Free We All Fall Down by Eric Walters Page A

and I could feel the building moving, gently, back and forth. It seemed to go on forever but really it was no more than ten seconds before it came to a stop.
    “Did the top of the other tower fall over … did it hit this building?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.”
    Still holding my hand he pulled me along the corridor toward the shattered front doors of his office. A million tiny pellets of glass crunched under our feet as we stepped through the now open doorway. There were more tiles fallen from the ceilings, wires hanging down, filing cabinets knocked over and computers smashed on the floor. My father reached up and turned on one of the TVs. The screen snapped to life. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
    “Oh, my good God,” the announcer said. “I don’t have the words to describe what I have just witnessed.”
    He didn’t need words. The picture told the whole story. There wasn’t just one building on fire. The second tower—the tower we were
standing in—
was on fire too! My whole body trembled, and if my father hadn’t been holding my hand I think Imight have crumpled to the ground.
    “Just seconds ago, live, before our eyes, a second plane crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center,” the announcer said. “Here is that dramatic footage.”
    The screen changed and there was a shot similar to one we’d already seen: the North Tower, on fire, smoke billowing up into the clear blue sky. Then a plane—a gigantic airplane—cut across the sky, banked slightly to one side and slammed into the South Tower, disappearing into a cloud of smoke and dust and debris! This was completely beyond my ability to comprehend.
    “At 9:03, a second plane crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. We saw it approach, cutting across the sky from the south, and then it just hit the building, disappearing, like it was sucked inside, converted to a gigantic ball of orange flame. There can now be no doubt: as with the first plane, this one was
deliberately
crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.”
    My father walked right up to the TV and began running his finger down the picture of the tower. What was he doing?
    He turned to me. “Floor seventy-nine or eighty.”
    “What about floor seventy-nine or eighty?”
    “The plane hit this building at around the seventy-ninth floor … below us … we’re above the crash.”
    I looked at him and then at the screen. Back to him again, and then my eyes settled finally on the smoke billowing out of the building. That couldn’t be right. We couldn’t be above because that meant we were trapped. That couldn’t be.
    “M-maybe you’re wrong,” I stammered. “It’s hard to tell what floor it is because of all the smoke.”
    “I counted,” my father said.
    “Count again!”
    “We do not as yet have much information about the passengers on the doomed airplane,” the announcer said. “What we do know is that at 9:03 a commercial airplane crashed into the South Tower, hitting at an angle that caused damage to floors seventy-nine, eighty, eighty-one and eighty-two. Beyond that we have no information about fatalities in the buildings. And while we have no further information at this time, the pictures speak volumes. I can’t imagine that anybody on those floors could have survived the impact of a fully fueled commercial airplane slamming into the side of the building.
    “To recap. At 8:46, American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Any doubts that may have existed that this was an accident have been completely eliminated as, at 9:03, a secondplane crashed into the South Tower in what is surely an act of terrorism … the worst act of terrorism in the history of this country.”
    My father reached up and clicked off the TV. “Now we know what happened.”
    My father’s voice was soft, measured, reassuring. And he didn’t look scared any more. He just looked as