by Wendy Mills
“What?” I put my hand on his arm, and he stares down at it and then up at me, and something kind of breaks in his eyes. I hold my breath, my gaze locked with his for a long moment, and then he grabs my hand and squeezes it.
We continue walking, hand in hand, something big and unsaid filling the space between us.
Adam clears his throat and continues, his voice husky. “I only remember some of it. I was only three, but Sabeen remembers more. We were living in New York City, and my sister remembers my mother carrying her out to the living room and seeing my father in handcuffs. Both Sabeen and I were crying, and there were all these strangers in the house, some of them with guns. They were all talking in loud voices, even to my mother, who had converted and changed her name by then. They took my dad to jail. He was there for two months, like he was a common criminal, not an engineer with a job and a family, who had never done anything wrong in his entire life. They said it was because he was here illegally, but it’s not like he was hiding or anything. He had a lawyer, he’d put in an appeal, he was just waiting to hear back. I remember being scared, and my mom telling me it would be okay, that, God willing, my father would come home soon. Then one day they let him out of jail. No apologies or explanations, just you’re free to go.”
“That’s terrible,” I say, and squeeze his fingers.
He looks down at our linked hands. “My dad said it made him a better Muslim, because he saw how important it was for him to show Americans that all Muslims weren’t like the ones who hijacked those planes. His citizenship application was eventually approved, we moved to Michigan, and my parents became involved in outreach for the Muslim American community. It’s not like they were the only ones that happened to. A ton of Muslims were arrested after 9/11, some of them for less reason than my dad. It’s always been like that and always is going to be like that, one group singled out for one reason or another. It’s just our turn.”
He says this so matter-of-factly that my stomach turns.
“What?” He sees my face, and shrugs. “Yeah, I know, it sucks. But eventually there’ll be another group to hate on. Most people don’t give me a hard time because my dad is from another country, or that I’m Muslim. It’s hard though, because I want to believe the best in people, but time and time again, I get proved wrong.” He looks away, but he grips my hand, and tiny trembles course through my stomach and chest.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
We’re standing outside the shop. Fireflies are swirling around, and we watch them for a few minutes, shining their tiny lights in all that darkness.
“You better go in,” he says.
“Okay,” I say, but I don’t want to let go of his hand.
We stand for a few moments and then he releases my hand and I go up the stairs.
It’s only after I’m inside that I realize he never answered my question about whether or not he’d ever kissed anybody.
That night, Dad and I watch a show about someone doing a makeover on her kitchen. We don’t talk much, but it’s a good silence, not the awful, bottomless pit that it used to be. The hopeful part of me thinks maybe things can change. Maybe they can get better.
Later, my cell phone rings and it flashes an unknown number. I almost don’t answer it, but I sigh and go stand by my window where I have better reception.
“Hello?”
“Is this Jesse?” a woman’s voice says. Her voice is breathy, as if she’s excited, or having trouble breathing.
“This is she,” I answer automatically, leaning against the windowsill and looking up at the moon rising over the tops of the trees.
“My name is Julia Harris. Anne Jonna gave me your number. She said you wanted to talk to me about my experience in the World Trade Center.”
I feel a surge of excitement. “Yes! Thank you for calling. You see, my brother Travis, he died in the towers and—”
“Travis McLaurin? So he was your brother?” she interrupts me.
“Yes.” My pulse is thump-thumping. “Travis was my brother.”
“I’m so sorry he didn’t make it.” She pauses, and when she speaks again, her voice is choked. “I tried to call several times—”
“You called my parents?” I think about what Hank said about someone calling, and Dad getting so upset that he refused to talk about Travis again after that.
“I tried, but the number had been changed. I found the number on my cell phone bill, and I really wanted to—”
“Wait. Your cell phone bill?”
“There was a strange number on my cell phone bill. I didn’t see it until months later, but when I saw it … I knew it was them calling out. Travis was carrying my purse, and he must have found the phone. I’m glad it worked. Do you know if he got through? From the towers?”
“Yes,” I say numbly. “He left a message.”
She is silent for a moment. “Well, I guess that’s something,” she says. “I suppose … I suppose I was hoping he was able to talk to someone. I liked thinking I helped him do that, at least, after all the two of them did for me.”
“The two of them?” I press my phone tightly to my ear, feeling the rounded edges of the case pressing into my skin.
“Travis and Alia,” Julia says. “Do you know what happened to Alia?”
“No,” I say, feeling a crushing sense of disappointment. It’s not like I even knew Alia, but somehow she’s gotten all wrapped up with Travis in my mind. “I was hoping you could tell me about her. I’d like to contact her. Can you tell me what happened in the towers?”
I listen with fascination and rising dread as she tells me about Travis and Alia with her in the north tower, helping her down the stairs, giving her water, waiting as she recovered enough to go on. In my head, all I can think is: 102 minutes. They had 102 minutes from the time the first plane hit until the north tower came down. How long did they spend helping Julia? How much time did that leave them?
“Do you know anything else about Alia that might help me find her?” I ask when she finishes telling me how the firemen helped her down and put her in an ambulance, getting out right before the first tower fell. “I’d like to know what happened to her and Travis after that.”
“Me too,” Julia says, and sighs. “I thank God for the two of them every day. I moved away from the city after the attacks. I thought I could stay, but every time I heard a loud noise or saw a plane fly overhead, I felt so sick and scared. I moved back to New Mexico, and now I raise schnauzers. I looked for their names in the papers when they were doing the stories on all the victims, and I found Travis’s, but I never could find Alia’s. I like to think she made it out, but …”
“But what?” I ask.
“I think they would have stayed together,” she says. “The two of them.”
The thought is beautiful and horrifying all at the same time.
“But even if they didn’t find her—and I know they didn’t find a lot of the bodies—they still would have known that she was there,” I say. “She still would have been listed among the dead.”
“Sure,” she says. “That’s true. If anyone knew she was there in the first place.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Alia
“Be careful,” Travis says to me. There’s water on the stairs, and he turns to give me his hand. I hesitate, and then take it.
His hand is warm as he carefully closes his fingers around mine. He makes sure I get past the water without slipping, and then we continue down. We pass an abandoned wheelchair at the top of a landing, and below we can see a woman being carried by several men. I wonder if they know her.
I think about what Julia had said: There are angels walking among us today.
The stairway is so narrow, and there are so many frightened people jammed into this small space, and the woo-ah-woo-ah of the sirens is screaming in our ears, so loud it makes you feel like you’re going out of your mind. The funny thing, though, is that everyone is pretty calm. Nobody is shoving to get ahead and everyone is just walkin
g steadily down. When someone starts getting panicky, there has always been someone with a calming word. Both fear and bravery are con-tagious, I realize.
Travis is still holding my hand, and I know that he’s worried about me slipping, and maybe my touch is helping him feel better. I wonder suddenly what my parents would think about him.
“Will you tell me what happened?” I ask when there is a lull in the walking as something or someone in front of us holds up the line. “With your father?”
He looks over at me, his jaw working, and rubs the back of his neck.
“I was a coward,” he says in a flat voice. “And my grandfather died for it.”
“What?” My voice rises, and a few people glance over their shoulders at us. But the line is moving again, and we begin shuffling back down the stairs.
“Gramps had a group of guys he jammed with on Wednesday nights. They’d known one another since ’Nam, and they’d get together every week and play, drink beer, and hang out. Just like kids, except they were all like in their fifties and sixties. I went with him that night, and we left late, and a couple of punks came out of nowhere. One of them started slapping Gramps around, just punching him for no reason, you know? Gramps was trying to talk them down, to stay calm, but one of them pulled a knife … and I freaked out. I ran. I left Gramps, and by the time I found someone to help, and came back, he was almost dead.”
He swallows and traces a finger down a thin crack in the wall. A woman in front of us is praying and working rosary beads, and their tiny clicking somehow feels reassuring.
Travis turns his head back to me, and his eyes are stark. “He was in the hospital for weeks. He was in a coma, and they said he might come out of it, but they didn’t know. So Dad moved him to a nursing home in our town, and he just wasted away, month after month, until finally he died. By the end, I was praying he would die. Isn’t that messed up? But I knew he wouldn’t want to live like that. He was always so full of life. He never would have wanted to just lie there like that. Never. But I put him there, and he never even opened his eyes so I could tell him I was sorry. God, I was so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, when I can talk, my eyes full of tears for him. “You have to know that.”
“My dad says I’m a coward,” Travis says. “And he’s right, I know he is. I almost ran away from you, back there in the corridor. I started thinking, ‘I’ll just go down one flight, see if I can find somebody to help,’ and the next thing I knew, I was down two flights and all I could think about was getting out.”
“But you came back,” I say.
“Yeah. I did. But I didn’t want to, so I know my dad’s right about me. He hasn’t forgiven me for Gramps, and I can’t blame him, because I can’t forgive me either.”
“That’s terrible,” I say quietly, but suddenly I’m mad at Travis’s father. How could he make this good, kind boy feel like this?
“I got so angry,” he says in a low voice. “I wanted to kill those guys, but the police never found them, and sometimes I just wanted to kick someone’s ass, anybody’s.”
I don’t know what to say, so I squeeze his fingers and keep walking.
A little while later, I ask, “We’re going to get out of here, right?”
“Yeah, we’re going to get out of here.” He grips my hand hard as we follow the line of people moving quietly down the stairs.
“Doesn’t it feel like things will be different when we get out?” I’m not real sure what I’m trying to say, but how could you go through something like this and it not change everything?
Travis takes a piece of paper towel from a guy standing in a stairwell door holding a roll he had dunked in water, and hands it to me.
“Yeah, things will be different,” he says hoarsely as I press the paper towel to my face.
I see a heavyset man ahead of us being helped down the stairs by two men. Something about him is familiar, and I realize that it is Mr. Morowitz, my dad’s friend from his office, the one I talked to what seems like a lifetime ago.
“Mr. Morowitz!” I call. “Mr. Morowitz!”
The people in front of us let us by so we can catch up with him.
“Alia!” His eyes widen in surprise. “I’m so happy to see you! Did you find your father?”
“My father?” I frown. “No, you said he wasn’t in the building.”
“I need to rest a minute,” he tells his coworkers, and they guide him to a stairwell door, which thankfully is unlocked.
Travis and I follow them inside the office, which is quiet and empty. Mr. Morowitz’s coworkers, a big guy who looks like he played pro football and a tall man with short, neat dreads, help him slide to the floor. Mr. Morowitz takes several big breaths, and the tall man gently takes off Mr. Morowitz’s glasses, which have become fogged with sweat, and slips them into his front pocket.
“Thank you, my friend,” Mr. Morowitz gasps, and closes his eyes. He looks exhausted.
“Mr. Morowitz? Did you see my father?” I ask impatiently. Suddenly, I’m having trouble breathing.
“He must have … forgotten something … because I saw him come in soon after you left,” Mr. Morowitz says, fighting for breath. “I was just getting up to tell him I saw you when there was a whirring sound, and this big explosion, and the entire building just … lurched. Like in an earthquake, just shuddering back and forth. It sways in the wind,” he says, almost dreamily. “Up there, you get used to the window blinds going clack-clack-clack on a windy day, and the water sloshing around in the toilet bowls. But this was different. The building leaned over to the side, and at first I didn’t think it would bounce back. I braced myself to keep from sliding. The windows shattered, and I could see all this paper floating outside, like a ticker-tape parade. And then the building careened back the other way. All I could do was hang on. As soon as I could, I ran for a doorway like they tell you to do in an earthquake. It got hot almost immediately, and smoke started pouring in. When the building stopped moving, I knew it was time to get out of there. All of us did. We didn’t talk much, just headed for the stairs. We’ve been coming down ever since. Slow and steady, right, gentlemen?”
“But my father,” I say, and there are black spots in front of my eyes. “What happened to my father?”
“I don’t know, Alia.” Mr. Morowitz’s voice is thick with regret as he stares up at me. “He was standing near the door, and then I didn’t see him again.”
“He might still be up there? He might be hurt, and not be able to get down?” I cry. “How could you just leave him like that? Why didn’t you check to make sure if he got out?”
Mr. Morowitz closes his eyes. “You don’t understand, Alia,” he says almost in a whisper. “It all happened so fast … we did the best we could. Andrew, here”—he nods at the tall man—“he went around and checked, but he couldn’t find anyone else. Only our receptionist, and she … she didn’t make it.” He swallows hard. “You have to understand, it was very smoky and hard to see.”
“But he could be hurt!” I’m shaking his shoulder, and I can’t seem to stop.
“Alia,” Travis says, and pulls me away. “Alia. Calm down. He’s probably fine. If we got out of an elevator, don’t you think your dad was able to get out of his own office?”
But I’m thinking about the woman we just saw coming down the stairs, burned terribly, and what if Ayah is up there too hurt to move?
I see in Travis’s haunted eyes that he is remembering the same thing.
“I’ve got to go see,” I say.
“Alia …”
“He could be hurt and can’t move!” I turn and grab the knob on the stairwell door.
“Alia, no. He’d want you to get out!” Travis grabs my arm.
“It’s my father! I’m not going to be a coward and pretend like my father might not be up there needing help!”
Immediately, I realize what I’ve said, but it’s too late to take back the words. It’s always too late to take back the words. Travis looks like I h
ave hit him, his face white, his eyes staring.
“Let me go,” I say in a softer voice, tugging away from his iron grip on my arm, and his fingers fall away, and his mouth opens but nothing comes out.
“I’ve got to go,” I say. “I’ve got to go find him.”
I open the door, and it swings shut behind me.
I take a deep breath and start up the stairs.
Alone.
Chapter Forty
Jesse
It’s the middle of August when Mr. Laramore finally comes home.
The day after I found his picture in the yearbook with Travis, I knocked on his door and a neighbor came out and told me he was gone for the summer.
After getting off work, I drove the truck by his house like I’ve been doing almost every day, and this time I see a car in the driveway, lights on in the windows.
I go up to the door and knock.
“Jesse?” Mr. Laramore is dressed the same at home as he is in school, and I don’t know why I’m surprised. It’s not like jeans and high-tops on a thirty-something guy isn’t a fashion statement anywhere.
I’d gotten a C in his Entrepreneurship class, which I was actually pretty proud of. I’d been so screwed up with Nick, and the fallout from getting arrested, that I barely remembered the last couple of months of school.
“How are you, Jesse?” His tone is friendly, if a little guarded. Of course it is. He’s thinking about what I painted on the side of the Peace Center.
“You knew my brother Travis,” I say without preamble. “Why didn’t you tell me that you knew my brother?”
His face freezes, and then he recovers. “Let’s sit down.”
We sit on the rocking chairs on his front porch, but I keep my feet planted on the floor so the chair won’t rock. I don’t need the ground feeling any more precarious and unstable than it already does.
“I knew you were Travis’s sister,” Mr. Laramore says. “Of course I did. I still think about him all the time: whether he’d have a family, if we would have gone to Little League games together, barbecued in my backyard. He wanted to be a music teacher, and maybe we would have hung out together in the teachers’ lounge. Yes, I think about him, but I didn’t see any reason to bring up something that was so painful for your family. For all of us.”
