside. A fire-fighter spotted it and diverted a stream of water into the interior, soaking Francis and whatever hadn't burned. He turned and shouted something at the fire-fighter, but he was already hosing down something else. Inside Francis's trailer, they salvaged a drenched photo-album, a few tools, and a lock-box with some of his papers in it. He had backed up his laptop to his watch that morning, so his data was safe. "I kept meaning to scan these in," he said, paging through the photos in the soaked album. "Should have done it."