guy ran to the window and stayed there, so Amoud went out in the street.
He�d been to a running of the bulls in Madrid, and the crowds reminded him of hot Spain with all
the grabbing hands. In the middle of it, three blocks away, was Shara with his roofing ladder on her
head.
�Honey!� he yelled. People were climbing up the fire escapes to watch. Amoud had to run six
blocks east to get away from the people but it got packed again as he got closer to the park. Shara
was past the first branch by the time he got to the base of it. The kids weren�t visible from the
ground, but everyone knew they were there.
The park looked different to Amoud. Never in his life had he seen it this crowded. Shara was
stretched out on the last rung, with an arm hanging onto a near branch. Her black hair was in her
mouth and she was crying.
�Come here, baby-baby,� she was saying, all brokenly. �Let�s get you down, sweet.�
It was hard to hear with all the people in the park, so when Shara lowered her voice to speak French
(she always spoke French quietly; it scared Amoud�s Algerian family) the crowd started to climb up
the ladder and into the tree. It struck Amoud that these were probably people who had never climbed
a tree before. They settled into the lower branches, the waiters and the concerned citizens and the
USP pharmacy kids, all waiting for the kids to say something.
People cheered when the boy with the baseball cap came into view. A man with a yellow vest
yelled down to the crowd what he was said. Amoud saw people with little notebooks writing down all
the words, frowning distractedly. There was an old woman crying in the middle of a bunch of
tourists, going unnoticed.
The boy in the baseball cap said something sharp to the crowd in the trees, and they started
coming down the ladder fast. Some of the Philly Sci kids, the ones who�d gone up the ladder to gape,
stretched out a big blanket for their friend to jump on, and he landed OK. Lots of news stories said
that what happened next was the fault of the college kids.