All We Have Left (31 page)

“I just want to know what happened,” I say, but the words get caught in my throat as he looks at me.

I want to kiss him, but I know that it’s something that will mean way more than it would if he were any other guy. I’m still not sure he’s kissed anyone before, and the thought makes my blood run thick and slow. I reach my finger to touch the dimple in his cheek, the small indention that’s there even when he’s not smiling.

“I lost my faith for a while,” he says suddenly, his voice low, and quivers run along my arms, because of all the things we talked about, we never talked about
this.
“I lost it when my parents moved here with my sister and I stayed behind with my cousin to finish high school. I did some stuff I’m not proud of, trusted people I shouldn’t have. That’s why I left to come here. I needed to remind myself who I am. But now … now, I don’t know what I’m doing again.”

I stay silent as he runs the back of his knuckles over my cheek and my breath catches.

“I tried to stay away from you,” he says. “The first time I saw you, when we climbed the falls that day, I knew it was going to be hard. And then after you did what you did, I tried to stay angry at you. It felt safer that way. But even that couldn’t keep me away from you.” He laughs a little.

“You don’t have to lose your faith to be with me, do you?” I ask, running my hand across his cheek and then down his neck. He rolls his head to the side, and I feel the soft hair at the back of his neck.

“I think I do,” he says. “Right now anyway. I have trouble doing things half-ass, you know? If I’d already finished college and was thinking about a wife, then we’d be golden.”

Neither one of us moves to step away, to untangle our hands, our hearts.

“I don’t understand why you can’t have both right now,” I say.

“That’s just the way it works,” he says, but doesn’t let go of me.

My neighbor comes out of her door, Mrs. Lawrence walking her dog, and we finally separate slowly and reluctantly. Lightning is flashing far away, and I can feel the faint strum of thunder in my bones.

“Climbing tomorrow, right?”

“Yep.” He grins crookedly before turning and walking away, whistling under his breath.

My phone buzzes as I fumble for my keys, and I pull it out of my bag.

It’s an e-mail from Anne Jonna.

There’s a missing persons poster at the 9/11 museum. A girl named Alia. I think you should go check it out.

I’m leading the way up the stairs, and Travis follows without complaining.

The jet fuel smell is stronger as we go higher, and the smoke is thicker. We run into small groups of people here and there, and while Travis may talk to them, I don’t really notice. I don’t stop. I slow when I just can’t take it anymore, and once I have my wind back, I start up again faster. I concentrate on the glowing paint lines on the stairs and lifting my feet to take one more step.

“I don’t know if we can keep going, Alia,” Travis gasps. “The smoke is getting worse.”

“If my father is up there, it’s getting worse for him too,” I gasp back without stopping.

Travis is still checking doors as we pass, and it scares me
that some open and some don’t. What if the door to Ayah’s floor doesn’t open? It’s still a long way up, but what would we do then?

The stairwell walls are creaking, and cracked in places, and somehow I know that the tower is dying, little by little. It makes me want to turn around and race back the way we’ve come, but I have to make sure Ayah is okay.

We turn a corner of the stairwell and see the firemen, and I want to jump with joy.

“My father,” I gasp as I stumble to a stop in front of the two firemen who are standing in the stairway, their faces red. “My father is up there! I think he’s hurt. We need to go find him!”

“What floor?” one of them says immediately, while the other one leans against the wall, his head down. I tell them, and the fireman says nothing for a moment. He’s young, with a thick head of messy hair, a dusting of fuzz across his upper lip, and red-rimmed and exhausted eyes.

“We’re working our way up,” says the other fireman, a heavyset older man with a crew cut. “We’ll find him. You need to go back down. You need to leave the building as quickly as possible.”

“I have to go to him!” I can hear the hysteria in my voice, and Travis puts his hand on my arm.

“How old are you?” the older firemen says. “Sixteen, seventeen? What are you even doing here? If I were your father, I would want you to get to safety. We’ll find him, I promise.”

“Can’t you call someone?” I ask desperately. “Please, call someone and tell them that my father is up there!”

The firemen exchange looks. “Our radio signals aren’t getting through,” the younger one says. “We can’t call out.”

“You need to turn around and go. Right now!” the older one says harshly.

“No!” I cry. “I can’t leave him!”

“Alia,” Travis says quietly.

I ignore him and take a step up the stairs, but the older fireman pushes off the wall and stands beside his younger partner, and they are blocking the stairs. They are not going to let me go up, and, oh God,
I need to find Ayah!

“Please! He could be dying!” I want to push past them, I want superhero strength, but I am so tired, and they won’t move, and then Travis has me by the arm, tugging me back down the stairs. I start crying because I didn’t say good-bye to Ayah this morning, I did not kiss his cheek like I usually do, and why didn’t I tell him I loved him?

As I look back, the two firefighters are starting up the stairs again.

“Who was that?” a voice asks from inside the dark, empty shop.

I jump, still reeling from the e-mail Anne just sent me about the missing persons poster.

“God, you scared me, Dad,” I say, trying to make my voice light. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

My chest feels tight. He’s sitting behind the counter, and I know he has a clear view of the street. He could have seen me and Adam. I never thought he would be in the shop and
how could we be so stupid? How had we gotten so careless?

“Who was that?” he asks again, and I know he knows.

“Adam,” I say, hoping that will be enough.

“Adam who?” He knows who he is. I can tell by his voice.

There’s no use in lying. “Adam Ayoub.”

“Did you know he’s Muslim?” I wish I could see Dad’s face, because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t match up with the weird cheery tone of his voice. It’s a small town. I should have known he’d find out.

“Yes, I knew, but he’s not one of
them
, Dad, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone—”

“He doesn’t want to hurt anyone.” His tone is flat.

I want so badly to say something about how I feel about Adam, but how do I say the words? Not saying them feels like a kind of betrayal of Adam, and saying them is a betrayal of Dad, and which one is worse?

“So, let me get this straight,” Dad says, and his voice is rising, but still with that false, almost
happy
, tone. “You’ve decided it would be a good idea to hang out with
one of the people who killed your brother
?” This last part he roars like machine gun spray across the room.

I back up fast until I run into the glass front door and the bells jingle merrily above me.

“Adam was only three when 9/11 happened, Dad, he didn’t have anything to do with—”

“
I don’t care how old he was!
” He stands up with a clatter, the stool falling away behind him. “Those people want to destroy us! They hate everything we stand for! They don’t eat, they don’t drink, they
live
on hate for America!”

I don’t say anything, but I can’t help but think he lives on hate too, and how is it any different?

I feel his rage pressing outward like a big pressure bubble
against my chest. I put my hand on the door handle, wondering if I should run, because while he’s never laid a finger on me before, I’ve never seen him this angry before either.

“Adam and his family are good people.” I’m talking loudly, trying to make him understand.
And I think I might love him, Dad, and, oh God, what would you say if I told you
that
?
“Adam and his dad are even helping me find out what Travis was doing in the towers that day. They’re
helping
me!”

As soon as the words come out of my mouth, I know it is a mistake, an unrecoverable failure.

With a shatter of glass, the stand holding expensive designer sunglasses goes crashing to the floor.

“
They are not good people!
Those people won’t stop until they have killed every one of us, and you want to talk to them about your
brother
? The one they
killed
?”

“They didn’t kill him,” I try to keep control of my voice. “You can’t blame almost two billion people for what just a few of them did!”

He is silent, and I continue in a softer tone. “You never talk about Travis, and you won’t let any of us talk about him either. How do you think that makes me feel?”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time, and it’s like we are both clinging to a rope that can only hold one of us, and I wonder which one will let go first.

“You’re not my daughter anymore,” he says, and his words echo in the cool stillness of the shop. “Do you hear me?
You’re not my daughter anymore
.”

Travis is talking as he pulls me down the stairs, but I’m not listening to him, I’m not listening to anything but the frantic beat of my thoughts, a constant drumming of
you need to find him, you need to find Ayah.
I’m crying, big choking sobs that bring in gasps of thick, smoky air. I’m overcome with coughing, and have to stop.

“Alia, you need to calm down,” Travis says, and finally I hear him, and I know he’s right, but
I cannot leave my father up there.
But all of a sudden I can’t breathe, and I lean forward with my hands on my knees and Travis is saying,
Breathe, Alia, breathe.
I try to, but I catch another lungful of acrid, burning air, and my vision starts to go black at the edges.

Breathe, Alia, breathe.

And suddenly, I can again. I stand up, still coughing, but not as bad.

“There’s got to be another way up,” I say to Travis when I can talk again. “We’ll find another stairwell.”

Travis doesn’t say anything, but he looks weary and somehow defeated.

“There’s got to be another way up!” I scream at him, and start back down the stairwell. After a moment, I hear him follow.

The next door I try is locked, but the one below it swings open easily, and I breathe a small prayer of thanks.

Bookcases lay on the ground, manuals scattering under my feet as I stumble past desks. For some reason small details stand out: floor tiles that are skewed at a weird angle; a paper floating up in front of me so slowly that I can see that it is a memo about keeping the bathrooms clean; a wall with a perfect Z ripped through it.

I make my way past overturned furniture, stepping around big gray worms of air-conditioning ducts that have fallen from the ceiling. There has to be another stairwell, but where?