After a pause, Andrew says that these buildings will always be here, that they will outlive us all. And I believe him. “But just imagine,” my mammal brain says, “if you took this one we’re standing in down in such a way that it toppled into that guy.

Montana wants to scream, but the thing she is angry at is in the past. The past can’t hear her. This is the thing, her great discovery. She smiles at the future. Happiness is a choice.

She felt like a speck of sand in an alien land, confused as to how it had gotten there.