My mouth is too full to answer. I bob my head up and down and tear another bite before I’ve swallowed. We’re sitting on a fire escape in a dark alley, away from the streetlights and the chances of a police car patrolling the area for kids out past curfew. The fire escape is near the exhaust pipe from a 24-hour laundromat, which means warm, damp air billows around us in clouds. While I’m warm now, I know once we leave the cloud the dampness will turn to ice and I’ll be even colder than before. It doesn’t make me eat any slower, but since we managed to steal a foot-long sandwich from the convenience store, I still have plenty of sandwich left. “We really need to think about getting back on the road,” Kayla says. I swallow without chewing enough and have to swallow a few more times to get the lump of food down my throat. “Once I’m done we can get going.” I tear off another chunk, this time chewing a few more times. “Really?” Through the mouthful I ask, “Yeah. What else were we gonna do here?”
