The First to Die at the End (Death-Cast #0)(13)

“So I lost my parents on 9/11,” I say, giving it that pause that everyone needs to swallow that down. But I’ve also learned that you can’t wait too long because if you’re not running your mouth, someone else will start running theirs to tell you their own 9/11 story.

That’s what happens when your city lives through a traumatic disaster like that.

Everyone felt something across the city, across the country, across the world. But there’s a time and place, and I’ve lost count of how many times I tell people about losing my parents only for them to jump at the chance to let me know how they couldn’t catch a bus home, or weren’t allowed to play outside for a week. What am I supposed to say to that? I know what—I don’t care, and Your life went on; my parents’ didn’t, and You got your life back, but mine changed.

This is where outsiders like Valentino are blessings.

He’s quiet, either too stunned to find the next words he wants to say or knows no words can change anything. No matter what, I know he’s not bursting to tell me what went down with him that day. Lips sealed, eyes glistening.

Tonight, more than ever, I feel nine years old all over again as I relive that day.

It was a Tuesday. Fourth grade, two days into our first full week of school. I was already chosen to be on the safety patrol squad because I was a tremendous ass-kisser, though all that really meant was I got to wear this lime-green reflective belt and make sure everyone was in their classroom in time for morning announcements. I remember really feeling myself too, walking down the halls in my new navy FUBU jumpsuit and bright white sneakers, stuff my parents bought me during back-to-school shopping.

“It seemed like an ordinary day,” I say.

And it still took me a minute to catch on that it wasn’t.

My shift was over, so I returned my belt to the security desk, where the guard and vice principal were watching the news on one of those big-ass TVs that were always being rolled from classroom to classroom, depending on which teacher called dibs on it first.

“The footage looked like something out of an action movie, but it was so, so real. I saw the towers upright and burning, and then they cut to the collapse.” I feel a buzzing in my head and an emptiness in my stomach. “If you want to know how stupid I was, I didn’t know this was even going down in New York at that point. My vice principal had called the buildings the World Trade Center, but I grew up only knowing them as the Twin Towers. So I wrote it off as some video game company in another country, and I was so relieved that it wasn’t happening here because it looked so scary, and I went back to class without giving it another thought.”

I don’t know why I’m giving every damn detail like this, maybe I’ve got more of a novel in me than I give myself credit for, because I’m painting one hell of a picture.

Then I share the thought that haunts me the most.

“I had no idea my parents were dead at that point.”

I wipe away some sneaky-ass tears and stare at the ground, I can’t even look at Valentino or Dalma.

I start trying to wrap it up, but these memories are rolling fast like a montage, it’s got me thinking about how everyone says you see your life flashing before your eyes before you die. Maybe my body somehow knows that I’m hours, or even minutes, away from an End Day call.

If this is the last time I’m going to share this story, I’m going to tell it right.

Classes began as normal, but by lunch, there was a shift. Teachers were abandoning their lesson plans and telling us to do independent reading or chat quietly among ourselves as they stepped out into the halls to have their own conversations. No one was telling us what was happening. Then parents started arriving and picking up their children. Still, no word on why. But we started making a game out of it in class, betting on who would go home next.

“Then I finally overheard someone say the Twin Towers were attacked.”

There are so many things I remember about that day, but there are little gaps too, like not knowing who it was who dropped those words on me like a bomb, or how long I sat in that chair trying to process what that meant. But eventually I got up, kind of zombie-walking to my teacher Mrs. Williams’s desk and told her that my parents were in Manhattan that morning for work. She was gentle, using that voice she always had whenever I asked to go to the bathroom or needed her to repeat something for me that I didn’t understand. Then I realized I had to make it clearer for her.

“My parents had a meeting at the Twin Towers,” I say, and I’ve said those words a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times because everyone wants to know why they were there. It’s not like they were walking down a bad neighborhood’s dark alley late at night, they were conducting business in a business building during business hours.

My teacher, a woman who studied Shakespeare and expanded my vocabulary and assigned my reading, had no words for me after I told her where my parents were.

I still held out hope. My mom was always running late, like putting on makeup five minutes after she was supposed to be out the door already. I kept thinking that maybe they were late to their meeting because of her, and that I’d have so many more years of teasing her for that little character flaw, that for that day, we’d be thanking that procrastination bone in her body.

“You hear a lot of stories like that—about people who were supposed to be in the towers that morning but overslept or got stuck in traffic or rode the wrong train or felt sick so they stayed home.” I take a deep breath. I can’t believe I’ve been talking so much, and I can’t believe no one has stopped me. “But my parents weren’t lucky like that, so I was the last kid in the whole school.”