Ground Zero(5)

Brandon jumped onto the elevator, just missing the closing doors.

He’d made it! Brandon leaned against the railing at the back of the elevator and smiled. He couldn’t fix punching Stuart Pendleton in the nose, but he could fix breaking Cedric’s Wolverine gloves, and that made him feel better.

The elevator slowed to a stop, and an elderly white man with silver hair got on. The elevator stopped again, and a blonde white woman in a purple pantsuit got on, followed by a big white guy in a blue blazer and red necktie.

I shouldn’t have taken the local, Brandon thought. He glanced at his LEGO watch. 8:45 a.m. He was going to have to be speedy if he didn’t want his dad to find out he was gone.

The elevator stopped again, and a man with brown skin and a graying beard wheeled a catering cart with empty dishes onto the elevator. He wore a light blue turban that matched the color of his Windows on the World uniform. Brandon froze. The man wore a name tag that said SHAVINDER. Brandon didn’t recognize him, but he worried Shavinder might have seen Brandon around the restaurant and would know he was Leo Chavez’s son. Brandon slipped farther behind the big white guy and watched the red digital numbers of the floors tick by. 94, 93, 92, 91, 90, 89, 88, 87, 86—

THOOM.

Something boomed above them, and the elevator suddenly went sideways.

Brandon grabbed on to the handrail to not fall over. Two other passengers—the blonde woman and the old man—did fall down, but Brandon couldn’t have helped them even if he’d tried. The elevator was shuddering so wildly it felt like someone had taken him by the shoulders and was shaking the life out of him.

And then a new sensation: They were falling! No—the elevator car wasn’t falling—it was leaning. Farther and farther and farther to the side, like they were on the Tilt-a-Whirl at Coney Island. Brandon held tight on to the handrail, digging in his heels, while the other passengers slid forward until they were all pinned to the opposite wall. The serving cart toppled over, spilling dishes and water and silverware.

Brandon’s mind raced, trying to make sense of what was happening. The elevator couldn’t swing this far in the elevator shaft. Elevator shafts were just a little bigger than the elevators inside them. That meant—that meant the whole tower was leaning. All one hundred and seven floors. That wasn’t possible, was it?

The elevator stopped tilting, and Brandon held his breath. No one uttered a word. Then slowly, sickeningly, popping and complaining the whole way, the elevator began to right itself. It came up straight and Brandon caught his breath, but then the elevator swayed in the other direction. The passengers who’d been pinned to the wall scrambled to cling to the railing to stay put. Brandon closed his eyes and braced himself as silverware and broken plates came skittering across the floor toward him.

But the elevator didn’t swing so far this time. It shuddered and groaned its way back upright. The lights flickered but stayed on, and suddenly everything was quiet again.

“What the hell—?” the silver-haired man started to say.

And then the elevator began to slide.





Reshmina and her brother ran up the steps of their village, Reshmina’s thoughts racing faster than her feet.

Americans were here.

Reshmina had encountered Afghan National Army soldiers before—they had a base nearby and checked in occasionally with the village elders. The Americans were a different story. Reshmina had seen their helicopters flying over the valley, heard the pops and booms from their far-off gunfights with the Taliban. But in her eleven years, the Americans hadn’t once come to her remote little village. Why were they here now?

Like most other villages in the province, Reshmina’s was built into the side of a mountain. Flatland for farming was scarce, so houses were stacked one on top of the other, like a pyramid of square pieces of sweet bread. To get from the bottom to their house near the top, Reshmina and her brother had to climb a long set of switchback stairs cut into the rock.

Reshmina and Pasoon turned a corner and saw a group of ANA soldiers just ahead. They looked very young—almost like teenagers. Boy-men, Reshmina thought. Like Darwesh and Amaan, Pasoon’s friends.

Two of the soldiers held an old man named Ezatullah outside his home while other soldiers went inside.

“They’re searching all the houses,” Reshmina whispered. But what were they looking for?

Ezatullah started to argue with the soldiers, and Pasoon took Reshmina by the hand and pulled her along past them, up the stairs.

At the house just below theirs, Reshmina saw an American soldier giving instructions to a team of Afghan soldiers. The American’s uniform was sand-colored, unlike the green camouflage the ANA soldiers wore. He had more equipment too—and a bigger gun.

Reshmina pulled her headscarf over her face and looked away as she and Pasoon slipped by.

“Did you see that?” Pasoon hissed. “Afghans taking orders from an American in our own country!”

They came at last to their house, a squat square home made of mud and brick and wood. Pasoon threw open the door, and Reshmina followed him inside.

There were only three rooms in their house—a front room where the family ate their meals, a room beyond that where the women spent most of their time and where the family slept, and their tiny kitchen in the back with its cooking pit. Each room had a dirt floor with rugs on it but no other furniture.

Reshmina ran to the women’s room. Her older sister Marzia sat on the floor picking the bad bits out of a bowl of uncooked rice, and their anaa—their grandmother—did needlework and sang softly to Reshmina’s little brother, Zahir, who rolled around on a rug beside her. Marzia looked pretty in her pink dress and teal headscarf. Anaa wore a blue-and-white flower-print dress and a blue shawl.