by Wendy Mills
“You’re the only one who can get up there and do it,” Nick says.
I check out the old wall, with bricks jutting out here and there. Lots of cracks to place gear. It would be a breeze.
“I don’t know,” I say uneasily. I don’t want to! I’m thinking.
“We have to tell them,” Dave says furiously. “We have to tell them that they should go the hell back to where they came from.”
“Chill for a minute,” Nick says to him and turns to me. “Jesse?”
He stares at me seriously, ignoring Hailey and Dave, who are grumbling and throwing what-the-hell? looks at me. Nick shakes his head a little to clear the hair from his eyes. “Look, I don’t want you doing anything you don’t want to. Just think about it, okay?”
Before I can answer, a girl comes out of the Peace Center with a handful of blue fliers. She’s wearing jeans and boots, and a green head scarf tucked into her thick jacket.
The girl stops at a car with a “Just Dua It” bumper sticker and grabs a staple gun out of the trunk.
“Come on,” Nick says, and we trail after the girl as she starts up the street, putting up the blue fliers with a brisk thump-thump of the staple gun as she goes.
The girl in the scarf meets up with Jade and Hal, and they continue along the street, laughing and talking as they continue putting up the blue fliers.
“What the hell?” Dave yells at them as we get closer. His face is red, and he’s breathing hard. For a moment, he reminds me of my dad. It’s not the first time. When he gets going about the “freaking A-rabs” that cost his brother his leg, I keep my mouth shut. I know from experience the slightest word will set him off even more. Nick thinks it’s funny, and will egg him on into a frothing frenzy, but it scares me.
The girl in the scarf looks at Dave, and then her gaze travels to the rest of us, and I realize that I’m carrying some of the blue fliers that Nick crumpled up and handed to me at school. I want to shrink back against Nick, but he steps up so he’s standing next to Dave.
“No one wants you here!” Dave spits.
“Dave Tucker,” Jade says severely. “We most certainly want Sabeen here. You, on the other hand, can go take a flying leap.”
Jade, tall and redheaded in a gypsy skirt, jangles the bangles on her wrists angrily.
“It’s okay, Jade.” Sabeen, the girl in the scarf, looks at us. “What do you want to say to me?” she asks Dave directly. She is pretty, with dark eyeliner accenting her flashing eyes, and tiny diamond studs glimmering in her ears. A few people have gathered around, attracted by the confrontation.
“Go back!” Dave shouts. “If you don’t like it here, go the hell back to your own country!”
“I’m an American,” she says evenly. “I was born here, just like you.” I can’t help but admire her composure, but her words seem to set Dave off even more.
“You are not like me. You will never be like me.”
People begin murmuring in disapproval. Someone pushes through the crowd, and I feel sick when I see it’s Adam. He’s out of breath, his hair damp with sweat and curling crazily over his forehead, and the dimple is nowhere to be seen.
“Everything all right?” he asks, and his tone is neutral, but his blue eyes are not as he stares at Dave and Nick.
“No problem, man,” Nick says between his teeth, his breath hissing out.
“I didn’t think so.” Adam’s gaze lands on me, cool and appraising. I duck my head, flushing.
A group of college kids come by, and in the roiling crowd of people, Sabeen cries out. Her scarf lies in a puddle on the ground, the beautiful green silk slowly turning dark as the muddy water bleeds into it.
Adam is yelling something at Dave and Nick, while people mill around in confusion. I quickly stoop and pick up Sabeen’s scarf. I hand it to her, avoiding her eyes as my heart crumples.
Nick grabs my hand, and we walk away quickly. I feel like I want to throw up.
I know it’s all so wrong, but I can’t seem to find the words to say anything.
I try not to think about what I saw.
I try not to think about Nick grabbing the end of Sabeen’s scarf and yanking it off her head as she cried out in pain.
“You should hate them more than any of us,” Nick says later as we walk alone under a sky of clouds full and fat with snow, crowded close to the ground.
Hailey and Dave went back to her place to hook up, and Nick wanted me to come back to his house, but I told him I had a lot of homework. Suddenly I want to tell him I have plans every day and night for the foreseeable future. But I don’t know how.
“What?” I look over at him, at his handsome face, the silver ring in his eyebrow gleaming dully.
“I’m just saying they killed your brother. You should want them to pay for that,” he says.
I can’t stop thinking of him yanking off Sabeen’s scarf, but a part of me understands what he’s saying, that it’s hard when you feel like there’s nothing you can do or say to change anything. That someone should pay for making you feel like that.
“I don’t think about it,” I say finally, but it’s not true, because lately I’ve been thinking about it a lot.
I go into our apartment. Mom is gone; there is an uneaten casserole on the stove with a sticky note that reads: “At prayer meeting, back at 9:30!” punctuated with a smiley face. There are eight beer bottles lined up on the counter, and I glance reflexively at Dad’s recliner, but it’s empty.
I move down the hallway like a ghost. My parents’ bedroom door is cracked open, and as I pass, I see Dad on top of the covers, asleep. He’s snoring loudly, and there’s a book on his chest. I go to move past, but something makes me stop.
The day after I found the silver photo album in the shed, I went back to look at it again, but it was gone.
Now it’s here, on Dad’s chest. I walk over to the side of the bed and gaze down at the open album. A bottle of glue sits on the table next to Dad. He must have been gluing one of the older articles that had come loose.
I understand suddenly that this was never Mom’s photo album. It’s Dad’s.
He stirs, and I freeze, my gaze darting to his face, but he lapses back into rumbling snores.
I step closer to him and use one finger to flip past the news articles. Behind plastic protective sleeves are childish, scrawled Happy Father’s Day cards, a crayon picture of stick figures with arrows pointing at “Me” and “Dad.” On another page are the pictures: a small, blond Travis building a snowman with a laughing, pregnant Mom; Travis, sledding down a hill; in the mountains, the red and orange leaves falling like rain behind his gap-toothed smile.
My stomach clenches as I catch my breath in a choking gasp. This is Travis. This is my brother.
I look down at my sleeping father. While his opinions and rage spew out of him in a hate-fueled frenzy, his silence about Travis is a void that screams louder than any words.
The only time I remember him saying anything about Travis was Hank’s last Christmas when my brother yelled, “Why won’t you let us talk about him? For all you know he could have been a hero!” And Dad said, in a quiet, shaking voice that was so much scarier than his usual roar, “My son was no hero.”
I look back at my father’s face, relaxed and vulnerable in sleep. He won’t talk about Travis, and refuses to let anybody else talk about him, but here he is with a secret photo album, filled to the brim with Travis.
Something breaks inside me. Something big and dark cracks open, and white-hot anger pours out. I’m shaking, though I couldn’t begin to say what I’m angry at. I understand for the first time my dad’s free-flowing, no-target rage. I want to scream, I want to kick something, I want to make someone hurt like I’m hurting.
I go into my bedroom and close the door carefully, my hand trembling with the urge to slam it shut as hard as I can. I fumble in my pocket for my phone and send a text to Nick.
It reads simply:
I’m in.
Chapter Fifteen
I take an elevator back down to the seventy-eighth-floor sky lobby, still full of people rushing to get to work. I don’t notice Hip-Hop Boy until after I step onto the express elevator. He sees me, and his eyes widen, but then he looks away. There aren’t a ton of people going down, just a group of people in suits talking animatedly about commission rates, and one goes, “Hey, there’s Bob. We can ask him,” and they duck back through the doors, leaving just the two of us in the big car.
The boy seems worked up. His jaw is clenched, and he is jiggling his hand in the pocket of his baggy jeans.
I stare down at the slick brochure I picked up in the sky lobby, advertising a celebration of dance with a picture of two dancers staring into each other’s eyes as they hang suspended between the two towers. I pretend to study it—September 5–16 at 7 p.m., right here at the World Trade Center, why yes, maybe I will go!—so I can ignore the agitated boy, but my gaze keeps straying to him. At first, I think he’s just pissed about something, and then I see the gleam of tears in his eyes. He’s upset, and mad, all at the same time.
What happened to him in the ten minutes since I saw him last?
I edge closer to him. I’m not sure why, but even with his sticky fingers and tough-boy act, I don’t like that he’s upset.
“Hey,” I say and realize it’s the second time I’ve said that to him, and that each time it meant completely different things.
He glances up at me as the elevator jerks. I grab the rail, panicked, then feel stupid when I realize the elevator has started going down.
He doesn’t say anything, so I stare up at the red numbers, willing them to flick downward, and try to forget about him. In a manner of minutes we’ll be at the lobby, and I’ll never see him again.
I look up to see him staring at me.
“Do you normally stare at people like that?” I snap, figuring for sure he’s looking at me like that because of the scarf.
“You’re the one—” he says, and there’s a THUD, and the elevator swings crazily.
Then we drop into free fall.
Chapter Sixteen
Jesse
The blue lights wash across the brick wall of the Islam Peace Center, and I see the police officer running toward me as I slide too fast, too fast, toward the ground.
I land hard and something pops in my ankle, and the pain is glaring and vivid. I fall to the cold, snow-slippery ground, biting back a scream.
“Nick!” I clutch my ankle and yell “Nick!” not even caring if anybody hears me.
I’m alone, clutching my ankle and crying, when the cop reaches me. He sweeps his flashlight over me, and then up the wall to where my rope is still lazily swinging in front of the wall and the letters.
He doesn’t say anything at first, knowing that I’m not going anywhere. He just shines the flashlight over the letters that scream silently on the side of the center.
The first word, big and bubbly:
NOTHING
Below that:
Terrorists go home
The cop shakes his head in disgust and pulls out his handcuffs. The blue lights strobe over me as I lay with my face pressed to the icy ground, wishing I could just melt into it and disappear. The cop is saying something, but his words are disappearing into the black vacuum of my pain.
All the hot, blinding anger that has fueled me since I found my dad with Travis’s album is gone, and all I feel is empty and alone.
All I feel is nothing.
Chapter Seventeen
Alia
The elevator is screaming as it drops.
Or is it me screaming?
I can’t tell. I am on my knees, clutching the rail with both arms.
Orange sparks stream through a gap in the door as the car slams into the side of the shaft with a terrible scraping, grinding sound, and it gets hot, so hot I feel like the elevator rail is burning my palms.
Thoughts swirl through my head without any order, almost in slow motion.
What is happening?
And Mama, Ayah, I love you, I love you, I love you.
And God, please, please help me.
Hip-Hop Boy dives toward the front of the car. He begins stabbing buttons, cursing in frustration as the lights flicker crazily, and the elevator bounces around like a rubber ball.
Suddenly the car crashes to a halt with a horrendous screech. I don’t dare move as the elevator continues to sway. I’m convinced that if I move it will continue its plunge to the ground.
He seems to think the same thing, because he remains frozen by the console, staring up, as if somehow that is where he will get the answer to our question:
Will we fall again?
A voice starts speaking, and I jump, then realize that it’s a recorded message, saying that our message has been received and help is on the way. I feel a tiny bit better, because help is on the way.
A curl of smoke seeps into the top of the car, and I watch in numb silence as it slides around the top of the car like a thick curious snake and then gets fatter and more transparent before disappearing. The rocking begins to subside, and finally we are still.
“What—” I clear my throat, because my voice sounds froggy and weird. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. A bomb, maybe?” His voice is careful, as if even the sound of our voices might tip the elevator back into free fall.
“A bomb?” I say, too loud. But, oh my God, did he just say a bomb?
“A bomb went off in ’93,” he says, still staring up at the ceiling. “In the basement. It killed five or six people. I heard an explosion. Did you hear it? I did. I’m thinking that’s what it is, but … I don’t know.”
“A bomb?” I say again, wiping sweat off my face and fighting the urge to scratch under my scarf. It’s still so, so hot.
I’d never heard about a bomb going off in the World Trade Center, right here where my father had worked for the last year. Why hadn’t someone told me? Why hadn’t someone told me that my father worked in a place that people liked to bomb?
“My grandfather worked here then, and he said it was pretty bad. I’m thinking that’s what it is,” he says again, as if saying the words aloud will make some kind of sense of this whole terrible thing.
“How long do you think it’ll take before they come for us?” I ask in a shaky voice, finally daring to let go of the rail and sit up. I hold my breath, half expecting the elevator to start swinging again, or even worse, drop.
“It might be a while. There are ninety-nine elevators in this tower—and the same in the other tower—so if it was a bomb, a lot of people will be trapped like us. We just need to sit tight and wait.”
Lia wouldn’t be just sitting still, afraid to move. She’d figure out some way to get out of this elevator, and then, before lunch, have discovered what was going on and solved the problem without breaking a sweat.
I burst into tears. I want to go home and see my father and my mother and give them a big hug. I want them to hold me for the rest of my life.
I cry for a few minutes, head down and shoulders shaking, before I sense the boy sliding down next to me. He doesn’t say anything, just sits quietly.
“I don’t want to die!”
“We’re not going to die,” he says. “The emergency brake caught us, and there’s no reason to think it won’t keep us here until help comes. Crying won’t change anything.”
“I’m not crying,” I say, though I still am.
“I don’t think we dropped very far,” he says after a moment.
“It felt like we were falling for ages.”
“But we didn’t.”
I think he’s trying to make me feel better, but the fact is, we fell, and elevators aren’t supposed to do that.
“What’s your name?” I ask after a moment and am happy to hear that my voice is stronger. His comment about crying not changing anything has made me mad, and mad is better than sad right now. “I can’t keep calling you ‘Hip-Hop Boy’ in my head.”
“Hip-Hop Boy? Really?” He turns toward me, and I see that he has mismatched eyes; one is hazel, and the other is more green. It’s not something you would notice if you weren’t looking closely.
“Well, it’s not like I knew your name. What else was I supposed to call you? ‘Pickpocket’?”
His face reddens. “I didn’t steal anything.”
“Yes, because I stopped you,” I snap back. Then I relent. “I’m Alia.” When he gives me a puzzled look, I exaggerate my name the way I have to sometimes. “Ah-LEE-ah.”
“Alia,” he repeats.
He offers me his hand, and we shake awkwardly across our knees and legs.
“I’m Travis,” he says.
Chapter Eighteen
Jesse
I stand outside the Islam Peace Center in a monotonous June drizzle that streaks the glass of the door in front of me. It’s not cold, but I’m shaking as hard as I did the last time I was here, two months ago.
The night I got arrested.
I know I need to go in. In fact, I should have gone in ten minutes ago, but I can’t seem to make myself move. What will I say? What will they say to me? But if I don’t go inside soon, then I’ll have to go back to court.
I deserve this, I deserve this, I deserve this.
The door opens, and a woman with bright blue eyes and a pink head scarf peers out at me.
“Are you going to come in?” she asks briskly, though not in a mean way.
I would rather rip out my toenails one by one, I want to say, but I don’t have a choice, because I’m doing my community service here, at the Peace Center.
I was lucky, because it could have been worse. I had a good lawyer and was underage with no criminal history. I could be going to a juvenile detention center like Nick.
I nod mutely at the woman and duck past her into the cool, bright building, wincing as my healing ankle twinges in protest.
I can still smell the warm, sweet richness of candy, as if it has permeated the very walls. I remember coming here once with my dad, when I was eight or nine, and him standing patiently while I stared in happy indecision at the trays of chocolates behind the glass counter.
