Ground Zero(29)

“American drones,” Pasoon added.

“Yes, American drones,” Reshmina said, feeling a pang of sorrow for Hila all over again. “But you know why we’re always behind? Because while everybody else in the world is making things, we’re fighting wars. We never get to move ahead, Pasoon. We’re stuck in the past.”

“Infidels and outsiders may conquer us,” Pasoon said, still looking ahead. “But they can never rule us. Conquering Afghanistan and keeping it are two different things.”

Reshmina huffed. Pasoon wasn’t listening to her.

“Why would anybody want to rule Afghanistan?” she asked, frustrated. “There’s nothing left to rule.”

Reshmina saw a dried-up old cedar cone on the ground and picked it up. Once, their father had told them, giant cedars towered over every kilometer of these mountains. Anaa told stories of streets in the capital, Kabul, lined with cedar trees. Now those trees were all but gone. Each invading army had cut down more and more of them, and the Afghans had cut down still more to pay for weapons to drive the invaders out again. Now Afghanistan was brown and rocky and dead. The only cedars left survived in the most inhospitable mountains, places where even armies feared to go.

Is there some life left in this old cedar cone? Reshmina wondered. Something dormant inside, ready to sprout if given the room and resources to grow?

Reshmina broke open the cone. There were still seeds inside. She took one, leaned over, and pushed the seed deep into the ground. That seed would grow to be a cedar tree fifty meters tall and stand for a thousand years—if only everyone would let it.

“Pasoon,” Reshmina said, “what if there was another way? What if—”

But when she looked up, Pasoon was gone.





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.”