All We Have Left

by Wendy Mills

  I back up fast until I run into the glass front door and the bells jingle merrily above me.

  “Adam was only three when 9/11 happened, Dad, he didn’t have anything to do with—”

  “I don’t care how old he was!” He stands up with a clatter, the stool falling away behind him. “Those people want to destroy us! They hate everything we stand for! They don’t eat, they don’t drink, they live on hate for America!”

  I don’t say anything, but I can’t help but think he lives on hate too, and how is it any different?

  I feel his rage pressing outward like a big pressure bubble against my chest. I put my hand on the door handle, wondering if I should run, because while he’s never laid a finger on me before, I’ve never seen him this angry before either.

  “Adam and his family are good people.” I’m talking loudly, trying to make him understand. And I think I might love him, Dad, and, oh God, what would you say if I told you that? “Adam and his dad are even helping me find out what Travis was doing in the towers that day. They’re helping me!”

  As soon as the words come out of my mouth, I know it is a mistake, an unrecoverable failure.

  With a shatter of glass, the stand holding expensive designer sunglasses goes crashing to the floor.

  “They are not good people! Those people won’t stop until they have killed every one of us, and you want to talk to them about your brother? The one they killed?”

  “They didn’t kill him,” I try to keep control of my voice. “You can’t blame almost two billion people for what just a few of them did!”

  He is silent, and I continue in a softer tone. “You never talk about Travis, and you won’t let any of us talk about him either. How do you think that makes me feel?”

  He doesn’t say anything for a long time, and it’s like we are both clinging to a rope that can only hold one of us, and I wonder which one will let go first.

  “You’re not my daughter anymore,” he says, and his words echo in the cool stillness of the shop. “Do you hear me? You’re not my daughter anymore.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Alia

  Travis is talking as he pulls me down the stairs, but I’m not listening to him, I’m not listening to anything but the frantic beat of my thoughts, a constant drumming of you need to find him, you need to find Ayah. I’m crying, big choking sobs that bring in gasps of thick, smoky air. I’m overcome with coughing, and have to stop.

  “Alia, you need to calm down,” Travis says, and finally I hear him, and I know he’s right, but I cannot leave my father up there. But all of a sudden I can’t breathe, and I lean forward with my hands on my knees and Travis is saying, Breathe, Alia, breathe. I try to, but I catch another lungful of acrid, burning air, and my vision starts to go black at the edges.

  Breathe, Alia, breathe.

  And suddenly, I can again. I stand up, still coughing, but not as bad.

  “There’s got to be another way up,” I say to Travis when I can talk again. “We’ll find another stairwell.”

  Travis doesn’t say anything, but he looks weary and somehow defeated.

  “There’s got to be another way up!” I scream at him, and start back down the stairwell. After a moment, I hear him follow.

  The next door I try is locked, but the one below it swings open easily, and I breathe a small prayer of thanks.

  Bookcases lay on the ground, manuals scattering under my feet as I stumble past desks. For some reason small details stand out: floor tiles that are skewed at a weird angle; a paper floating up in front of me so slowly that I can see that it is a memo about keeping the bathrooms clean; a wall with a perfect Z ripped through it.

  I make my way past overturned furniture, stepping around big gray worms of air-conditioning ducts that have fallen from the ceiling. There has to be another stairwell, but where?

  “Alia, we need to go,” Travis says.

  I feel a gust of wind and turn instinctively toward it. I suddenly, desperately want to feel the cool wind on my face, need to take a few deep breaths of air that is clean and good. I go into an office, and some of the windows are blown out. I can feel glass crunching under my feet, and the wind whips at the smoke, tossing it around like a gray, ragged flag. The wind gets stronger, and I lean my head out the narrow window, gulping down air.

  And then I freeze in shock.

  “Alia, we have to go—” Travis is saying as he comes up beside me, and then, “Oh my God.”

  The other tower, the south one, is burning, and orange molten metal is pouring out of one side like a waterfall of lava. Papers and burning bits of things float through the air like some kind of crazy flaming confetti. A large piece of metal floats and wobbles past our window, and then a fiery shower of debris spills down.

  Horrified, I look down, and see smoke and the dim blaze of red lights spiraling crazily.

  Holding on tight to the edge of the window, I lean out and look up. Flames flicker along the side of the building far above us. People have their heads out the window, waving something white—a tablecloth, a chef’s coat?—at several helicopters that are circling the top of the building.

  I feel Travis’s hand on my back as he steadies me.

  I turn to him, speechless.

  “The firefighters will get to them,” Travis says.

  But I don’t believe him.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Jesse

  I’m fleeing, not thinking, as I run. I see Dad’s truck and jump inside, feeling under his seat for the spare key. I crank the engine, and back out of the driveway, gravel flying as I spin the truck onto the road and hit the gas.

  I don’t know where I’m going, just away, away from my father and his endless rage and his terrible words that he can never take back.

  I accelerate and fly down the empty road. I turn onto Main Street and see the Gunks, shining silver in the moonlight. Suddenly I know where I need to go, and head over the bridge, and then open up on the road that leads through fields and then swoops up into the dark forest.

  I’m crying as I drive, and I know I should stop, or at least slow down, that this is dangerous driving these narrow roads and sharp curves like this, but I don’t.

  How could he say that to me? How could his hate be so big that it leaves no room for me?

  I reach the base of the Gunks and turn to make the steep climb to the top. The moon has disappeared behind the clouds, and it’s just my headlights cutting a heavy swath through the green trees as I wind higher and higher.

  Near the top, I pull off the side of the road and get out. The wind has picked up, and even though it’s August, it’s a cool wind and I shiver. I run across the deserted road and find the trail that I know is there, though it’s hard to see in the darkness.

  I scramble up the steep path, holding on to trees to keep my balance, and gingerly cross a wide rock face to the spot I want. It’s the edge of the sky, a cliff dropping off steeply below me, but from here I can see in almost every direction. I stand on the mountaintop and feel the freshening wind on my face and take deep gulps of air, trying to calm myself.

  I stand, feeling the rock under my feet, the night sky stretching endlessly above me, in a cathedral that echoes in every part of me.

  A while later, I hear the rustle of something big in the bushes and I step back against a tree. It could be a bear. It could be anything.

  The rumbling of thunder I heard earlier has gotten closer, and I can see the play of lightning in the tops of the clouds. I need to go, I need to get down off this cliff, but now something big is coming toward me.

  “Jesse!” someone shouts, and then Adam comes into view, scrabbling across the rock face toward me.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask dumbly.

  “You left your earbuds in my car. I came back to see if I could peg your window with a pebble or something, and I saw you come running out. You looked so upset, I followed you. Why were you driving like that?”

  I tell him quickly about the fight and
what my dad said, and his face turns grim.

  “We should have been more careful,” he says. “We should have known this was coming.” A bolt of thunder cracks across the sky, and he looks around. “Come on, let’s get off this cliff,” he says, and reaches out to grab my wrist. “If it starts raining, we’ll never make it across that rock face in the dark.”

  But it’s too late. The sky opens up, and rain falls in swirling, battering sheets. Lightning is dancing around us now, and I yank at his hand. “Come on!” I shout. “I know a place.”

  We slip and slide down the path, and Adam swears as he stumbles. It starts hailing, tiny pellets hitting my face and back, but I finally see the overhang.

  “Here,” I gasp as I pull him in under it, out of the rain and the hail.

  I turn to look at Adam. It’s dark, but he takes out his phone and turns on the flashlight app.

  “You’re bleeding!” I exclaim, seeing the rivulet of blood running down his face from a cut in his forehead.

  “I am?”

  “Right here.” I touch the spot on his forehead, and his breath catches.

  I freeze, and I can feel the cold drops of rain on my suddenly burning skin.

  I trace around the cut on his forehead, pretending my fingers aren’t trembling, and that his eyes haven’t closed as he takes a deep breath.

  I’m shivering but I have never felt so warm in my life, my skin humming with heat and yearning.

  “Adam—” I start to say, and a rush of mud and leaves come crashing down over the overhang. Adam presses me against the rock and holds my face against his shoulder as more mud and now rocks come cascading down. I can feel his body against every inch of me, his leg wedged between mine, the tenseness of his muscles as he braces himself. I know that he’s getting the worst of it, and I shut my eyes, feeling the rapid beating of his heart and smelling the warm, soap-soft smell of his shirt against my face.

  Thunder cracks right above us, and I jump. He rubs his fingers into the back of my neck, saying, “Shhh, shhh.” I can feel the warm dampness of his breath against my ear, and goose pimples race down my arms, which have nothing to do with the cold and the rain, and everything to do with him.

  “It’s going to be okay.” He pulls away so he can look down at me.

  His eyes are almost black in the shadows, and his face is splattered with mud and blood, but I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life. I want to kiss him, suddenly and desperately, and his face goes quiet. Then he leans forward, his lips brushing mine, and it’s fire and ice, and I want to crawl inside him as I catch his shoulders and bring his lips down harder on mine. He cups one hand against the back of my head and braces himself against the wall with the other, pressing me hard against the rock. I suck in my breath, tasting him and me, all intermingled. The feel of him against me, the white-hot fury of the storm, all of it blurs into need and hunger and now.

  We kiss for what seems like forever, and when we pull apart, the mudslide has stopped and it’s just rain falling in a steady stream outside the overhang.

  “You’re still bleeding,” I say softly, reaching both my hands up and rubbing his cheeks, feeling the graze of stubble under my palms.

  “I don’t think I’d notice if my arm was amputated right now.” We stand chest to chest for a long moment, breathing together.

  “Is it always like that?” His voice brushes against my ear.

  “No,” I say, and he nods, like he knew that but just wanted to make sure.

  We sit with our backs against the wall, watching the rain slow. We’re sitting thigh to thigh, our arms and hands intertwined.

  “I knew it,” I say suddenly.

  “Knew what?”

  “That you hadn’t kissed anyone before.” There’s a sunshiny little window in my heart because of it.

  He smiles, but his eyes are shadowed. “I was just waiting for you,” he says. “If I’d known it was going to be like that … well, let’s just say I’m not sure I would have held out as long as I did.”

  I close my eyes as he brushes the hair back from my face, feeling powerful in an elemental, earth-mother kind of way.

  “I’m glad your first kiss was with me,” I say.

  “Me too,” he says, and squeezes my fingers.

  In the quiet darkness of our small haven, the rain misting in the air, I tell him the rest of it.

  About the missing poster that Anne found at the 9/11 museum.

  That I’m afraid Alia might be dead.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Alia

  I’m just turning away from the terrible scene outside the window when something catches my eye. I turn back and watch numbly as a woman falls past our window.

  “Nooooo!” I scream, and turn to Travis. He puts his arms around me and holds me tightly.

  No, no, no, no, no, no.

  Please, no.

  “Why did she do that?” I whisper into Travis’s chest. Why would someone jump out the window?

  But as I see flames begin licking along the edge of the ceiling above us, I know. She jumped because her choices were monstrous, were unbearable. Which would I choose? To burn alive or to jump?

  I shudder because I can’t even imagine having to make that choice, can’t even imagine what it must be like on the floors above us.

  Where Ayah may still be.

  “I’ve got to find him,” I say, and draw away from Travis, but he suddenly pulls me back.

  “Don’t look,” he says, and crushes my face against his chest. I start crying, because even without seeing, I know. Another person has fallen, or jumped, plummeting to the ground so very far below.

  “Don’t they know if they just hang on someone will come help them?” But even as I say the words, I know that whatever is going on upstairs has left these people with no other options.

  Travis doesn’t say anything, but he is trembling so hard that I put my arms around him and hug him fiercely. In my mind, the words in the narration box over our heads read:

  They cling together as the world falls apart, filling each other’s cracks with bits of themselves.

  I see a phone on the desk and with a small yelp, I lunge toward it. But when I put the receiver to my ear, there’s only silence.

  “It’s not working!” I wanted to let someone, anyone, know that we are here, and what’s going on. Do people know how bad this is?

  Travis starts to say something, and then he looks down at Julia’s purse that he has carried up all those stairs. He pulls it off his shoulder and dumps it onto the desk. A wallet, keys, pens, a card on a cord just like the one Dad carries to work every day, subway tokens, and …

  A cell phone.

  With shaking fingers, Travis flips open the phone and dials three numbers.

  9-1-1.

  He listens, his face full of hope, but immediately it fades.

  “Busy,” he says briefly.

  “Try someone else,” I urge. “Maybe if you call someone else, it’ll work.”

  He dials again, listens, and then shakes his head.

  “Still busy. Alia, we need to go.” Travis looks up at the flames spreading out like hungry vines in the ceiling above us. “We need to go now.”

  The smoke is getting thicker, and I know he is right.

  “One more time,” I say, because I can’t let go of my belief that if only people understood what was going on here they would be here, helping.

  More people are jumping now, and I’m trying to not look out the narrow windows. I close my eyes, but I see them anyway.

  I force myself to concentrate on Travis’s face, the strong line of his jaw, the way his straight blond hair sweeps across his forehead as he holds the phone to his ear.

  I move closer to him.

  “It’s ringing,” he says.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Jesse

  Adam follows me to Emi’s house, where he waits patiently as I run in, and then follows me to the climbing shop so I can drop off Dad’s truck. There are n
o lights on in the apartment over the shop when I slip the key back under the seat and walk over to Adam’s car.

  We don’t speak, lost in our own thoughts, as he drives me to where Mom’s staying, a small apartment in her friend Mary’s garage. Mary sometimes rents it out to budget-minded climbers, luring them in with the promise of a home-cooked breakfast.

  “We’re going to do this, right?” I ask as we stand in the driveway. “Tomorrow morning?”

  “Just promise you won’t go tonight. There’s nothing to see tonight.”

  I hesitate, because I want to run, run, run as fast as I can. But he’s right, there won’t be anything to see until tomorrow morning.

  “Early,” I say.

  “Early,” he agrees and presses a kiss to my forehead.

  I lean my head against him for a moment, and then step away.

  “You sure you don’t want me to come in with you?”

  It’s tempting, but I know I need to do this myself.

  He nods and turns to get back into his car. I watch him go, and then take a deep breath and go into my mother’s apartment.

  As late as it is, Mom is sitting on the couch watching I Love Lucy.

  “Jesse!” She’s surprised to see me, but recovers quickly. “I made breakfast for dinner, if you want a feta and sausage omelet.”

  She winces a little, and I know that she’s thinking of Dad, because that’s his favorite kind of omelet.

  I never really realized how much she loved my father until she left him. I look over at the small refrigerator where she’s got September 11 circled on the calendar, and has written the time of the memorial the town is planning for Travis. It’s something she never would have dared to do when she was still living with Dad. In the past, it was like September 11 didn’t exist, though as the anniversary approached, Dad would get quieter and drink more, and Mom would work herself up like some sort of windup doll, leaving a path of casseroles and a sparkling-clean apartment in her wake.