All We Have Left (19 page)

He makes a buzzing sound, his eyes on the knife. “Try again, Sherlock. It was my grandfather’s. He gave it to me when I turned sixteen.”

I shake my head, not sure I believe him. He inserts the knife between the crack of the doors, pries it open an inch, and then uses his fingers to pull. The muscles in his arms bulge and his face turns red as the doors slide open, one reluctant inch at a time.

“A little help here?” he says, his voice straining.

I jump up and grab the other side of the door and pull. I have no idea whether they are just heavy or if there is some sort of mechanism that is pressing them shut, but it’s
hard.
The doors open a couple of inches and then stop.

“Pull!” Travis gasps.

“I … can’t … pull … any harder!” I gasp back, wishing I had Lia’s superhuman strength, but I don’t, and have to let go.

“Find something to keep it open,” he says, his voice straining.

I look around, and then see my thick, fat American history book. I grab it and shove it between the doors, and Travis finally lets go. The doors shudder but stay open.

But just a few inches. We’d have to be a mouse, a hamster, a ridiculously small purse dog to get through them.

He collapses to the floor, and I sit beside him.

“Now what?” I ask, my voice small.

This time he doesn’t snap at me for asking unanswerable questions and instead just drops his forehead onto his arms.

I jump up and go to the control panel. I study it for a moment and then hit the intercom. “Hello? Is there anybody there? We’re stuck in the elevator! Do you hear me?
We’re stuck in the elevator!
” My voice trembles, and I start jabbing the intercom button over and over again.

There’s a distant
boom!
and the elevator starts swinging again, like the pendulum in one of those old-timey clocks my grandmother has in her house.

“What’s going on?” I look frantically at Travis. I may not know him, may not even like him very much, but he’s the only human being here.

The elevator rocks unsteadily, and dust and water trickle from the ceiling.

Abruptly, the lights go out. I stand still in shock. What did I do? My finger is still pressing the button, and I slowly release it, hoping for some reason that it will make the lights come back on.

It doesn’t.

There’s a large crowd at the Peace Center when I get there on Saturday night in late June. It’s been a few weeks since my first awkward day here, and it’s gotten better, though some of the kids still whisper about me when I come for teen outreach on Thursday afternoons. Since I’m supposed to be here two days a week, I also come in on Tuesdays and help Yalda with whatever she needs help with. So far, I’ve stuffed backpacks of food for needy kids, drawn posters for an interfaith meeting, and helped arrange a blood drive.

I was doing inventory on a new shipment of Rab and Sherpa jackets at the climbing shop, so I’m late and all the chairs are taken. I find a place by the wall and lean against it.

I see Sabeen and Adam, and Sabeen smiles at me. Adam
gives me a long look from under his eyelashes and then turns away without acknowledging me.

I swallow, and twirl my ponytail around my finger, around and around and around, until it pulls painfully against my scalp.

There’s a screech of amplifier noise, and Yalda, dressed in a long-sleeved tan dress, her hair covered with a white scarf, taps on the microphone. She clears her throat.

“Thank you, everyone, for coming out. The fifteenth anniversary of 9/11 is coming up in less than three months, and we have a very special guest tonight. Anne Jonna was in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and has a story that she’d like to share with us here at the Peace Center. With no more ado, I’d like to present: Anne Jonna.”

A thin, dark-haired woman steps up to the podium and adjusts the microphone as the crowd claps. She doesn’t say anything at first, just bows her head and closes her eyes, her lips moving in a silent prayer. Around me, others bow their heads as well.

After a moment, she looks up with a beautiful, luminous smile.

“Thank you so much for your warm welcome,” she says. “In September it will be fifteen years since the unthinkable happened: planes crashed into the Twin Towers and brought them tumbling down; a plane smashed into the Pentagon; and a group of brave passengers lost their lives in a silent Pennsylvania field. It is one of those rare days in history that
is etched into our collective souls. That day could be defined as a day of fear and hate, but I saw something else. Inside the towers, I saw incredible acts of bravery from people of all walks of life. I saw people just like you and me doing what they could to help others in a desperate situation. To me, the bravery and basic human kindness shown by ordinary citizens that day is a shining example of what it means to be human.”

She begins to describe her day in the tower, starting so innocently as she sat at her desk checking e-mails and eating yogurt, and then, bam, out of nowhere, everything changed. One plane hit, then another, and then the towers began to fall.

The towers were only half-f. A lot of people weren’t at work yet, and the horde of tourists hadn’t arrived to visit the observation deck on top of the south tower, or the restaurant on top of the north one. It could have been so much worse. Anne Jonna made it out, and so did approximately twelve thousand other people.

But my brother was not one of them.

I stand at the edge of the group that crowds around Ms. Jonna, and listen to people thank her for her story, and tell her where they were when the planes hit—
standing at my kitchen counter drinking a cup of coffee, on a flight over California and we had to land, lying in bed cuddling my two-year-old daughter
.
I wonder why it’s so important that people recount their
own
story whenever the subject of 9/11 comes up. I want to yell, “What does it matter where you were? People were
dying
, my brother was
dying
, and you were home safe in bed!”

But Ms. Jonna listens patiently, and I realize that maybe everybody’s story is important, because 9/11 didn’t just happen to the people who died, it happened to the entire country. People were living their lives, doing everyday things, when suddenly the planes hit, and time ripped into two pages titled “Before 9/11” and “After.” With their clumsy stories, they are saying: “We all felt it. We remember where we were when the world changed.”

But what about those of us who could not remember that day? I’ve seen the footage, watched the big, clumsy planes crash into the towers like some sort of low-budget action film. Which is worse? To know that things used to be different, or to never have known that more innocent day at all?

I’m trembling, and I tug on my ponytail as I inch closer to Ms. Jonna. I
want
to have the courage of those people in the towers, people as ordinary as me who found an incredible well of strength inside themselves that day. What would happen if I said all the words that are hiding inside me, so many that it feels like my chest might burst with them? What if I told Adam that I thought what Nick, Hailey, Dave, and I did was wrong? What if I told my dad that the things he says about Muslims are terrible and hateful and I wish he would stop?

I am standing in front of Ms. Jonna, and her face is kind and smiling. The smile fades as she looks at me.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I stare at her without speaking. Up close, she has lines at the corners of her eyes, and silver threads running like tinsel through her hair.

“Do you need to sit down?” she asks. Around us people are picking up bags, calling good-byes.

“My brother was in the towers,” I say, and it feels like something comes unblocked in my throat.

Ms. Jonna takes my arm and draws me away from the podium to a table, and we sit.

“Did he die?” she asks quietly.

I nod, and feel my eyes burn like they know they should be crying, but no tears come. I’ve never cried for Travis. How can I cry when I don’t even remember knowing him?

“No one knows what he was doing there that day. He shouldn’t have been there. He shouldn’t have died!” I’m talking too fast, but now that I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop.

“Honey, none of those people should have died,” she says, and her voice is full of sympathy. “I knew several people who didn’t make it out, and I ask myself every day why them and not me. I felt guilty for a long time. What happened taught me that life is unpredictable; I’ve considered every day since a gift.”

She puts her arms around me and gives me a hug, and I lean my cheek against her shoulder for a moment.

“If you need anything, let me know,” she says, patting my back.

“I want to find out what happened to my brother,” I say. “His name was Travis McLaurin, he was eighteen, with dark blond hair and greenish eyes. If you ever hear anything about him, could you let me know?”

“Give me your e-mail address, and I’ll ask around,” she says. “I know it’s frustrating not knowing what happened to him, but I need to warn you that most people never found out what happened to their loved ones in those final minutes.”

“Thank you,” I say, and scribble my e-mail address on a piece of paper.

She squeezes my shoulder, and I get up. I almost run into Adam, who is standing directly behind me. He looks at me, his eyes dark and shadowed, and I know that he heard.

I put my head down and go for the door.

As I bike toward home, I slow near Teeny’s house, seeing Emi’s car in her driveway. I wonder what would happen if I went up to the door and knocked. Would Teeny say, “Yeah, no, loser, climb back into your hole” and slam the door in my face? I’d seen my friends’ faces when I went back to school. I wasn’t the person they thought I was.

My phone dings, and I see that I have a message from Deka.

Hank says look in his closet, the Tupperware container with blue lid in the back.

Dad has been different in the weeks since Mom left, and he exploded at me for asking what Travis was doing in the towers. While Mom has launched us into a flurry of girl-outings and church services that have left both of us bewildered and exhausted, Dad has gotten quieter and quieter.

But since that night I’ve caught him looking at me a couple of times, a strange expression on his face. He’s stopped watching the news, and now watches fishing shows, or ESPN, and while he still yells at the TV, it’s because someone missed a fish or dropped a ball.

He hasn’t slept in the room that he used to share with my mother.

He’s sitting at the counter doing some paperwork, a pair of glasses perched on the end of his nose. He hates those glasses, hates that he can’t see the way he used to.

“Where were you?” he asks when he sees me.

I hesitate, surprised by the question. I can’t remember the last time he asked where I was.

“Community service,” I say, which is partially true, though I didn’t have to go tonight.

“How are they treating you? Okay?”

“Okay,” I say. “Everybody’s been nice, actually.”

He stares at me a long moment, as if there is more that
he wants to say, but then just nods and looks back down at his papers.