Parting of the Young Crowd

In an old building - maybe an old hotel. I walked up 2-3 flights of stairs. As I leave the stairwell, I see a White woman with a her toddler in a jogging stroller. She eyes me suspiciously. I hear her say to the child, "We have to take the stairs because the elevator is so slow." Just as I leave the stairwell, I hear the ding of the elevator and think to myself, "If she had only been patient." I hop on the elevator and take it up to another floor. There are lots of people standing in the hallway. It is hot and the building has no air conditioning. I see a Black family - mom, dad and two teenagers - standing outside a door (from now on the rest of the characters are Black). They are locked out of their room and waiting for someone to come and open the door. I was with my friend, CC and two other people. A small crowd gathered behind us. We had to walk through the other side of the building (the east side) in order to continue going up. The buildings were connected via a covered glass walkway with two sets of glass doors. I could see through to the other side of the building - a larger crowd of young people were on the east side waiting to pass through to go downstairs. The east side crowd outnumbered the people behind me on the west side of the building. I looked back to see if there was an exit sign pointing to another stairwell. I asked the mom of the locked out family if there was another stairwell. She said something like, "I wish. That would be too easy."

I looked ahead of me at the crowd of youngsters on the other side. There was no way both groups could pass through the hall at the same time. Since our group was smaller, I thought we could pass through first and then they could be free to walk through to the other side. I pushed my way forward to the west side glass doors and pressed a button to talk through a speaker. I asked the kids on the other side to stand back and make room for us to pass through first, and then, we would return the favor. I saw the kids move to the sides of the hall and make a pathway in the middle for us to go through. Before I went through the doors, I asked the mom to make sure the other group had space to walk through the hallway like they were giving us, but when I looked behind me, I realized that may not be necessary since there weren't many people on our side of the hall and we could pass through easily to the other side. I started my way down the walkway to the east side. My nephew (or another kid) was with me. The rest of our group stayed behind the west side glass doors to see what would happen. The glass door on the other side opened automatically as we approached. At first, the kids were making room, then a few of them started spilling back inside the middle. I paused and then moved back to the other side of the door. I had to press a button to force the door to close. I looked behind me - the people on the west side were still behind the doors, watching to see if I could get through. I turned around and spoke into the speaker at the east side doors. I told the kids I was going to give them time to settle down and regroup - to make space for us again. The kids calmed down and then made a path for us to walk through. I hit the button again and the doors opened. My nephew and I walked through the crowd. The kids looked excited, though not to see us. We walked through the crowd to the top of the hill, and then, turned around to look down on the others as they passed through. My friend, CC and the other people in our group, walked through - waving to the crowd. The kids were jumping up and down as if my friends were celebrities that they had been waiting to see.