Everything in front of me just shriveled down to nothing. It feels like there's nothing left. So many emotions were flying through my mind. What happens next?

It was a crisp fall morning in New York when I heard my alarm clock buzz. I looked at my clock; it was 7:02am. I realized I should probably get out of bed. I walked sluggishly to my bathroom, dragging my feet in front me. I could hear my mom in the shower listening to some old 80’s music. My mom has always been a more bubbly person, where my dad's more chill and laid back. I’ve always been more like my dad. After getting ready, I walked downstairs and could smell my mom's pancakes. We lived in a pretty spacious New York apartment. Three bedrooms and one bathroom. We’ve lived here my whole life; my parents moved in after they got married because it was so close to my mom's bakery and my dad's station.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” my mom said in her cheerful voice as always.

“Morning,” I said, sitting down next to my dad at the kitchen table.  He looked tired as always, a fireman at the local station, and he got called in late at night a lot, so he never really slept well. I felt bad until I realized how much he really did like helping people. My mom owned a bakery down the street and worked whenever she felt like it, really. I went to school at City Knoll Middle School. I hated it. I always had. When I was young my dad would take me out of school to get ice cream because he knew how much I hated being there.

“Ready for school?” Dad said.

“Ready as ever,” I said more sarcastically than I meant to.

It was only my second week of eighth grade, and I already hated it. After being an only child my whole life, I was more mature than the kids in my grade, and I found almost everyone there childish and annoying. But I stuck through it and went.

It was 7:45 now. Everyday at the same time, we all walk down the apartment building together and to the parking garage. Dad left for work to the station a few miles away in his big black truck, and Mom and I got in her little white Chevy, and she drove me to school.

It was about 8:00 when I got to school.

“Have a great day at school, Honey, I love you.”

“Love you.”

I walked into school, passing all the loud kids near their lockers getting ready to start the day. About 45 minutes boring minutes went by while I was in study hall; suddenly, the classroom phone rang. My teacher got up to answer it, and we continued working, thinking nothing of it. A few seconds went by and I looked up at her, face turning pale.

I turned to my friend in class. “What is happening?” I whispered, hearing sirens roar from miles away.

The teacher turnen back at us. The silence in the room made my stomach hurt.  “There’s been an emergency at the World Trade Center.” Because of living so close, I thought of all the people my parents and I know that work there.

“What kind of emergency?”

“A plane crashed into one of the towers,” my teacher bellowed, her voice shaking.

She dragged the TV over with the cart and put on the news. There was debris and smoke everywhere.

Seeing all the fire trucks and police men surrounding the building couldn't help but make me think of my dad. I knew he was there somewhere; he worked at the closest station. There's no way he's not there. 15 minutes passed, and the only thing you could hear was the TV. We were all silent. Then suddenly, a scream of terror reached through the TV screen. Another plane crashed into the North Tower.

People were crying and screaming. There was smoke everywhere. It felt like watching a horror movie. But no, this was real.

There's no way this was an accident; we're under attack.

11:30, when we were in the passing block, there was nothing but buzz in the hallway about what was possibly happening. I was in complete denial. I couldn’t comprehend what was happening and what could be happening to my dad. A few minutes after settling into my new class, my teacher got a call. What could this possibly be, how could this get worse? What I wasn't expecting was him to say my name.

“Abby, you’re getting picked up, you are excused.”

The whole class stared at me as I packed up my things and walked out.

As I was walking, so many thoughts were rushing through my head; Who is picking me up? Is everyone okay? Is this another attack?

I reached the office doors, and I saw my mom standing out there. I felt both relief and terror. Her face looked pale like she had been sick. I walked to her, and she said nothing, so I waited until we got in the car, the same little white Honda she drove me in that morning when the only thing I had to worry about was school.

“So.. what's this about?” I said, trying to break the horrorizing silence.

“Jim called me,” my mom said, holding her tears back.  Jim was my dad's best friend and had been for longer than I’d even thought in his life; they worked at the same station together.

“After the planes had hit the station split up and no one has seen your father since.”

A lump in my throat formed, and we both let out sobs, still sitting in my school parking lot. It felt like I was about to pass out. Five minutes passed when my mom finally spoke up, breaking the silence.

“I have hope that he is somewhere and didn't tell anyone,”my mom says, rubbing the tears off her face.

“We should get home.”

My mom and I sat for hours, waiting for my dad to come home. We looked outside and saw smoke still roam the air. People were picking up debris, but none of them had the familiar face we were looking for. It was 3 AM now, and he should have been home eight hours before. I fell asleep eventually, but I knew my mom was up all night waiting for him.

The next morning we didn't even bother excusing my absence from school. My mom and I drove to what we used to call the World Trade Center, but it was now what looked like a war zone. People had stayed up all night cleaning, but there was debris everywhere and smoke was still traveling through the air, burning my lungs. We walked around, hoping for a miracle that my father was one of the hundreds of people here helping, but I looked through all of them;  none of them were him. With disappointment, my mom and I headed back home, waiting for him to come to the door.

Two hours of silence and waiting for the doorbell, my mom jumped up onto her toes like her seat was on fire to answer the door. She opened it, and I recognized the man from my dad's station.

“Come in, Come in,” my mom said quietly, hands shaking, closing the door behind him.

“Mrs. Hanson, I’m so sorry, but your husband did not return after entering the North Tower. It is to our belief that he was on a higher level as the building collapsed.”

The tall, dark-haired man looked down at his feet as my mother fell to the ground. I didn’t know what to feel. Sadness, confusinon, and emptiness all ran through my body.  He grabbed my mom's hands and sat for a minute. I didn’t know what to think.

He was really gone. Anger flowed through me. How could these people do this much damage to all of these innocent people? No one, especially my father, deserved this.

As the days and weeks went by, I missed my dad a lot, but the little things reminded me of him and proved that he was still here. Once every couple of weeks, my mom picks me up from school early and brings me to that same ice cream shop that my dad did. Sometimes, it feels like he’s not even gone.

 

 

 

 

-Danielle M.