I don’t know why I’m giving every damn detail like this, maybe I’ve got more of a novel in me than I give myself credit for, because I’m painting one hell of a picture.
Then I share the thought that haunts me the most.
“I had no idea my parents were dead at that point.”
I wipe away some sneaky-ass tears and stare at the ground, I can’t even look at Valentino or Dalma.
I start trying to wrap it up, but these memories are rolling fast like a montage, it’s got me thinking about how everyone says you see your life flashing before your eyes before you die. Maybe my body somehow knows that I’m hours, or even minutes, away from an End Day call.
If this is the last time I’m going to share this story, I’m going to tell it right.
Classes began as normal, but by lunch, there was a shift. Teachers were abandoning their lesson plans and telling us to do independent reading or chat quietly among ourselves as they stepped out into the halls to have their own conversations. No one was telling us what was happening. Then parents started arriving and picking up their children. Still, no word on why. But we started making a game out of it in class, betting on who would go home next.
“Then I finally overheard someone say the Twin Towers were attacked.”
There are so many things I remember about that day, but there are little gaps too, like not knowing who it was who dropped those words on me like a bomb, or how long I sat in that chair trying to process what that meant. But eventually I got up, kind of zombie-walking to my teacher Mrs. Williams’s desk and told her that my parents were in Manhattan that morning for work. She was gentle, using that voice she always had whenever I asked to go to the bathroom or needed her to repeat something for me that I didn’t understand. Then I realized I had to make it clearer for her.
“My parents had a meeting at the Twin Towers,” I say, and I’ve said those words a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times because everyone wants to know why they were there. It’s not like they were walking down a bad neighborhood’s dark alley late at night, they were conducting business in a business building during business hours.
My teacher, a woman who studied Shakespeare and expanded my vocabulary and assigned my reading, had no words for me after I told her where my parents were.
I still held out hope. My mom was always running late, like putting on makeup five minutes after she was supposed to be out the door already. I kept thinking that maybe they were late to their meeting because of her, and that I’d have so many more years of teasing her for that little character flaw, that for that day, we’d be thanking that procrastination bone in her body.
“You hear a lot of stories like that—about people who were supposed to be in the towers that morning but overslept or got stuck in traffic or rode the wrong train or felt sick so they stayed home.” I take a deep breath. I can’t believe I’ve been talking so much, and I can’t believe no one has stopped me. “But my parents weren’t lucky like that, so I was the last kid in the whole school.”
And that’s when I bust down, crying hard.
I don’t need to get into how Dayana was called to rescue me as my emergency contact, or my transition into living with Dalma and her family, or all the nightmares I had and the nightmares I have now and what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. I probably couldn’t even get the words out if I tried, I got myself so deep in those memories that I swear that Death-Cast must have gone live hours ago while I was too busy thinking about the towers falling with my parents inside.
“Can I hug you?”
Valentino’s words surprise me, cutting through the air like there are no other sounds—no cars honking, no Death-Cast reps with microphones, no sobs coming out my own mouth.
I nod, still crying, like I’m still that kid who needed to be comforted over and over because I felt so lonely.