by Wendy Mills
I turn around and go.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jesse
The Saturday before the Fourth of July is gloomy and dripping, but I hardly notice as I’m sitting on the floor of Hank’s closet, going through his and Travis’s stuff.
Okay, so I don’t feel exactly right about it, but Hank still hasn’t gotten back to me, and it’s been over a week. I know now that he’s avoiding me, and that makes me want to catch a plane to Somalia and kick his ass. But since I can’t, I’m going to do some good old-fashioned invasion-of-privacy.
I open an old, battered instrument case, and run my fingers over the tarnished saxophone inside. I’d seen stacks of music scores, and guessed they were Travis’s, as his obituary mentioned that he was in a band. I close the music case and put it carefully back where I found it.
There’s an entire box of trophies of all shapes and sizes, Travis’s and Hank’s, and stuck at the bottom of the box is an old stuffed animal of Hank’s he kept around even when he got older.
My phone buzzes, and I pull it out and see I have an e-mail from Anne Jonna.
I found a woman who remembers a young man in the towers who might be your brother. I gave her your contact information. Her name is Julia.
I stare at the message for a moment, feeling a flutter of excitement in my belly, and then turn with renewed determination to the closet. I’m getting closer. I can feel it.
A stack of yearbooks teeters on the top shelf of the closet.
I stand on tiptoe to lift them down. I pick up one from 2000, because that was the year Travis graduated. There are actually two of them, because Hank was a freshman in 2000, but a quick look at the inscriptions inside shows me which one is Travis’s. The scrawled notes across the front pages are mainly generic, like Stay sweet, Travis! and Let’s keep in touch! But a few are more interesting: I’ll never forget that party when you rode the pig and When you hit the big time don’t forget us little guys.
I turn to the senior section and find Travis’s graduation picture, a twin to the smirking, shaggy-haired kid they use every year in the articles. I look up Travis’s name in the index and there are two listings for him. One for his senior picture, and one on page 21.
I turn to page 21, and see a picture of Travis holding a saxophone, with two other guys. One is behind a drum set and the other holds a guitar. Travis is in baggy jeans and an oversized T-shirt, with a small, kind of wistful smile. The caption reads: “The Do-Gooders: Greg Laramore, Travis McLaurin, and Graydon Hunt.”
Wait a minute.
I bend over the yearbook, studying the picture until I’m sure. The guy on the left, Greg Laramore, is Mr. Hipster himself, my Entrepreneurship teacher. He’s wearing a floppy hat and shades, but it’s definitely him.
It’s a small town, so I don’t know why I’m surprised that I would know one of Travis’s old friends. But a teacher? What would Travis be doing if he were still alive? He’d be turning thirty-four this year. What did he want to do when he grew up? Travis had never seemed like me and my friends. He’d been this mythical figure who vanished in smoke and flames. As crazy as it sounds, I am just realizing that he was just a little bit older than I am right now when he died.
Shaken, I run my fingers over the picture of Travis, like I can feel who he was through the cool, glossy picture.
My phone buzzes, and I pull it out of my pocket and see there’s a text from Drew about climbing today.
I wonder if he’s forgotten I’m on the message list and sent it to me by mistake. He must have heard what I did.
But I haven’t been climbing in months, and the thought of being on a mountain, away from it all … it’s almost too hard to resist.
I stare back down at the picture of my brother. He looks relaxed and happy. A year later, he’d be dead.
I need to talk to Mr. Laramore, but first …
First, I need to go climbing.
I’m early, sitting on a blocky boulder on the Undercliff Road trail, with a mist-shrouded view of fields and trees behind me, and the jangle of climbers’ gear singing like wind chimes on the cliff in front of me.
“Slime the rock with your feet! Right below you,” a guy yells up at his petrified girlfriend.
It’s a cloudy day, but even so the trail is full of backpacks and water jugs at the base of the cliff, the climbers swinging above like multicolored metronomes. Hikers with walking sticks and dogs dressed in colorful backpacks saunter by, preferring the horizontal path to the vertical one.
I’m in the process of strangling a light green spicebush when Drew and a couple of people come around a curve in the path. They are laughing and chatting about Fourth of July plans, and I notice with a small shiver that Adam is with them. I’m not surprised, but it doesn’t make me feel less nervous.
Adam is wearing jeans and a dark blue stretchy climbing shirt. The gear on his belt jingles as he walks, and he is laughing at something one of the pretty blond college girls has said. I watch him, unable to stop myself, even when his eyes meet mine and he falls abruptly silent.
Drew is already talking a mile a minute as he approaches. “The third pitch of CCK is one of the best photo-ops on the mountain,” he says. “I hope you brought your cameras—this is one you’ll want to show the kiddies. Who needs a partner?” Drew’s gaze falls on me. I struggle to meet his eyes, and something flickers across his face.
He knows.
Climbing is all about trust. You have to trust your partner. In that one flicker, I know what Drew’s thinking: You’re not the person I thought you were, so how can I trust you as a climber?
It’s a small group today, since many of the college kids have gone home for the summer. Everybody here knows I don’t have a partner, and people are already pairing up, avoiding my eyes.
I feel the hot prickle of tears, but try to act like the obvious snub isn’t bothering me.
“I’ll climb with Jesse,” Adam says, and the blond girl he was talking to looks at him in surprise.
“Good, fine, I’ll climb with Clara,” Drew says, obviously relieved.
Adam walks over to me, and I say in a low voice, “You don’t have to climb with me. You don’t have to do this.”
He shrugs. “What if I want to?”
For the first time in months, I see the flash of his dimple.
Adam leads the first pitch, and I belay him as he moves up the cliff like silk, his muscles rippling in his back as he reaches for the next handhold. I barely know anything about him, but I know everything I need to watching him climb. He is confident, and sure-footed, and careful when he needs to be, and sometimes he stretches farther than he should to get a good handhold, and every once in a while he just goes balls to the wall, like, Eff it, I’m going all in.
I lead the last pitch, an exhilarating stretch of white billboard rock that makes my teeth and spine tingle with fear and excitement. At the top, I kneel on the jutting overhang so I can see Adam on the sheer face of the cliff. I watch his face, knowing that he won’t see me, because he’s concentrating on finding a foothold. His jaw is clenched, his clear blue eyes shaded by dark eyelashes as he sets his right foot and then reaches up to feel for a crack over his head. His gaze flicks up to mine, and I’m busted. Not that I shouldn’t have been watching him, that’s my job, but I can tell he sees that it is more than that. I blush and look away, but when I peer back over the edge he’s got his eyes closed, and his face is drained of color.
He’s not moving.
“Hey,” I say. “Adam? Are you okay?”
He nods, but he doesn’t open his eyes.
“Adam!” I call again, more sharply.
He doesn’t answer.
I tie off his rope and scan for a tree where I can build a second anchor. I find one, and loop the webbing around a tree trunk, twisting the ropes on either side so I can slip a carabiner on the whole thing to equalize the anchor.
Then I walk backward over the edge, my hand tight on the rope coming out of my belay device, and rap down
to Adam.
“I’m okay,” he says when I reach him, but he doesn’t open his eyes and his face is white and sweaty.
“No,” I say. “You’re not. What’s wrong?”
“Just give me a minute. I did something kind of stupid.” He leans his forehead against the rock and takes deep breaths.
“I know the feeling,” I say. Below us the cliff face drops straight down to the tops of trees.
After a few minutes, he opens his eyes. “I’m feeling better. I just got light-headed for a minute there.”
“Are you sick?”
“No, I’m fasting. I thought I’d be okay, but it was hotter than I expected.”
“Why are you fasting?” I ask in exasperation. “Are you trying to lose weight or something? That’s a stupid thing to do when you’re going climbing.”
“Tell that to God,” he says wryly.
“What?” I stare at him.
“It’s Ramadan. We don’t eat or drink between sunup and sundown for a month. It’s sort of like Lent.”
I don’t know what to say, so I start moving cams and ’biners around with one hand, clipping and unclipping them like a cowboy in an old western drawing a gun.
“Ready?” Adam says. He slips his sunglasses back on and looks up at the blocky boulder shading us.
“Up or down?”
“I made it this far, I might as well go the distance.”
“You first,” I say.
We’re only a short distance from the top, and Adam takes it slow. I stay beside him as much as I can and still keep out of his way, pointing out cracks for foot- and handholds. When he starts giving me dirty looks, I know he’s feeling better.
At the top, we stand on the ledge and the world is at our feet. The sun has come out, and the wind is an orchestra of sound, the lower leaves of the trees tinkling in individual harmony and then building to a great rush of dancing treetops, the steady beat of tires on wet pavement below us keeping time.
“So why’d you do it?” he says as we stand there shoulder to shoulder.
We both know what he’s talking about.
“I—” The words get caught in my throat, and I shake my head helplessly. I need to answer this question, not only for Adam but for me, and for everybody who cares about me. If I can’t explain it now, when I’m standing on the edge of maybe and never, when will I ever?
I take a deep breath. “My dad never talks about my brother Travis. He won’t let any of us talk about him either. My mom says it’s because it hurts too bad, that he says a lot of horrible things about other people, about … Muslims … because he’s hurting inside. But right before I … did what I did … I found my father with a photo album full of Travis, and I realized that he did care, and he never told me, and that made me bitter. Because it was like I wasn’t supposed to care about my brother, and what happened to him, and here Dad was all these years caring, but not saying anything. It scared me that my dad, who always seems so strong, could be so hurt. I didn’t want to be scared. I got angry instead. I was furious that those terrorists, who didn’t even know us, could kill my brother and screw up Dad like that, and not only him but my entire family, and … me. I didn’t know who to be mad at, so I just got mad at everybody.”
I can’t meet his eyes because I’m afraid of what he’ll say. When did I begin to care this much about what he thinks?
“I get being mad because the world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be,” he says.
There’s a bitterness in his voice I’ve never heard before, and I know that somehow he understands what it’s like to feel anger that makes you feel powerful and powerless all at the same time.
“It sucks,” I say. “Neither of us had anything to do with what happened.”
“But we’re left dealing with the fallout,” he says.
I look out at the valley, the square blocks of houses and plots of land, the summer trees in a million shades of green, and cloud shadows moving slowly across all of it. I wonder why people climb mountains and build towers aiming for the sky. When we are so high, do we feel bigger than everything else? Or does it remind us how small we really are?
“I feel God the most when I’m up here,” I say, something I’ve never admitted to anyone. Sometimes religion seems so messy and full of arbitrary rules, and really, why does it have to be so complicated?
“Me too.” He stares out over the world that seems to go on forever. “Have you ever noticed that it somehow feels the same when you’re at the bottom looking up at a mountain as it does on the top looking down?”
I take a deep breath. “Can we start over?” I say. “Please?”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment and then he turns to me with a crooked grin. “Hi, I’m Adam, and there’s something you should know about me.”
I wait.
“I take such great soil samples that my boss insisted I change my middle name to ‘the Great’ last week. It looks awesome on my license.”
I smile. “I bet it does. Hi, Adam, I’m Jesse. Nice to meet you.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Alia
After the man in the blue shirt screams at me, I don’t run, exactly, but I walk really fast back to where Julia is still sitting in her office chair.
“Where’s Travis?” I say too loud.
“He hasn’t come back. What’s going on?” Julia’s voice is a breathy whisper.
“Nothing,” I say. “But we’ve got to get out of here. Come on, let’s go.” With or without Travis, it’s time to go, but I’m so scared that I want to cry. I can’t do this. I really can’t do this by myself.
“Wait, not yet,” Julia gasps.
“Just a minute more,” I say, thinking about what the man had said: Two have already hit—do you think there can’t be a third? Two what? What was he talking about?
“How old are you?” Julia asks, wheezing softly. “You’re younger than I first thought. The scarf makes you look older.”
“Sixteen,” I say, feeling absurdly pleased that the scarf makes me look more grown up.
“Sixteen? Wow. You’re one brave girl.”
I frown. “I’m not brave.” Lia is the brave one. I’m always scared inside. Every day, I feel like I’m walking on ice and it’s cracking in every direction I turn.
She takes a deep breath and presses her hand to her chest. “My mom used to tell me when I was having one of my attacks that I needed to hold on for just one minute longer than I thought I could bear, and then one more. I think bravery is trusting yourself enough to know you can hold on for that one more minute. I don’t know what’s going on out there,” she says, waving a hand toward the window, “but I’ve seen what’s going on in here, in these stairwells and offices. There are angels walking among us today. And you’re one of them.”
I shake my head, because I know she’s wrong. I’m just trying to get through this.
“I just want to get home,” I say. “I just want to see my parents and my brother and my friends.”
Travis comes bursting through the stairwell door, and we both startle. He’s sweating, his shirt clinging to his chest, and he’s breathing hard.
“Hold on,” he says, when he sees that I’m getting ready to lift Julia to her feet. “I want to get something first.”
Without saying anything about where he had gone, or what he was doing, he runs down the hall. I ease Julia back into the chair, but don’t take my eyes off Travis. I’m afraid he’s going to disappear again.
He stops in front of a vending machine, which I hadn’t even noticed. He messes with it and then comes running back with his arms full of bottled water.
“Thank God,” I say, and take the bottle he hands me. I open it, and the first few gulps washes the smoke and gunk out of my throat. I close my eyes and tip my head back, and, oh, the slide of smooth, cold water down my throat is wonderful. I can’t remember being this thirsty before, even when I was fasting. One of the gates of heaven is called the “Thirst Quencher,” and for the firs
t time I really understand why.
When I finish the bottle, I open my eyes and see that Travis is watching me.
“What?” I ask, automatically putting my hand up to my head and tugging my scarf back into place.
“We need to get going,” he says, urging Julia to her feet. “I found another stairwell with fewer people.”
He swings her purse onto his shoulder, and she clutches his arm. We’ve stuck several waters into her purse, and I’m carrying three bottles. I’d intended on keeping them for us in case we needed them on the way down, but as soon as I step through the stairwell door and see the tired and desperate faces of the people trudging down the stairs, I hand out the bottles. Travis does the same, and we watch for a moment as people take a few sips and then pass them to the person behind them.
“Let’s go,” Travis says.
We head back down the stairs.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Jesse
That night, I Skype call Hank fifteen times.
On the sixteenth time, my brother’s picture flickers onto the screen.
“Jesus, Jesse.” He runs his hand through his short, dark blond hair, and looks pissed and sheepish all at the same time.
“Really, Hank? You taking lessons from Dad?”
“I know, Jesse. I’m sorry I never called you back. I’ve felt bad about it.”
“At least you didn’t try to tell me you lost your phone, or your dog ate your computer or something,” I say. “But why, Hank?”
“Look, I’m not sure what you want to know. I’ve spent a lot of time forgetting what happened back then.” He shakes his head. “Why do you think I moved over seven thousand miles away? What can I say, Jesse? It’s not a time in my life I like to think about.”
“I want to understand, Hank,” I say. “What happened to Travis? Tell me all the big, loud secrets that have messed up my life and I don’t even know why. You know something or you wouldn’t be avoiding me.”
