All We Have Left (35 page)

“What?”

“I lost his ashes.” He coughs. “They must have fallen out of my pocket.”

I take his hand. “He was here when they built the towers,” I say. “He’ll be here when they die.”

Tears streak the dark ashes on his cheeks, and ash and dust crowd the air. All of it is becoming ashes now.

Travis coughs again, and I unwind the scarf from around my head. For a moment, my hands are tangled in the ends of it and I pull it to my face, because even through the smoke I can smell my mother’s citrus scent on it, and the faint scent of beeswax that always reminds me of Nenek.

“Take it,” I say, offering it to Travis.

His eyelashes are caked with dust and his eyes are red, and at first he doesn’t make a move to take it.

“You need it,” I tell him, and wind it gently around his neck and mouth, my fingers brushing his cheek, and he closes his eyes briefly.

I don’t need the scarf to be strong, to be Lia. Today, despite all the fear and chaos, I
was
Lia. She’s always been there inside me. Faith and strength aren’t something you wear like some sort of costume; they come from inside you.

“Thank you,” he says, his voice cracking.

“You’re welcome.”

I turn and lead the way down.

If we hadn’t been searching for it, we never would have noticed it.

My breath catches, and Adam pulls me close, wrapping his arm around my shoulders.

MISSING

ALIA SUSANTO

There’s a black-and-white picture of a young, laughing girl in a head scarf, trees and brownstones behind her. How did her parents pick which picture to use? How do you make that choice?

She’s wearing the scarf, the one found with Travis.

I’m trying not to cry, and Adam pulls me tight against him.

I feel like I’m a leaf fluttering in the wind, shuddering and falling down, down, down. I’m crying in earnest now, because it is all so senseless. All those people died, people who got up in the morning and went to work, laughed and cried, loved and dreamed. All of them gone, and for what? My brother was a kid who liked to play music with his friends. And Alia. She looks my age, small and feisty with a happy smile.

How did they deserve to die?

Everything is burning. Small fires race across the tops of doorways, and it’s so hot that I feel like I’m in an oven. We’ve slowed down because the stairs are so dark and slippery with water and dust. If we break an ankle, we’ll never get out of here. But we’re getting close. We’re almost there.

Below us we can hear shouting—
go, go, go!—
and the pounding of running feet. Some people are still in here with us, and somehow that knowledge comforts me, because we’re not the only ones left.

Travis is behind me, and I look back over my shoulder and his face is focused, grim.

That’s when we hear the sound.

The sound of a thousand trains coming all at once.

“No!” Because I know what it is; I heard the same sound right before the other tower fell.

I start running, Travis right behind me, but now I can hear a banging sound, like a gigantic metal ball bouncing down the stairwell above us. The entire building is shaking, concrete falling in chunks out of the walls.

Travis sprints past me to one of the stairwell doors and tries to open it as the entire building twists. He yanks on the door, and it suddenly flies open, slamming him against the wall. A gust of wind comes down the stairwell, a hurricane of dust and wind that sweeps up both of us and sends us flying down the stairs. We end up in a corner of the landing, and I hear a screeching sound, like a million banshees, and the winds gets stronger as the building comes rushing down at us.

I love you, Ayah.

Travis curses and shoves me into the corner, using his body to shield me.

I love you, Mama.

I can hear Travis praying.

I love you, I love you, I love—

It’s the last weekend before my senior year starts. My friends and I have driven out to the lake and are lying out on towels, sneaking sips of wine coolers that Myra snagged from her parents’ fridge.

“Seniors rule,” Teeny says lazily, digging her toes in the water and accidentally flipping some at Myra, who yelps.

“When’s Hank coming in?” Emi asks me, her lips blue. She’s dressed in a sleek black Speedo, back from a marathon swim.

“Tonight,” I say, feeling a frisson of happiness. It’ll be the first time I’ve seen Hank in almost four years, and he’s bringing Deka and Joshua.

Things have changed in the couple of weeks since I returned from the museum. I was devastated when we got
back, and Adam and I spent hours at our picnic table by the river as I talked and talked, trying to make sense of everything, trying to understand
why.

But there’s no understanding why. It’s like trying to understand why lightning strikes where it does, or why mothers buckle their toddlers in their car seats and drive them into the ocean. There is no why. There is only incomprehension.

I’m not sure what my mom said to Dad, but they are talking again, and he’s even agreed to see Hank. Mom and I still live in the small apartment in Mary’s garage, and we’ve grown closer. She cried when I told her about finding Alia’s missing persons poster, and I realize that what had started as my quest had become hers too.

She says Dad wants to talk to me, but so far I’ve refused. I’m not ready.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready.

“Where’s Mr. Hottie? I thought you said he was coming,” Myra asks. She dropped her phone in the lake when we first got here, and we’ve been laughing at her all day because she’s so lost without it.

“He’ll be here,” I say, taking a pull from the wine cooler and handing it to Emi, who wrinkles up her nose but takes a drink anyway.

“I can’t believe you’re dating him,” Teeny says. “I mean, how can you have a normal conversation with him? I’d be like, ‘Dude, don’t move. Don’t talk. Just
sit
there so I can look at you.’”

I laugh. “We’re not exactly dating,” I say. “It’s complicated.”

It
is
complicated. Adam isn’t supposed to be dating, and though he’s told his parents that he has feelings for me, he is still struggling with his faith.

But he’s worth waiting for, and I’ll be patient while he figures out how to balance religion and love in this messy, mixed-up world.

“Your dad really is going to go to the 9/11 thing?” Emi asks curiously.

I shrug. “I guess so.”

Mom has evidently told him everything that I discovered about Travis, and something has changed in him. My mom keeps telling me he’s trying, and she thinks I should be trying too, but I tried for seventeen years. I’m done trying.

Although I’ve kept searching, I haven’t been able to find out anything else about what Travis and Alia were doing in those last minutes in the towers. I tried calling the number on Alia’s missing persons poster, but it is a pizza delivery store now. I’ve found no trace of Alia Susanto. Late at night, I wonder if Alia’s parents knew she was in the towers. There were thousands of remains that were never identified; they rest now in a repository inside the 9/11 Museum. Could Alia be among them?

I ache to think that when my mother gets up to talk about Travis at the fifteenth anniversary memorial, she will not know the exact shape and texture of my brother’s death. It’s
not only the loss that burns but the open-endedness of it. How can we accept that we will simply never know the end of the story?

I see Adam walking across the sand, and I get up to meet him. He waves at my friends, who giggle, and we walk hand in hand along the shore, the pebbly sand crunching under our feet, the blue water gleaming beside us.

“Hey, you,” I say, and he twines his fingers tight around mine.

Summer is slowly sliding into fall, and the tips of a few trees are starting to glow gold. Everything changes, no matter how much you want it to stay the same.

“How was your first week?” I ask.

Adam started college last week, and it’s far enough away that he’s in the dorms but close enough that he can come back and visit every weekend.

“It’s lonely without you,” he says.

“What, you miss me or something up there at the big university? You better not be practicing your newfound kissing skills on anyone else,” I tease.

He laughs. “No, I think we need to practice more before I showcase my skills to the public.”

I grin. “You could take it on the road. I shouldn’t tell you, but you’re a seriously natural talent.”

He laughs again. “Of course I am.”

We walk in companionable silence, and I work on treasuring
right here, right now
, because that’s important.

“You going to talk to him?” he asks after a while.

“I’m not sure why you’re so gung-ho about me talking to my dad, since you’re the reason we’re not talking, and the last time we had any type of conversation, he called you a terrorist.”

He shrugs. “He’s still your dad. What’s between you and him has nothing to do with me.”

“But it does,” I say, though in some ways it’s not true. What’s going on with me and my father has been going on for as long as I can remember.

“The last time we fought, I was too scared to tell him about my feelings for you. It was like I denied you, and I’m afraid I’ll do it again. And that makes everything that’s between us mean nothing,” I say, not able to look at him.

“You know it’s not nothing,” he says, and pulls me closer so we are walking shoulder to shoulder.

“But what is it?”

“What I feel for you … that can’t be wrong,” he says after a moment. “Other than that I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either,” I say, “but we’ll figure it out.”

Mom has gone to pick up Hank and his family at the airport, so I know my dad will be alone.

When I come up the stairs, I feel myself tensing, because I’m listening for the TV, I’m listening for him yelling, and
this is exactly how I don’t want to feel. This is why I have been avoiding him.

I almost turn around and leave, but as I stand on the stairs I realize that if I don’t do this, for the rest of my life I will wonder if I can be brave enough to do all the other things I want to do.