MY DAD HAD HAD A MEETING with some finance guy at nine a.m.

“On time is late,” he used to say, and I always naively agreed. That was, until getting there twenty minutes early had literally been the death of him. If he’d been on time, he would have survived. But no, he’d had to be early and stepped off the elevator on the one hundred first floor of the North Tower five minutes before it got hit by a fucking airplane.

I heard the horrific sounds from my classroom that morning, but I had no idea what it was until all hell broke loose. All of our teachers were hysterical, and even Principal Rogers couldn’t stop crying in the assembly room, where we’d all been forced to gather and wait. Principal Rogers never showed any kind of emotion, except anger. That was when I knew it was really bad. None of us could check anything though. Cell phones had stopped working; the networks were overloaded.

“Both towers were hit with planes this morning,” Principal Rogers informed us, and my twelve-year-old brain played it off like it wasn’t a big deal at first.

An accident, I thought to myself. Why is everyone freaking out? The Twin Towers are massive. They’ll be fine. It’s not like they can fall. We all know they were built to stand.

Another round of noise I couldn’t begin to describe engulfed us, and the ground started to shake. We all frantically looked around at each other, but no one said a word. It was eerily quiet. A room filled with teenagers, not one of us making a sound. Principal Rogers excused himself and returned quickly, his face pale, his hands shaking.

“One of the towers just fell,” he announced.

The assembly room exploded with cries and shouts. We all talked over one another, our utter shock apparent. Many of my classmates had parents who worked in the buildings.

When my mom finally showed up to take me home, it was the first time I’d stepped outdoors since it’d happened. By then, both towers had fallen, and the sky was an unnatural shade of gray, thick with debris that hurt to breathe in. My eyes burned.

“Your father,” Mom started to say, her hand squeezing mine way too tight as we walked across the street and toward the building where we lived.

I was too old to be holding my mother’s hand, but I allowed it.

I stopped walking. “What about him? Where is he?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

I pulled out my phone and tried to call him, but the networks were still fucked. When they did work, the calls went straight to voice mail, and we prayed that he was just somewhere and couldn’t reach us. Roads were closed. Mass transportation had halted. It wasn’t out of the question that he was simply out of reach and would walk through our front door at any moment.