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Brandon stood on the broken edge of the World Trade Center, looking straight out into the bright blue September sky. Strong winds whipped his hair around his face, and burning papers fluttered down from somewhere above him. Exposed electric wires sparked in the sheared-off walls.
Brandon backed up against the stairwell door, his breath hitching in his throat. To his left and right, what was once an interior wall was now the outside wall of the North Tower. Below him, the Brooklyn Bridge stretched across the East River, as tiny as a model train set. He was almost a thousand feet in the air. But this time, there was no window between him and the open sky.
The wet napkin Brandon had tied around his face whipped away into the sky. One long stride and he would join it, falling forever and ever and ever.
Brandon’s brain couldn’t handle what he was seeing, and he sank, shaking, to what was left of the floor. He knew he should move. Get back inside. But he was paralyzed with fear.
The ledge he sat on followed the wall in both directions, but it was only three feet deep. He stared, horrified, at the emptiness around him. There should have been walls here. Cubicles. Desks. Copiers. Fax machines. Water fountains.
People.
But there was no one. Nothing.
In his mind, Brandon kept seeing himself sliding off the edge and falling eighty-nine stories to the ground. He tried not to think about it, but it was all he could think about. First his feet would go over, then his legs. He imagined himself clawing and grabbing at the carpet, sobbing, desperate not to go over the side. He couldn’t fall. But the pull of gravity was too much. He was too high up to resist. Over the ledge he would go, and then that terrible, awful sinking feeling as he fell backward, arms flailing, legs churning. There was nothing to grab onto, nowhere left to stand. He was disconnected from the earth. From everything he’d ever known. And then the ground would come rushing up toward him, closer, closer, closer until—
Brandon’s eyes jerked open. His heart thundered in his chest and every inch of him quivered, like when he woke with a start from a nightmare. He was still sitting on the floor. He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t fallen.
But he was going to, if he stayed out here much longer. The wind was a living thing up here, pushing and pulling at him like a cat playing with a toy. Brandon had to get up, get out. The whole 89th floor wasn’t gone. He could see that now as his senses returned to him. There was still part of it, off to the sides and behind him. If he crawled along the broken hallway, he could make it around the corner, try to find the other stairwell. But his arms and legs were lead. He couldn’t make them move.
Whoomp-whoomp-whoomp-whoomp. Air pounded against
Brandon and the floor juddered underneath him. Suddenly a
blue-and-white helicopter rose up right in front of where he sat. The helicopter hovered, rotating back and forth to hold its position, and Brandon saw the letters NYPD written in white on its side. How often had he seen a New York Police Department helicopter flying by overhead and wondered what trouble they were headed for?
Now he was the trouble.
Brandon put a hand up to keep the wind from his eyes, and as the helicopter blocked the sun, he saw two people inside it, a man and a woman in dark blue uniforms wearing helmets and sunglasses. Brandon’s arms came to life, and he waved them over his head like someone stranded on a desert island trying to catch the attention of a passing ship. The helicopter pilot put a hand to the microphone that bent around from the side of his helmet, like he was talking to someone, telling someone about Brandon. They had definitely seen him! They were going to help! Brandon almost laughed for joy.
But the longer the helicopter hung there, the longer Brandon smiled and waved his hands, the more he realized that there was nothing the police helicopter could do. It wasn’t like they could land anywhere here on the 89th floor, or even get close enough to lower him a rope or a ladder. There they were, safe in their helicopter, and here he was, on the edge of a broken, burning building, with a thousand- foot-deep gulf between them.
Brandon lowered his hands and slumped against the door. He might as well have been on the moon for all they could do to help him.
The people in the helicopter must have been thinking the same thing. The woman pulled off her sunglasses, and Brandon could see the anguish in her eyes. She knew Brandon couldn’t hear her, not through the window of the
helicopter, not over the thundering blades and the roar of the wind, but she said something anyway.
It might have been “I’m sorry.”
The helicopter turned and flew away, and Brandon lifted a hand goodbye. Maybe they could help someone else. Maybe they could help his father get off the roof—and Brandon too, if he could get up there.
Brandon’s arms and legs obeyed him once again, and he knew he had a decision to make. He had to move from this spot, get off this ledge. But which direction should he go? The easiest thing to do, the sanest thing, was slip back through the door behind him into the safety of the stairwell. But the only way that stairwell went anymore was down, and his father was up. There were two other stairwells though, and if one of them went up from this floor, Brandon might still be able to get to Windows on the World.
He had to try.
Brandon and his rescuer collapsed to the safety of the floor far away from the ledge, and Brandon tried to catch his breath.
“Holy crap, kid! Where’d you come from?” his rescuer asked, and Brandon looked up into a familiar face.
