Ground Zero(17)

Brandon wanted so desperately to tell his dad he was sorry. For running off today, for getting suspended, for everything he’d ever done to make things harder for him.

He would just have to make it back up to Windows on the World and tell him.

Brandon set his teeth and lifted a foot to climb to the next step. He was careful not to splash whatever was running down the stairs onto his jeans, just in case.

At the next turn in the stairs, there were cracks in the wall. At the turn after that, the walls had fallen down on the stairs.

Pieces of drywall lay on the stairs in huge, smashed chunks, blocking Brandon’s way. Both railings were useless now—one was torn off, the other buried. The metal studs that the drywall had been attached to stood bare and exposed, and red and black wires hung where the fluorescent lights used to be.

Brandon felt panic rising in him. This was bad. Really bad. Was he getting close to the spot where the airplane had hit? What if he couldn’t get past it?

Brandon made himself calm down. He was just going to have to climb over the wreckage. He could do this. He grabbed an exposed end of drywall and hauled himself up. The water flowing down the steps turned everything into a slick sludge and Brandon’s sneakers slipped as he climbed, but he was making it.

He was almost to the next flight when the piece of drywall he was clinging to snapped off in his hand. Brandon went flying, slipping and tumbling head over heels back down the stairs. He whacked his head and banged his shin, and with a thunk that rattled his teeth he slammed into the wall of the landing, right back where he’d started.

“Crap,” Brandon muttered. “Crap crap crap crap crap.”

He lay sprawled among the broken drywall. One whole side of him was scraped up, and when he wiped his nose, he came away with blood. There was a nasty-looking purple bruise starting on his shin, and the left side of his stomach was sore when he tested it.

Brandon put his head back and closed his eyes. Except for the smoke and the gritty, nasty drywall, he might have been back in the cement drainage ditch where he’d first learned to skateboard—right down to the trickle of water soaking his butt through his jeans. All that was missing was his helmet and pads.

But the thing he’d learned about skateboarding was that if you gave up after you took a fall, you were never going to be a skater. You always crashed, even when you got good at skateboarding. That was just part of it. Every skater ate pavement. You learned how to fall.

And you learned how to get back up again.

Brandon pulled himself up out of the soggy Sheetrock and started the climb again, more carefully now. He made it to the 88th floor, and through one of the cracks in the wall he saw the red-and-orange glow of a fire.

Brandon felt a mix of fear and relief. Okay, he thought. If this is where the fire is, down here on the 88th floor, then my dad is all right! If I can just get past this floor, I can get to Windows on the World and we can wait for the fire department together!

With renewed energy, Brandon scrambled up the next mountain of broken and disintegrating drywall. But when he got to the landing of the 89th floor, he couldn’t go any farther.

The stairwell above the 89th floor was gone. Not just the walls—everything. The stairs themselves seemed to have collapsed in a pile of concrete and twisted metal.

There was nothing to climb, and no going past it.

The entire stairwell was gone.

Brandon’s mind reeled. How was this possible? This was the World Trade Center. The biggest building in New York. The second-biggest building in the whole United States. It couldn’t just fall apart!

Brandon tried to think. This stairwell was destroyed, but there had to be other stairwells, right? If this was Stairwell A, there had to be a Stairwell B, or why would you even label it Stairwell A to begin with? So he could just exit onto the 89th floor, find one of the other intact stairwells, and keep going up.

Brandon took a deep breath and nodded to himself. This was a good plan. This would get him back to his dad.

The door to the 89th floor was a little bent, the way a cheap plastic chair warped when somebody big sat in it, and broken Sheetrock crowded the floor in front of it. Brandon kicked at the wet drywall to clear a path, then pulled on the bent door.

It wouldn’t budge.

Brandon put his feet on the wall, going vertical like he was doing a rock to fakie, a skateboarding trick where you came all the way to the top of the half-pipe, popped half your board over the rim, and then rolled down again backward. Brandon pulled with his arms and pushed with his legs, and with a wet screech the door scraped open just far enough for him to squeeze through.

Brandon jumped down to his feet and panted. Through the narrow opening in the doorway, he could see bright light and feel a blast of fresh air. Yes. Score one for the skaters.

Brandon slipped sideways through the gap and froze.

The 89th floor was gone.

Brandon was staring straight out into open sky.





Reshmina paused at the top of a ridge to look out at the mountains that swept up through Afghanistan and into China. The enormous mountains always humbled her. It was easy to see only the village you lived in and not the wider world if you never stopped to look up.

What Reshmina didn’t see anywhere was Pasoon.

It wasn’t hard to hide out in these mountains. That was why the Taliban were so difficult to find and fight. Pasoon had to be out there, just over the next hill, just beyond the next valley.