“Are you serious?” he asks. “But you look healthy.”
“Hey, it’s what’s on the inside that counts, right?” I throw that line at people a lot, can’t lie. But it fails to draw a smile out of Valentino. “I got diagnosed with viral cardiomyopathy a few years ago, which can be super dramatically translated as my heart trying to kill me. If you want boring medical details, then WebMD can give you the CliffsNotes.”
“Two different websites,” Dalma says.
“Whatever. The point is that it can happen whenever, wherever.”
“Now Death-Cast will help you breathe easier,” Valentino says. “Orion, I’m so sorry that this is something you even have to worry about. I’m in awe of you.”
I probably shouldn’t tell him that kind words like that get my heart going. I’m not trying to die, but death by compliment sounds nice.
“If only that was everything,” I say.
I kind of want to stop, feeling guilty that we’re swinging at Valentino with all this death talk when he came to Times Square tonight to live his life. But with Valentino’s concerned, raised eyebrows and soul-gazing blue eyes, I get the vibe that he’s waiting for me to drop this other chapter in my story.
“So I lost my parents on 9/11,” I say, giving it that pause that everyone needs to swallow that down. But I’ve also learned that you can’t wait too long because if you’re not running your mouth, someone else will start running theirs to tell you their own 9/11 story.
That’s what happens when your city lives through a traumatic disaster like that.
Everyone felt something across the city, across the country, across the world. But there’s a time and place, and I’ve lost count of how many times I tell people about losing my parents only for them to jump at the chance to let me know how they couldn’t catch a bus home, or weren’t allowed to play outside for a week. What am I supposed to say to that? I know what—I don’t care, and Your life went on; my parents’ didn’t, and You got your life back, but mine changed.
This is where outsiders like Valentino are blessings.
He’s quiet, either too stunned to find the next words he wants to say or knows no words can change anything. No matter what, I know he’s not bursting to tell me what went down with him that day. Lips sealed, eyes glistening.
Tonight, more than ever, I feel nine years old all over again as I relive that day.
It was a Tuesday. Fourth grade, two days into our first full week of school. I was already chosen to be on the safety patrol squad because I was a tremendous ass-kisser, though all that really meant was I got to wear this lime-green reflective belt and make sure everyone was in their classroom in time for morning announcements. I remember really feeling myself too, walking down the halls in my new navy FUBU jumpsuit and bright white sneakers, stuff my parents bought me during back-to-school shopping.
“It seemed like an ordinary day,” I say.
And it still took me a minute to catch on that it wasn’t.
My shift was over, so I returned my belt to the security desk, where the guard and vice principal were watching the news on one of those big-ass TVs that were always being rolled from classroom to classroom, depending on which teacher called dibs on it first.
“The footage looked like something out of an action movie, but it was so, so real. I saw the towers upright and burning, and then they cut to the collapse.” I feel a buzzing in my head and an emptiness in my stomach. “If you want to know how stupid I was, I didn’t know this was even going down in New York at that point. My vice principal had called the buildings the World Trade Center, but I grew up only knowing them as the Twin Towers. So I wrote it off as some video game company in another country, and I was so relieved that it wasn’t happening here because it looked so scary, and I went back to class without giving it another thought.”