Everything was silent outside the New York Marriott hotel, except for the sound of birds chirping. Sunlight streamed through the tree leaves, casting an odd-shaped shadow on the pavement, and the water cascading from the fountain outside the hotel glimmered as the light hit it. A single truck chugged steadily away from the hotel entrance after making its deliveries.

In room 732, the only sound was the roaring of the air conditioning as it came to life. I was soundly asleep in one of the three beds, as was the rest of my family. Suddenly, the calm was disrupted with the incessant blaring of an alarm.

     Half-awake my brother, Connor, groaned, “Turn off the alarm clock.”
    

No one moved, each hoping the other person would crawl out of their warm cocoon of blankets to switch the alarm off.

     “Walk quickly and calmly to your nearest exit and evacuate the building immediately,” announced a monotone voice.

It’s too early in the morning for this, was my first thought. My second, and admittedly delayed, thought was when it clicked in my head that the alarm was actually a fire warning. My sister, Skylar, Connor, and I bolted up, looking wide-eyed at each other. Skylar slipped out of bed and tugged on her shoes before tossing my own pair at me. Following her, I climbed out of bed, shivering as my feet touched the cold tile floor.
    

My mother, father, and grandmother were already awake, and my parents looked around the room a final time to make sure we were all ready.

     “Wait!” my grandmother called out, just as we were about to leave. “I want to pack up my suitcase first.”
     “It’s an emergency,” my father explained. “We have to get out of here quickly.”

     We could hear frantic footsteps outside the corridor as people rushed to evacuate the hotel. As the alarm continued to beep, my grandmother was calmly double-knotting her shoelaces. Once she was finished, I jumped up again, ready to evacuate the building. We had to get out quickly, and it seemed most people had already left.
    

“Wait!” she said again, pulling her suitcase out from under the bed and starting to neatly fold up her clothing.
   

  Connor sighed, crossing his arms together and tapping his foot impatiently. My parents explained to my grandmother that it was an emergency, but still, she insisted on packing a bag.

     “Bring the children down first,” my father said to my mother.
     “But-”
     “We’ll be down soon. Go!”

     My siblings and I followed my mother out the door, and the last thing we heard before the door slammed shut was my father trying to convince my grandmother they had to leave. Would they make it down in time? We took the stairs, following another family in front of us.

     When there are fires in movies and books, they’re pictured with black smoke billowing from the windows as the building crumbles apart and people run around in chaos. It wasn’t like that here. Most people had taken a seat on the concrete in tense silence, except for an occasional quiet murmur. Others were handing out iced water in clear plastic cups.

     I took a seat under the shade with Skylar and Connor and placed my cup of water on the sidewalk, observing everyone else. One woman was wrapped in only a white robe, soap suds still in her hair. However, most were bleary-eyed and dressed in wrinkled pajamas. My grandmother, who had already come down with my father, was one of the few that were fully dressed.

     “I don’t think there’s a fire,” said Skylar, breaking me out of my thoughts.
     I picked my water cup up and set it back down, leaving a wet circle on the pavement.
     “What? Why not?” asked Connor.
     I traced the circle with my finger, recalling what I remembered from when we evacuated the building. We didn’t smell any smoke, I realized.
     “She’s probably right,” I said. “Did you smell any smoke while we were coming down?”
     “It could be a small fire.”
     “The firefighters haven’t arrived yet either,” reasoned Skylar. “Once a fire alarm goes off, they’re alerted right away, and it’s been nearly ten minutes.”
     “So you think they’ve called the firefighters off because there’s no fire?” Connor asked. “Wouldn’t they have told us by now, instead of making us wait outside?”
     She shrugged, and all three of us lapsed back into silence. As if on cue, a hotel employee stepped up and waited until he had everyone’s attention.
     “There’s been a mistake, and there is no fire,” he said. “It appears a customer was smoking and set off a fire alarm. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience.”
     Some people groaned loudly and gathered their belongings before trudging back into the hotel, hoping to go back to sleep.
     “Look on the bright side,” I said. “At least there wasn’t actually a fire.”
     “I guess,” said Connor reluctantly, before joining our parents and grandmother.

When we arrived back to our hotel room, we finished packing our belongings into suitcases and lugged them downstairs. After checking out of the hotel, we piled into the car and left, driving to our next destination. The engine exhaust left behind puffs of smoke in the air.