Slate magazine today posted a collection of Katrina memoirs written by four students from Walker Charter High School in New Orleans. The teenagers and their families rode out the storm but were evacuated later after the floodwaters overtook their neighborhoods. Here’s a sample from Vickey Brown, 17:

I ran all the way home. I was yelling to my grandma, “We going to die, the water is flowing up the street and it looks like it is getting higher.” I began to cry.

“Well what can I do? Won’t you stop crying? It’s going to be OK,” my grandma replied. I was scared for my life.

Then my mom stormed in the door.

“Get only two outfits and some shoes,” my mama said in a scared voice.

“Mama, I don’t want to leave my grandma,” I said, crying.

“She can come too, I don’t want to leave her here either.”

So I went to my grandma’s room to ask her would she go with me. I got on my knees besides her and asked, “Grandma, come with us please, I don’t want to leave you here without me.”

“Girl, just go with ya mama, you hear me, now go on.”

My mom tried to convince her to go, too, but my grandma wouldn’t budge. Deep in my mind I was wondering what would happen to my grandma if I were to leave her. It hurt me to my heart to leave her, but I was too scared to stay.

As we passed the bridge on Claiborne and Earhart Boulevard we saw a dead man lying at the foot of the curb with a white sheet over his body. I looked at him with amazement because I had never seen a dead body before.