Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Why I Wrote About September 11
Time Line for the Morning of September 11, 2001
Questions and Answers About 9/11
About the Author
Also Available
Copyright
A bright blue sky stretched over New York City.
It was the morning rush. Men and women hurried to work. Taxis, cars, and buses zoomed through the streets.
And then there was the plane.
Many people in Lower Manhattan heard it before they saw it — the screaming roar of jet engines.
The massive aircraft streaked through the sky, barely skimming over rooftops.
Up and down the sidewalks, people froze.
Eleven-year-old Lucas Calley wasn’t supposed to be in Manhattan that day. His parents had no idea that he’d caught a train into the city, that he was there, on a crowded sidewalk, looking up as it all began.
Lucas watched, almost hypnotized, as the plane careened through the sky.
He’d never seen a plane flying so low.
It was so close he could read the letters on the tail: AA.
American Airlines.
Panicked questions swirled through his mind.
Was there something wrong with the plane?
Was the pilot sick? Lost? Confused?
Pull up! Lucas wanted to shout. Go higher!
But the plane kept getting lower.
And faster.
And now Lucas’s heart stopped as he saw what was in the plane’s path: the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. The silver-and-glass buildings, each a quarter of a mile tall, rose high above the New York City skyline.
The plane sped up.
No!
With one last ferocious roar, the jet plunged into the side of one of the towers.
There was a thundering explosion.
People all around Lucas screamed.
And then the bright blue sky filled with black smoke and fire.
As usual, football practice was brutal.
It was ninety-five degrees. Lucas was soaked in sweat. Three guys had already puked up their Gatorades. Lucas’s body felt like one big bruise.
A football came sailing through the air. It looked like an impossible catch — Lucas’s favorite kind. He took off, legs pumping, eyes on the ball. At exactly the right split second, he leaped up as high as he could, plucked the ball from the air, and grabbed it to his chest as he crashed to the ground.
All around him, guys hooted and cheered and high-fived.
A familiar happy feeling rushed over Lucas. Sure, his entire body ached. Yeah, Coach B. was always screaming at them. But this is where Lucas was happiest, where he belonged: on this broiling hot turf field with his football team, the Port Jackson Jaguars.
It had been Uncle Benny’s idea that Lucas could be a football player. Benny was Dad’s best friend from Ladder 177, the New York City firehouse where they both worked. Lucas had always liked Uncle Benny — everyone did. Dad once said that Benny was like the firehouse cheerleader.
A six-foot-two-inch cheerleader with a shamrock tattoo.
But it wasn’t until Lucas was in third grade that he really got close to Uncle Benny. That year, Lucas’s dad was badly hurt in a warehouse fire in Brooklyn. He was in the hospital burn center for almost two months. Uncle Benny practically moved in with Mom and Lucas until Dad was better. Lucas would wake up some mornings and find Uncle Benny reading the sports pages at the kitchen table. Before Lucas could say, “Where’s Mom?” Uncle Benny would grab him by the arm and sit him down. “You gotta see this,” he’d say, holding up a picture of some football player Lucas had never heard of.
Lucas would sit there, pretending to be interested. He’d never been a sports kid. He and Dad were always so busy working on their projects. Before Dad got hurt, they’d been spending every weekend in their basement workshop, building a model of the Ladder 177 truck, the Seagrave 75.
But Uncle Benny wasn’t interested in truck models. What Uncle Benny loved was football. And soon enough he had Lucas glued to Monday Night Football, cheering for Uncle Benny’s teams, watching ESPN, and booing the players Uncle Benny hated. Uncle Benny bought Lucas a football, and then spent hours with him in the backyard, teaching him to throw and catch.
And then came the day when Uncle Benny appeared with the form to sign up for the Jaguars.
“I can’t really play football,” Lucas said.
Back then Lucas had been pudgy, shorter even than some of the girls in his grade.
But Uncle Benny got his mom and dad to sign the form. And the next thing Lucas knew, Uncle Benny was driving him to his first practice.
Lucas had to smile as he thought back to that day — he was a little butterball stuffed into his pads and brand-new cleats.
“I think we should go home,” he said to Uncle Benny, choking back tears.
“No, you don’t,” Uncle Benny said. “You want to get out there and show what you can do!”
And Uncle Benny’s eyes were so big and sparkling, like bright lights spelling out the words You can do it!
So Lucas did it.
And from that first day, Lucas felt like he’d found his place.
It wasn’t really the game he loved. It was being on the team, being surrounded by the guys. They watched each other’s backs. Winners or losers, they stuck together.
Uncle Benny had also taught him the secret of catching a football: that you had to believe you were going to catch it.
“You have to feel it in your heart,” Uncle Benny said.
It worked every time.
Almost.
Toward the end of practice, someone threw another impossible pass.
“Go get it, Lucas!” the guys screamed.
And off Lucas went, his eyes glued to the ball, his arms stretched out so long he felt like he could grab the sun. But something went wrong. His heart knew he would catch it. But his ankle didn’t.
It wobbled and Lucas lost his balance. Suddenly he was flying through the air, a missile out of control. He crashed headfirst into the hard turf.
Crack!
He could practically feel his brain smacking against the inside of his skull.
A white light of pain exploded inside Lucas’s head.
He saw stars — a whole galaxy behind his eyes.
And then he blacked out.
The next few hours were a blur. The guys swarming around him, Coach B. helping him off the field, the long wait at the emergency room, Mom’s and Dad’s worried faces.
But in the end, Lucas was fine.
He just had a concussion.
Sure, it was worse than the concussion he’d gotten during play-offs last season, and the one before that, during the summer after fourth grade. But he knew he would get better if he took it easy, just like the other times.
That night, Dad came into Lucas’s room to check on him.
“Feeling okay?” he asked.
“I’m good, Dad,” Lucas said.
He really was feeling much better.
What killed him was knowing he’d be off the field for twelve days.
He already missed the guys.
Looking up at Dad, Lucas saw a face almost exactly like his own — they even had the same specks of green in thei
r brown eyes.
“You need anything?” Dad asked.
“I’m good,” Lucas said again.
Lucas stayed very still, hoping Dad would stick around and talk.
But Dad stood up. He leaned over and kissed Lucas on the forehead.
And he was gone.
Lucas’s heart sank a little.
There had been a time when Dad would have plopped himself down on Lucas’s bed and announced his plan for their next adventure. Some nights back then, they’d wait for Mom to fall asleep so they could sneak down to the basement to work on the Seagrave.
Dad and Lucas had been a team — a team of two.
But then came the warehouse fire.
Two years had passed since it happened, but the memories were still sharp — the doorbell ringing in the middle of the night, the Chief and Uncle Benny standing in the doorway, still stinking of smoke. Mom’s tears. And later, the sight of Dad wrapped in bandages, his face white with pain.
Lucas had always known that his dad’s job was dangerous. Sometimes Dad would bring Lucas to the firehouse on his days off. Lucas would help with the chores — washing the truck, cooking lunch, checking the hoses. But what he loved most was sitting around the big, round kitchen table, listening to the guys talk about the fires they’d fought.
To Lucas, they were superheroes.
They ran into buildings filled with blazing orange flames and choking black smoke. They used metal spears to smash windows, rip out walls, and bash through doors. They carried people down oven-hot stairwells and dangled from ropes hundreds of feet in the air. The fires they tamed were more evil and ferocious than any video-game villain or movie monster.
But it wasn’t until the warehouse fire that Lucas understood what a fire could do to a real man, a man like his dad.
Dad had never talked about what happened to him inside that warehouse. All Lucas knew was that four firemen died, and Dad was badly burned in an explosion. Even after all this time, the scars on Dad’s arms were bright red and lumpy, like raw hamburger.
But the burns weren’t the worst of what that fire did to Dad.
It took away his easy smile and booming laugh. It turned him quiet. Some days Dad barely talked at all. He’d get this look in his eyes, like his mind was somewhere else — probably sifting through the ashes in that warehouse.
Lucas stopped asking when they’d get back to that model of the Seagrave, which was half-finished and covered with dust in the basement. And when the memories of that night came back, or he started worrying that Dad would never be himself again, he’d close his eyes and imagine himself on the football field, surrounded by the guys, their voices calling out his name as he made one of his famous catches.
Monday came, the last day before Lucas would be allowed back on the field. He’d been crossing out the days on his calendar, counting down. Mom picked him up early from school for a doctor’s appointment — she wanted him checked out before he was cleared to play.
“I’m fine,” Lucas said. “Can’t you tell?”
Lucas lifted his arm and flexed his bicep.
Mom laughed. “You look incredible.”
Mom had decided to take him to a new doctor. “I hear he’s the best,” she said. “We were lucky he could fit you in.”
His name was Dr. Barrett. With his blond crew cut and huge shoulders, he looked more like a linebacker than a doctor.
Dr. Barrett brought Lucas into an exam room and checked him over — looking in his eyes, listening to his heart and lungs. He asked him to walk across the room with one foot in front of the other. Lucas was sure he passed all the tests.
After the exam, Dr. Barrett waved Mom and Lucas back into his office. The wall was covered with framed diplomas and pictures of football players. Lucas looked at a photo of a rough-looking man in a Denver Broncos uniform.
“That’s Dan Brock,” Dr. Barrett said. “Have you heard of him?”
The name was familiar, but Lucas didn’t know why.
“He was All-American at the University of Wisconsin, then a third-round pick for the NFL.”
Dr. Barrett pointed to the next photo in the row, a big smiling man with a busted-up nose and chubby baby cheeks.
“That’s Tyrus Vallone,” he said. “He was a star tackle at Florida State, and then he played ten years for Green Bay.”
There were three other pictures on the wall. It was only the last one that Lucas recognized.
“Is that Stan Walsh? Didn’t he … isn’t he …”
He was dead.
He had died just a few months ago. Uncle Benny had been upset about it — he’d played against Stan Walsh when he was a college player.
Dr. Barrett nodded, seeing that Lucas knew about Stan Walsh. “He had just turned forty,” the doctor said. “He had the same kind of brain disease you see in men in their eighties.”
Dr. Barrett pointed up at the wall, at all of the players.
“All of those men are dead,” he said. “They donated their brains to our lab, so we can study them. They all died because of concussions.”
A chill ran up and down Lucas’s spine.
He looked at Mom. Her eyes were wide with shock.
“We used to think concussions were like sprained ankles,” Dr. Barrett said. “You get dinged, you let it heal, and you’re good to go. But now we know that too many concussions can actually change the brain.”
“How many concussions is too many?” Mom asked.
Lucas held his breath.
“I would say that in an eleven-year-old boy, three concussions in two years is too many.”
The room was suddenly quiet. Lucas could feel the eyes of those football players looking down on him.
“I can stay out another week,” Lucas said. It would be torture. But he’d be back in time for the first game.
“I’m sorry, Lucas,” Dr. Barrett said. “But what I’m suggesting is that you never play football again.”
All night Lucas argued and begged. He had a million reasons why that doctor was wrong, and he told Mom and Dad practically every single one.
When that didn’t work, he offered to sit out for two more weeks — then three.
“Just please don’t make me quit!”
Finally Dad put his hands on Lucas’s shoulders.
“Lucas,” Dad said in a soft voice. “Football is a game. I know you love it. But it is just a game.”
A game.
Of course Lucas knew that.
But that game was the most important thing in his life.
What would he do without his team?
That night he lay awake in bed for hours, thinking.
It was past midnight when he realized what he needed to do.
He had to see Uncle Benny.
Before Mom and Dad talked to Coach. Before it was too late.
Dad left early the next morning. He was teaching a class at The Rock, the firefighter training school, across a bridge from Manhattan, on Randall’s Island. Mom dropped Lucas off at the bus stop on her way to work.
The minute her car disappeared, Lucas sprinted back home. He grabbed his bike and pedaled as fast as he could to the train station.
He caught the 7:17 with one minute to spare.
Lucas knew how wrong this was — to skip school, to sneak into the city without Mom and Dad knowing.
But right then, none of that mattered.
He had to see Uncle Benny.
Somehow, Uncle Benny would make this right.
Lucas had made this trip so many times with Dad he knew it by heart — the train to Penn Station, the subway to Canal Street.
When he got out of the subway, he looked up and found his landmark: the two silver buildings jutting into the sky.
The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.
The World Trade Center was nine blocks south of the fire station. So he just followed his view of the towers until he hit the right street.
As Lucas walked, he thought of the last time he and Dad visited the Trade C
enter. They’d gotten there early, before the observation deck was open. But the guard noticed Dad’s FDNY hat and let them go up.
They had the place to themselves.
The view from the 110th floor was like looking down on Manhattan from a cloud. The whole island stretched out in front of them. The buildings below looked like toys, the rivers like trickling streams, the cars and trucks looked smaller than the models Lucas and Dad built in the basement.
They stood there, just Dad and Lucas, alone on top of the world.
That was right before the warehouse fire — only two years before now.
It seemed like a very long time ago.
When Lucas got to the firehouse, the garage door was open.
And there, right next to the Seagrave, was Uncle Benny.
He glanced up and gave an offhand smile, obviously thinking that Lucas was just a neighborhood kid hoping to get a peek at the truck.
But then Uncle Benny looked at Lucas again.
“Hey, you!” he said with a surprised grin, striding over.
He pulled Lucas into the garage.
Lucas breathed in the familiar smell of diesel fuel and sweat. He’d always loved the sight of all the guys’ black bunker coats hanging on the walls, the pants already tucked into the big black boots.
The firehouse was crowded. The guys from the last shift were saying their good-byes and the morning men were just getting settled.
Guys came from all over the firehouse to say hi to Lucas, wrapping him in bear hugs, rubbing his head, and telling him he was growing like a weed.
“I’ve missed my assistant,” said Georgie, who drove the truck and also did most of the cooking. On Lucas’s visits with Dad, his favorite job was helping Georgie cook his famous tomato sauce.
Chief Douglas came over, his smile flashing from under his bushy gray mustache, followed by Mark, one of the youngest guys. He and his family lived not far from Lucas. His eight-year-old twin boys were football fanatics, and Mark coached their team. Last season they came to one of Lucas’s games. Afterward, the twins had asked Lucas for his autograph.
I Survived the Attacks of September 11th, 2001 Page 1