Nine, Ten: List 3

At the mention of the word “school,” Naheed must have groaned out loud, at which point Nouri felt the need to share with Aunt Judith an account of the two boys who had been teasing her older sister.

Not a bad move, Will was about to congratulate himself. Nothing like a sincere apology. Girls liked that. Except maybe he looked a little too smug a little too soon.

“Does this have something to do with your late-night excursion?” Will’s mother asked.

“And then I get mad at that other man, for having a stroke or whatever he had, like he shouldn’t have been driving, but then I know that doesn’t make sense either.”

“But what about Mom? Isn’t Mom your special girl?” Aimee blanched. Her insides wrenched up into a knot.

“I’m sorry, Aimee.” Her dad composed himself.

“He probably had a hemorrhage, a bleed in his brain you couldn’t see,” Gideon said.

She stood at their booth holding up two large canisters, both dripping with condensation from the cold ice cream inside.

But then again, they both poured their shakes into their respective glasses and then lifted the metal canisters to their mouths, drinking down the leftovers first.

When he looked down at his own hand, he saw his fist clenched, like it always was, and he let it unfurl.

He barely listened as his teacher droned on about something.

Someone standing at the window started rambling about a dark mushroom of smoke rising from across the river, and the bell, without any awareness of what was going on, rang for first period.

Flight 77—with fifty-eight passengers and six crew members on board—on its way to Los Angeles International Airport, deviated from its course, turning south directly over Ohio, where, thirty-five thousand feet below, Naheed was sitting in language arts class, listening to Virginia Whitworth give her book report on The Outsiders.

Now Naheed felt silly, but when she turned to ask Eliza what had happened, Mrs. Salinger preempted her.

“Hello? Hello?” She thought she heard the connection click. Someone answered, but there was a lot of noisy interference.

She’d be frazzled and rushed and she wouldn’t be able to listen.

The reception was better. The static suddenly lifted. Her mother’s voice was clear.

The sky over Manhattan was gray with soot in a halo of blue and a shroud of black.

It was clear that the world was about to blow apart, if it hadn’t already, and suddenly nothing else mattered but getting home. It was a primitive instinct, a drive, a need to find family no matter how far.

Police sirens were wailing, and cops were not paying one bit of attention to all the black teenagers loitering outside the school, running down the sidewalks and the middle of the street.