by Tom Rogers
eleven
Tom Rogers
Alto Nido Press
Los Angeles
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2014 by Tom Rogers
All rights reserved.
Published by Alto Nido Press, LLC, at Smashwords
This book is also available in print at most online retailers.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without written permission from the publisher. For information regarding permission, contact the publisher through the contact page at www.eleventhebook.com.
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ISBN-978-0-9911810-2-5 (Kindle)
ISBN-978-0-9911810-3-2 (ePub)
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover illustration by Tim Kordik
www.trkstudio.com
Author photo by Minh Q. Pham
“You are My Sunshine,” by Jimmie Davis
Copyright © 1940 by Peer International Corporation
Copyright Renewed
Used by Permission
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to those who perished in the attacks of September 11, 2001, and to all the courageous first responders, supporters, survivors, volunteers, families, neighbors, and communities who came together in this tragedy and showed us all the better angels of our nature.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: A-Dawg
Chapter 2: The Home Front
Chapter 3: Man in the Mirror
Chapter 4: You Smell Like a Monkey
Chapter 5: Worst. Birthday. Ever.
Chapter 6: The Man in the White Shirt
Chapter 7: Sick
Chapter 8: The Man in the White Shirt
Chapter 9: Be There
Chapter 10: A Dog’s Life
Chapter 11: The Man in the White Shirt
Chapter 12: Home Run
Chapter 13: The Man in the White Shirt
Chapter 14: Terror
Chapter 15: Missing
Chapter 16: The Man in the White Shirt
Chapter 17: Radar
Chapter 18: Questions
Chapter 19: Mac
Chapter 20: The Man in the White Shirt
Chapter 21: Crossing the Bridge
Chapter 22: New Deal
Chapter 23: Whirlwind
Chapter 24: The Man in the White Shirt
Chapter 25: Ghosts
Chapter 26: The Man in the White Shirt
Chapter 27: Friends
Chapter 28: Heroes
Chapter 29: The Man in the White Shirt
Chapter 30: Dead End
Chapter 31: Van Orton Street
Chapter 32: The Man in the White Shirt
Chapter 33: Everything’s Changed
Chapter 34: The Man in the White Shirt
Chapter 35: Faces
Chapter 36: The Man in the White Shirt
Chapter 37: Sunshine
Chapter 38: Night
Chapter 39: Vigil
Chapter 40: Home
Acknowledgements
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
A-Dawg
Monday. 5:39 p.m.
All his life, A-Dawg had wanted to be a hero.
Now, his time had come.
Five seconds ago, A-Dawg had been seated squarely in the cockpit of his F-16, guiding it with ease as it knifed through the air.
Then everything changed.
The enemy plane came out of nowhere. A-Dawg reacted on pure instinct. The missile clipped his wing as he pulled up hard on the yoke and rolled into an inverted dive that flipped the horizon over, putting the buildings above and the sky below and turning his whole world upside down.
The daredevil maneuver worked. When he straightened out, he’d lost his pursuer.
He was trailing smoke and leaking fuel. He checked his gauges. If he tucked his tail and ran away, he’d have just enough juice to make it back to base.
Or he could make the ultimate sacrifice and do what had to be done.
He glanced at a photo of his dog, tucked into the instrument panel. The dog gazed back, loyal, proud, and brave. Maybe it was his mind playing tricks, the G forces sloshing his brain around, but A-Dawg was sure he saw his dog nod.
A-Dawg knew what he had to do.
He banked sharply and swung back into the fight. He was face-to-face with the enemy plane across a three-mile gap, on a collision course and closing fast. He brought the crosshairs into focus on his target. A tone sounded: radar lock.
Then a voice crackled in his headset. “Okay, hotshot, time’s up. Bring it in.”
“Not yet. I have a job to do.”
“You know the rules.”
A-Dawg knew the rules. But today, the rules went out the window.
His glove tightened on the stick. His thumb brushed the red firing button.
The other plane fired first.
“FIRE!” A-Dawg stabbed his thumb down. His airplane shook as a missile leapt off the wing, riding a trail of flame. A-Dawg banked away, straining to see behind him. Did he get the job done? Was he about to be a hero?
He twisted in the cockpit, desperate to see what happened.
And then everything went black.
CHAPTER 2
The Home Front
Monday. 5:40 p.m.
Alex Douglas frowned at the darkened computer. He toggled the joystick, stabbed at the keyboard, hit the red firing button. Nothing. Dead. Then he saw her in the reflection on the screen, like a white-robed ghost, arms folded.
“MOooooooOOM!” he groaned, gritting his teeth.
Alex’s mother loomed over him in her white nurse’s uniform. She had just come off a twelve-hour shift at Mercy Hospital in Jersey City and was in no mood for guff. She narrowed her eyes and pointed at him with the flopping end of the computer plug she’d just yanked out of the wall, totally crashing his Screaming Eagles IV flight-sim game in the middle of what would have been his most heroic victory EVER. He was about to save the world, but he hadn’t even had time to hit “save.”
“God, Mom, how can you be so STUPID???”
He didn’t really say that out loud. But he thought it so loudly he was afraid she might hear it echoing in his brain. If he had said it out loud, he probably wouldn’t have lived to see his eleventh birthday (only seven hours and fifty-one minutes away, he calculated).
Alex had discovered over the years that he wasn’t so great at hiding his thoughts from his parents. Lately, he’d been practicing in front of the mirror, thinking of stuff that made him mad while trying to keep his feelings from showing on his face. He was pretty sure he was getting better at it.
“Don’t give me that look,” said his mom. “I know what you’re thinking.”
Guess there’s still room for improvement, he thought.
“What are the rules?” she asked.
Alex spotted movement out of the corner of his eye.
“Rule 1: Nunu has to stay on her side of the flight line.”
Alex pointed at his six-year-old sister, who was about to cross a black-and-y
ellow stripe that Alex had taped on the floor, dividing the room in two. Nunu (her real name was Nolabeth, but everyone called her Nunu) sighed and flopped back onto her bed. Everything on her side of the room was pink: pink bed, pink princess sheets, pink dolls piled up on pink pillows. Even the walls on her side were painted the color of shiny, chewed bubble gum. Alex had one word for it.
Gross.
The other side of the room, Alex’s side, was made of awesome. He had turned it into a shrine to the two things he loved: airplanes and dogs. Four airplane models dangled from the ceiling on strings: a huge Boeing 747, a World War II-era P-51 Mustang (its nose painted to look like a shark’s mouth), a Sopwith Camel biplane, and an F-16 Fighting Falcon, exactly like the one he was flying before his mother pulled the plug on his computer. He’d even stenciled his own call-sign, “A-Dawg,” onto the nose of the fighter jet. Posters of airplanes covered the walls. Over his bed, tacked to the ceiling, was a huge fold-out of a 747 cockpit; staring up at it night after night before bed, he’d memorized the location and function of every single dial and switch.
On his dresser sat a framed photograph of the Navy’s Blue Angels elite flying squadron in close formation, signed by every pilot on the team. He got that for his birthday two years ago, when his dad took him to an air show in upstate New York. They’d gotten up super early, way before dawn, and even though he was dog-tired because he’d hardly slept the night before, he was wide awake by the time they pulled onto the air base and parked in a field near the viewing stand. It was so early the bleachers were still wet with dew – not that it mattered, because he never once sat down.
He remembered every detail and maneuver like it had happened yesterday. Even his dad seemed impressed. Alex’s dad drove a commuter train for a living, which meant he was in charge of steering a half-million pounds of steel and aluminum through a tunnel underneath the Hudson River at seventy miles per hour, so it took a lot to impress him. In the air show finale, the Angels flew low and fast right over the crowd, four fighter jets in a tight diamond pattern, so close overhead that Alex felt like he could reach out and touch their wings. He could still remember how the roar of the engines made his insides rumble.
Right after the Angels flew past, Alex’s dad reached down and squeezed his shoulder. Alex looked up, his fingers still in his ears to dull the roar of the jets. His dad grinned at him and mouthed one word:
“WOW.”
He had always thought of that day as his Greatest Birthday Ever.
Until this one. This one was going to leave that year’s in the—
“Alex, answer the question.”
Alex froze. He’d totally forgotten what they were talking about.
“I asked you about the rules,” she reminded him.
“You didn’t say which rules.”
“Careful, young man.”
Ugh. He hated when she called him “young man.” The fact that it had the word man in it didn’t really help, because the only word that mattered was young. Man was like those silent letters they’d just learned about in English class, like the s in island or the g in phlegm. He thought of it as a new part of speech: the silent man.
His mom and dad were always telling him he needed to grow up. It was one of the things he definitely agreed with them about. Because if growing up meant getting better at hiding your feelings so you don’t get in trouble, then he was all for it. He wondered if he’d be better at it once he turned eleven.
All he knew for sure was that growing up meant he could get a dog.
And that’s why this was going to be his official new Greatest Birthday Ever.
He’d been asking for a dog since forever. Last year, his parents said they’d think about getting him a dog when he was old enough to take care of one. That was all the encouragement he needed. Six months ago, he’d started his campaign, dropping hints, a steady stream of little reminders that built and built into a tidal wave. Post-its with the number of days to his birthday would mysteriously appear on his parents’ bathroom mirror. Pictures of dogs would turn up inside their favorite magazines or stuck to the refrigerator door. At two months out, he turned it up another notch, beginning almost every sentence with, “When I get a dog….” “If you get a dog,” his parents would correct him. But he was relentless, and before long they stopped saying “If” and would just trade exasperated looks. That’s how he knew it was finally happening; he’d worn them down.
He was definitely getting a dog for his birthday.
Which explained the other half of Alex’s half of the room.
The other half of Alex’s half of the room was plastered with pictures of dogs. Everywhere there wasn’t an airplane, there was a dog. To Alex, airplanes and dogs went together like peanut butter and baloney, which happened to be his favorite sandwich. When he wasn’t playing flight-sim or memorizing cockpit dials or throwing dirty socks at Nunu to keep her on her side of the flight line, he’d stare at all the pictures and daydream about how cool it would be if a dog could fly a pla—
“Alex Douglas, pay attention!”
First AND last name. He was in the danger zone now.
“What are the rules? And this time, I expect a straight answer.”
Alex sighed. “No games until my homework is done.”
“And?”
“And my chores.”
“And are they done?”
“Define ‘done.’”
Dead silence. Alex withered slightly, then rebounded. He could usually get out of a tough spot by making his mother laugh.
“How do you know that time travel isn’t possible and I didn’t just time-warp two hours into the past, do my chores, and then time-warp right back into my chair?”
“Call it maternal instinct.”
But he thought he saw her crack a tiny smile.
Across the room, Nunu giggled. Despite the dirty socks, she always laughed at her brother’s dumb jokes.
If it weren’t for Nunu’s Lolly doll, Alex might have been willing to overlook her other flaws, like her pink sheets or her very existence on this planet (especially the part of the planet that included the other half of his bedroom). But she never went anywhere without Lolly. And by the time you counted the bus ride to school every day, the bus ride home, and anywhere they went with their parents, Alex felt like he never went anywhere without Nunu. Which meant that he never went anywhere without Lolly and her missing eye and that one ear Nunu had chewed on until it was practically gone, worn down to a hard, spit-dark, threadbare nub.
Lolly had ruined his life.
It happened the first week of school. Nunu was halfway onto the bus when she whirled around and pointed: she’d left Lolly on the bench. Alex sighed but sprinted back off the bus and snatched up the soggy-eared doll.
Just as Jordan McCreevey sauntered up.
Jordan the Jerk.
That’s what Alex and his friends called him behind his back. If they’d ever called him that to his face, they probably wouldn’t have faces anymore.
Jordan snatched the pink doll out of Alex’s hand. Alex made a half-hearted attempt to take it back, but Jordan held it way up high, out of reach, as he stared down at Alex. The left side of his mouth began to curl. Alex flinched as Jordan laughed in his face; his breath stank like armpit and Cheetos. Then Jordan slapped the doll onto Alex’s head like a dunce cap.
“Here’s your baby…baby.”
And that’s when Alex knew that Jordan McCreevey was going to make his life a living hell.
“Alex.” His mom again.
“What? I’m listening.”
“Really. Okay, I’ll make you a deal. Answer one easy question for me, and you can have ten more minutes on the computer. Fair?”
Alex’s eyebrows shot up. He liked where this was going. He was constantly trying to make deals with his parents to get out of doing stuff right away. “Please, just five more minutes, and then I promise I’ll do the dishes,” he’d beg, and then they’d forget the time limit, five minutes would become
twenty, and half the time the dishes would get done while he was away. But this was a new twist: now his mom was offering him a deal. Sweet.
“Fire away,” he said with confidence.
“Here’s the question: what were we just talking about?”
Alex opened his mouth, then shut it. Uh-oh. He frowned and saw where he’d messed up: he was a daydreamer. And she knew it. His mind had a tendency to wander. Like this one time last week in Ms. Foster’s room, when they were supposed to be doing class participation, but then he saw this dog run by outside the window—
“That’s what I thought.” His mom shook her head and started for the kitchen. “Now leave that computer off, take out your books, and do your homework.”
She was halfway across the living room when Alex bolted into the hall.
“HOMEWORK!” he shouted triumphantly.
His mom laughed. But she wasn’t buying it.
“Please, Mom? Ten more minutes—”
“No.”
“Five? And I’ll do the dishes.”
“No more deal-making.”
“But it’s my birthday tomorrow,” he wheedled.
“I know. That’s why you have to get your homework done today.”
Alex tried a different tack. “You know what, Mom? You’re absolutely right. That is so smart. I really should get ahead on my homework.”
His mother cocked an eyebrow, wondering where this was going.
“That way I’ll have more time to play with the dog you’re getting me for my birthday.”
“Alex—”
“You promised. You promised I could get a dog for my birthday—”
“I know, Sweetie. If you got serious about your schoolwork. And if your grades improved. But you got a C on your last math test.”
“Yeah, but look on the bright side. At least you know I didn’t cheat.”