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Brandon and Richard walked hand in hand down empty Manhattan streets. They were both dazed, and neither of them had spoken for blocks. Soon they came to a small city park with lush green trees and red and yellow flowers. Richard found someone who let him borrow a cell phone, and he stepped aside to try to reach his family again.
Brandon stood like a statue, staring at the flowers. The park was beautiful, but it brought him no pleasure to see it or to be there.
“Talisha!” Richard cried into the phone. He had finally gotten through to his wife. “Oh my God, honey, I never thought I’d hear your voice again … Yes—yes. I’m all right. I’m safe.”
But are we all right? Brandon wondered. Are we really safe? He looked around at that park, just blocks away from the burning pit where thousands of people had just died— where his father had just died—and wondered how anybody could ever feel happy and safe again. This little oasis wasn’t the real world. Brandon knew that now. He had seen the real
world. It was dark and evil and scary, not sunshine and flowers waving in the breeze.
“Yes,” Richard was saying into the phone. “I’m with a boy who escaped with me. Brandon. I’m bringing him home. It’ll be a while—the subways and buses aren’t running … No, don’t leave the house. We’ll walk it … All right … Yes—I love you too.”
Brandon and Richard got moving again. They decided to get out of Manhattan as quickly as possible, following the thousands of other people streaming out of the city over the Brooklyn Bridge. They didn’t use the pedestrian path. They walked right down the middle of the road instead, working their way around abandoned cars. Some of the people walking by them cried. Others talked in whispers. Most just held their shirts to their faces and walked away from Manhattan as fast as they could, bewildered and stunned.
It felt like the end of the world.
Brandon was still holding Richard’s hand as they walked into the little front yard of his house in Queens three hours later. The security door flew open and Richard’s wife, Talisha, came running down the steps. She was a pretty Black woman with curly hair, wearing jeans and a purple sweater. Brandon recognized her from the photo on Richard’s desk. A small white dog ran out onto the porch next, followed by Richard’s little daughter and son. The kids waited awkwardly, not really sure why their father coming home today was a bigger deal than usual.
“Thank God you’re alive!” Talisha said, and wrapped Richard in a hug. Brandon looked away as they kissed.
Richard’s wife pulled away at last, her eyes full of tears. “Brandon, this is my wife, Talisha,” Richard said. “Brandon
saved my life,” he told his wife.
“Then I thank God for you too,” Talisha said, giving Brandon a hug and kissing the top of his head. He closed his
eyes and scrunched a little lower, embarrassed, but he didn’t fight it.
“He saved my life first,” Brandon said.
“You can tell me all about it after we get you both cleaned up,” Talisha said. She took Brandon’s and Richard’s hands and pulled them toward the porch. Richard embraced his children and introduced them to Brandon as Kiara and Anthony. Richard also petted the happy little dog, whose name was Neo.
Richard’s house was small but cozy. Brandon caught flashes of it as he was led inside—shelves full of books, dolls and toy cars on the floor, family pictures on the walls—but it was all a blur. He was exhausted, and he was losing his focus on the world.
Richard’s daughter and son followed on Brandon’s heels. Neo jumped to sniff at the Tasmanian Devil Brandon still carried.
“Are you a ghost?” Kiara asked.
“Hush now,” Talisha told her. “Let him be.” She steered Brandon into a bathroom with an old claw-foot tub and a shower curtain on a metal ring. “Get yourself cleaned up, and then we’ll get some food in you,” Talisha told him.
Anthony and Kiara stared at him, wide-eyed, until the bathroom door shut in their faces, and suddenly Brandon was alone.
He stood for long minutes in the middle of the black-and- white-tiled bathroom, letting the stillness settle over him. For the first time in hours, Brandon wasn’t trying to get somewhere or survive. He had gotten used to planes hitting buildings and smoke in the air and people falling from the sky, and now that it was all done he didn’t know what to do with himself.
The silence in the bathroom grew. I should be doing
something, Brandon thought. He just didn’t know what. He
wasn’t hungry, he wasn’t sleepy, and he didn’t feel like showering. He didn’t feel like doing anything but crawling into a ball and disappearing, but he couldn’t do that.
So he did nothing.
Brandon caught sight of himself in the mirror and recoiled. Richard’s daughter was right—he did look like a ghost, covered all over in fine white dust. But it was more than that. There was a hollow, empty look in his eyes, like he was dead inside.
Was his father dead too? Brandon had seen the building come down. But had his father gotten out somehow before it happened? It seemed impossible, but Brandon didn’t know for sure. Should he be at home right now, waiting there in case his dad came back?
A gentle knock on the door made Brandon jump.
“You okay in there?” Talisha asked softly through the door. “Yes,” Brandon lied.
He set the Tasmanian Devil on top of the toilet. He turned on the sink faucet and put his hand under the water, watching the blood and dust and grime of the World Trade Center start to wash off him. The hand of a ghost turning back into the hand of a living, breathing boy.
When he was done in the shower, Brandon put on a fresh set of Richard’s clothes. Talisha had rolled up the sleeves and cuffs for him, but they were still comically baggy on him. He looked less like a ghost now, but he still felt empty inside, and he didn’t know if or how he would ever feel whole again. He had been younger when his mother had died, so young that he hadn’t understood why she wasn’t coming back. Brandon was old enough now to understand that his father was probably gone from his life forever. But unlike the last few months with his mother, Brandon had barely had time to say goodbye to his dad. It was still a
fresh wound, deeper and far more painful than the cut on his palm.
“Kid, you done in there?” Richard asked through the door. Brandon hated to leave the sanctuary of the bathroom,
but he couldn’t stay in there forever. He opened the door.
Richard had cleaned up too and was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Richard reached a hand out to Brandon, and they hugged again. Neither of them had to ask, or say why.
“Esther’s okay,” Richard said at last. “I just talked to her. She and Anson and Mr. Khoury made it out and away from the building before it came down. Anson’s dog too.”
Brandon nodded. He’d forgotten all about them with all the other things that had happened, and a relief he hadn’t expected flooded through him. That’s three people, at least. “I need to call my apartment,” Brandon said. His voice was thin and raspy, and he cleared his throat. “I need to
leave a message for my dad. In case.”
Richard looked like he might say something, then just nodded. He led Brandon to the phone in the kitchen and left him alone. Brandon dialed his number and waited through the rings, hoping against hope his dad would somehow pick up the phone before the answering machine kicked in.
The call connected, and Brandon held his breath. “Hey, this is Leo Chavez,” his dad said.
“And this is Brandon Chavez!” Brandon’s recorded voice said.
“Leave us a message!” they said together.
Brandon sniffed. He knew his father wouldn’t be there, but he had wanted so badly for him to answer.
“Hey, Dad, it’s me. Brandon,” he said. Tears came to his eyes, and he blinked them away. “I got out, just like you told me to. I’m okay. I’m with Richard, the guy you talked to. His family’s nice. I’m at their house. If you get this, you can call
me back at this number,” he said, knowing the machine would list it.
Brandon paused. He didn’t know what else to say, and the machine was going to cut him off soon. He’s not going to hear this anyway, Brandon thought, choking back more tears.
“I love you, Dad,” he said at last. “Goodbye.”
Brandon hung up and went back to the bathroom and closed the door. He sat on the closed toilet seat until his tears ran dry. Then he cleaned up his face and joined Richard’s family in the living room.
Richard and Talisha sat on the couch watching the news on TV, while Kiara and Anthony played with LEGOs on the floor. Brandon sat on the couch too, and Neo jumped into Brandon’s lap, tail wagging. Any other day, Brandon would have been delighted to play with a dog, but now it was enough to just put his hand on Neo’s warm body and feel his heart beat.
They sat in front of the television for hours, watching and listening and trying to make sense of what was happening. Every channel was talking about the attacks. Even MTV and ESPN switched to nonstop news coverage. From talking head after talking head, Brandon learned everything the world knew so far. Terrorists had hijacked two planes and flown them into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center. He knew that part. He had been there. Ground Zero. That’s what they were calling the pile of rubble and twisted steel that remained. They couldn’t call it the World Trade Center or Twin Towers anymore. The World Trade Center was gone.
A third plane had crashed into the Pentagon, just like the security guard with the bullhorn had told them. The Pentagon was the headquarters of the US Department of Defense, right outside Washington, DC. The TV showed a
picture of the smoking hole in the building. One hundred and twenty-five people were dead.
They still had no idea who, or how many, had died when the Twin Towers came down.
A fourth plane had also been hijacked. When the passengers on that flight used phones on the plane to call their families and tell them terrorists had taken over, they learned about the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and they knew they were next. They told their loved ones they were going to try to take the plane back from the hijackers. A few minutes later—right around the time the South Tower had collapsed, while Brandon and Richard had been in the underground mall—that last plane had crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board.
The people on the news guessed that the terrorists had chosen those four planes specifically because they were all headed for California from the East Coast, and carried as much explosive jet fuel on board as possible.
It was too much to take in at one time. Too much horror, too much death. And none of it made any sense.
“Who would do this to us?” Brandon asked Richard. On the news, they were guessing it was a group of Islamic extremists called al Qaeda, but no one knew for sure yet. “Why do they hate us?” Brandon asked.
Richard shook his head. “I don’t know, kid. I don’t know.”
Kiara and Anthony had long since grown bored with their toys, and they ran through the room laughing and squealing and chasing each other. Brandon scowled at them. How could they be playing around at a time like this? Why weren’t Richard and Talisha telling them to be quiet? To have some respect?
Richard read the anger in Brandon’s face and put a hand on Brandon’s knee. “They don’t understand,” he said
quietly. “They can’t yet. They’re too young. They know something bad happened, but they don’t get how big this is. You wouldn’t either. Not really. Except you were there. Your friends and classmates, they’re not going to understand either. Not until they’re older. When you go back to school, they’re going to be laughing and playing and living their lives like this never happened because they’re not old enough to get it. But you do, because you were there. That makes you different. You’re going to have to remember that.”
Brandon nodded and tried to let go of some of his irritation, but it was hard.
President Bush came on the television later, talking about how America had been attacked because they were a beacon of freedom and opportunity. About how they were going to hunt down the people who did this and bring them to justice.
“This is going to be bad,” Richard said. “People are hurt. Angry. And they should be. They want revenge, and so do I. But revenge against who?”
Brandon didn’t know, but he hated whoever had done this. He wanted them to pay for everything he’d just been through. He wanted them to pay for what they had done to his dad.
On TV, the president was saying that the country was strong. That anybody who wasn’t with the United States was against them. He sounded like Brandon’s dad.
We’re a team, Brandon. Just you and me. It’s us against the world.
Brandon’s father was gone now, and so was their team.
Brandon was all alone against the world.
But was he? Brandon thought back to everyone who’d been trapped in the elevator with him. The people from Richard’s floor. Gayle and Pratik in the mall. All the
firefighters, the police, the security guard with the bullhorn, all those paramedics and EMTs—Brandon didn’t know if any of them had survived, but they had helped others survive.
And Richard, of course. He and Brandon had helped each other survive, time and again. And now Richard and his wife had taken Brandon in when he had nowhere else to go.
It isn’t me against the world, Brandon realized. It’s everyone, working together. And not against the world either, but for each other.
That was how they survived.
