“Yeah, I’ve got a condom on my heart, don’t sweat it.”
“I’m serious, Orion.”
I keep my eyes on Valentino, wanting to kiss the hell out of him. Holding back my feelings is like sinking into quicksand; the deeper and deeper I’m buried, the more desperate I am to breathe. “I’m serious too. It’s just getting harder and harder acting like I don’t like him. Every minute that passes, I care more.”
“Do you think it’s extra charged because it’s his End Day?”
“I was feeling my feelings before I knew he was a Decker. My heart knows what’s up.”
“Then you better get back to him,” Dalma says, meaning it. “Tell him I said hi?”
“I will. I love you, D.”
“I love you too, O.”
We hang up, and I feel more at ease, like I’ve got one less hand gripping my heart as I get ready to hit Ground Zero.
I rejoin Valentino. “Dalma says hi.”
“Tell her I say hi back next time you speak to her. Is she okay?”
“All good.” I look down the street, knowing that when we turn the corner, everything I’ve been avoiding for years will come into view. “You still want to do this? Legit zero offense if there’s somewhere else you want to go.”
“I’m still in. Are you?”
“I am,” I say.
Half-lie, half-truth.
I take the first step, aka the most important one. The rest follow. I don’t turn back at the last second. I keep moving forward into this strangely chilling ghost town. This is supposed to be the city that never sleeps, but it’s almost noon, and it’s quiet and dark, the sun blocked by the high-rise buildings. I immediately think about writing a story about a boy who follows the sound of footprints left by invisible spirits, and when they step into the sunlight, they’re revealed to be his parents, giving him the chance to finally say goodbye. I have a small, stupid envy for that fictitious kid who gets closure.
The deeper I go into the darkness, the eerier it becomes.
“I’m starting to feel like you shouldn’t be here,” I say.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Valentino says.
If he dies here, not only am I never returning to this spot, I’m getting the hell out of this city.
Another minute in, things start feeling less like a graveyard but still alarming. This is the construction site where they’ve been building the memorial for the past few years, and it’s heavily guarded. There are steel barricades and blue wooden barriers and chain fences and cinder blocks and police officers standing outside their cop cars. No one is getting through. Security is going strong, as if someone might launch another attack during the construction of the memorial; it reminds me of making sandcastles at the beach when you have to dig moats if you don’t want the waves destroying everything you’ve built. I can’t even see any of the memorial-in-the-making yet, I’d have to climb up one of those cranes to get a bird’s-eye view. But I already know what’s there—and what’s not there. It’s a hole in the world where the Twin Towers once stood, and I feel like it’s sucking me in, like a whirlpool.
As a family member of the fallen, I’ve gotten occasional updates about all the ways they want to memorialize the victims. There will be twin waterfall pools where the towers were. This Survivor Tree that was in the area, and, well the name kind of tells you the rest. Some stone monoliths studded with Trade Center steel they recovered during cleanup. And, of course, inscribing the names of everyone who died, from those in the planes and towers and the Pentagon to the first responders and recovery workers. But I’m not going to be able to see any of it until next fall for the tenth anniversary; if I even make it to then.