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Brandon’s hands and feet moved like they were on autopilot as he and Richard made their way down the stairs.
All Brandon could think about was what had just happened up on the 90th floor. Those people trapped in the elevator. When he’d turned around, they’d just been … gone. And that poor woman, burned all over. Brandon felt sick. He was the one who had told her she had to get out before the elevator fell.
Brandon stopped and sat down amid the debris, his eyes hollow and unfocused.
“It’s my fault,” Brandon said. “That lady—she got burned because of me.”
Richard stopped and turned around. He looked as sick and sad as Brandon felt.
“Oh, kid, you can’t blame yourself for any of that,” he said.
“I told them they had to get out of the elevator,” Brandon said. “That lady ran through the fire because of me. Because of what I said.”
“Brandon, if she’d stayed in that elevator, she’d be dead now,” Richard told him. “What you said saved her life.”
“Saved her life?” Brandon said. “She’s going to be burned
—scarred—for the rest of her life, and all because of me. I didn’t save her life, I ruined it!”
“At least she has a life to ruin,” said Richard.
Stay in the elevator and die, or run through flaming jet fuel and be horribly burned for the rest of your life, Brandon thought. What kind of choice was that?
What would he have done, if he’d been inside that elevator? He didn’t know. Tears sprang to Brandon’s eyes, and he cried for the burned woman, for the people in the elevator, and for himself.
Richard sat down beside him.
“It’s gonna be all right, kid,” Richard told him. “How old are you?”
Brandon didn’t want to answer. He didn’t want to talk. But he choked out a response. “Nine,” he said.
Richard nodded. “Same age as me when my dad died in Vietnam. I wasn’t there to see it, not like you were just now with that lady and those people in the elevator. But it wrecked me. I wish I could tell you there’s something you can do to make it better, to make it not hurt. But there isn’t. You just … you just get over it eventually. Because you have to. It scars over, like a bad cut. It still aches every now and then, when it’s cold and gloomy outside and you’re left alone with your thoughts. But most of the time … most of the time you just forget it’s there.”
Brandon didn’t want to forget. He wanted it to hurt forever. How could it not hurt forever? He owed it to that burned lady and those dead people in the elevator.
“Come on,” Richard said. “Let’s get back down to the 89th floor.”
Richard worked in an office called Cosmos Services. He knocked on the door, and a woman opened it and let them inside. She shut the door behind them quickly and bunched a wadded-up jacket along the bottom of the doorframe to block the smoke.
“I was beginning to worry that something happened to you,” the woman said to Richard as she led them through the reception area. She was Asian American and had long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore gray slacks and a white blouse.
“A plane hit the building,” Richard told her.
“We heard. I got my husband on the phone. I couldn’t get your wife, but I left a message, told her you were all right.” She nodded at Brandon. “Where’d you find him?”
“He kind of fell into my lap,” Richard told her. “Brandon, this is my administrative assistant, Esther.”
“Nice to meet you,” Esther told him. She led them to the office farthest away from the door, with a window that looked south, toward the other Twin Tower. The air was mercifully clearer here, and Brandon took a deep, grateful breath and looked around. Sports jerseys hung in glass frames on the walls, and a framed photo of Richard with a pretty woman and two little kids sat on the desk. This was Richard’s office, Brandon realized.
There were two other people in the office with them. One of them was the oldest man Brandon had ever seen up close. His skin was light brown, about the same color as Brandon’s, but wrinkled all over. He had white hair mixed with streaks of darker gray, a big bushy white mustache, and thick bristly sideburns. He wore a maroon sweater-vest over a brown plaid shirt, and on top of his head was a dark brown, pie-shaped cap with a button in the middle of it. He sat perfectly still and calm on a chair in front of Richard’s desk, back straight, hands perched delicately on top of a
polished wooden cane, as though things like planes crashing into his building happened all the time. His name, said Richard, was Mr. Khoury.
“He’s Lebanese,” Richard explained. “I’ve heard him speak Italian, Arabic, French, and Spanish, but I don’t think his English is very good. He works at the shipping company next door. And this is Anson. He’s a software rep who picked the wrong day to make a sales call in the World Trade Center.”
Brandon turned to look at the other person in the office. Anson was a young white man with dark hair slicked back. He wore khaki slacks and a white shirt and a red tie. For some reason, he stood ramrod straight in the corner with his eyes closed.
Brandon didn’t understand until he came around the side of the desk. In one hand, Anson held a long white cane, about chest high, and in the other he gripped the harness for his dog, a light brown Labrador retriever.
His guide dog.
Anson was blind! Brandon reeled. If any of them should be panicking, it should be Anson. But besides old Mr. Khoury, Anson was the calmest one there.
“Can I pet your dog?” Brandon said, suddenly forgetting all the heavy things that had been weighing on him. What a good dog!
“Usually no—not when she’s working,” Anson said. “But it’s okay right now. Her name’s Daphne.”
Brandon knelt and rubbed the big dog’s head and scratched behind her ears. He’d always wanted a dog, but his dad kept saying no. They were gone from the house too much during the day to take care of one, Dad said. Brandon knew he was right, but he still wanted a dog of his own.
At the desk, Esther turned on a radio. “It was Anson who had the idea to look for a radio, see if we can get any
news,” Esther said. “We’d just dug one up when you came back.”
Esther found a station with two morning radio show hosts talking and laughing.
“So get this,” one of the radio DJs said. “Reports are coming in that somebody flew a plane into the World Trade Center!”
The other DJ laughed. “I mean, I get it. Planes crash. But how bad a pilot do you have to be to run right into a skyscraper? I mean, what is it they say in golf? ‘Trees are ninety percent air.’ You know what I’m saying? You’ve got to try to hit one of the towers.”
“The guy flying that plane must have been drunk!” the other man said. He laughed. “Hey, stewardess! Cut that guy off—he’s got a plane to fly!”
“Turn the channel,” Richard said, frowning. Brandon knew exactly how he felt. How could anyone be joking about something like this? If they’d seen what he’d just seen …
“Do they give DUIs to pilots?” the DJ kept joking. “Hey, buddy! Pull it over! Yeah, I’m talking to you. Land that plane before I—”
Esther twisted the knob on the radio. She found a news station where a woman was talking about the plane crash, and Brandon paid attention, hoping to learn something new about what happened.
“We’re still unclear at this point how this horrible accident could have happened. The New York Fire and Police Departments are both responding, and we’re awaiting reports from the ground. In the meantime, we have somebody on the line calling in by phone from one of the floors above the accident. Mr. Collins, are you there? I understand you’re trapped in the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of the North Tower. Can you tell us what it’s like there?”
The 104th floor! Brandon immediately perked up, and he and Richard shared a hopeful look. The fire had been the worst on the 93rd floor. If there was someone alive on the 104th floor, that meant people above the impact had survived. That meant Brandon’s dad was alive!
“Well, there’s a lot of smoke,” the man from the 104th floor said. “The elevators are destroyed, and all the stairs down are blocked. We called 911, and they told us to stay where we are and they’ll come get us. We just wanted to let our families know we’re okay, and …”
The interview went on, but Brandon wasn’t listening anymore. He leaped to his feet.
“Richard—he’s calling from the 104th floor!” “I know. That means your dad is okay.”
“No,” Brandon said. “I mean, yes. But he’s calling from the 104th floor. That means the phones up there are still working!”
Brandon scrambled for the big black phone on Richard’s desk. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He could call his dad in Windows on the World!
