September, 2001
Fern loved summertime, the lazy days and the long hours with Bailey and her books, but fall in Pennsylvania was absolutely breathtaking. It was still early in the season, not quite mid-September, but the leaves had already started to change, and Hannah Lake was awash in splashes of color mixed in with the deep green of the fading summer. School was back in session. They were seniors now, the top of the heap, one year left before real life began.
But for Bailey, real life was now, this instant, because every day was a downhill slide. He didn't get stronger, he got weaker, he didn't get closer to adulthood, he got closer to the end, so he didn't look at life the way everyone else did. He had become very good at living in the moment, not looking too far ahead at what might come.
Bailey's disease had taken away his ability to raise his arms even to chest level, which made it impossible to do all the little things people did every day without thinking twice. His mom had worried about him staying in school. Most kids with Dushenne MD don't make it past twenty-one, and Bailey's days were numbered. Being exposed to illness on a daily basis was a concern, but Bailey's inability to touch his face actually protected him from germs that the rest of the kids managed to wipe all over themselves, and he rarely missed a day of school. If he held a clipboard in his lap he could manage, but holding the clipboard was awkward and if it slipped and fell he couldn't lean down to retrieve it. It was a lot easier for him to work at a computer or slide his wheelchair in close to a table and rest his hands on the top. Hannah Lake High School was small and not very well-funded, but with a little help and some adjustments to the normal routine, Bailey would finish high school, and he would probably finish at the top of his class.
Second hour pre-calculus was filled with seniors. Bailey and Fern sat in the back at a table high enough for Bailey to utilize, and Fern was his assigned aid, though he helped her more in the class than she helped him. Ambrose Young and Grant Nielson sat in the back of the room as well, and Fern was tickled to be so close to Ambrose, even though he didn't know she existed, three feet away from where he sat wedged in a desk that was too small for someone his size.
Mr. Hildy was late for class. He was habitually late to his second-hour class, and nobody minded really. He didn't have a class first hour and you could usually find him in the mornings with a cup of coffee in front of the TV in the teacher's lounge. But that Tuesday he came into class and flipped on the TV that hung in the corner of his classroom, just to the left of the chalkboard. The TVs were new, the chalkboards old, the teacher ancient, so nobody paid him much attention as he stood staring up at the screen, watching a newscaster talk about a plane crash. It was 9:00 am.
“Quiet, please!” Mr. Hildy barked, and the room reluctantly obeyed. The shot on the screen was trained on two tall buildings. One had black smoke and fire billowing out of the side.
“Is that New York, Mr. Hildy?” someone asked from the front row.
“Hey, isn't Knudsen in New York City?”
“That's the World Trade Center,” Mr. Hildy said. “That wasn't a commuter plane, I don't care what they are saying.”
“Look! There's another one!”
“Another plane?”
There was a collective gasp.
“Holy sh–!” Bailey's voice trailed off and Fern clamped a hand over her mouth as they all watched another plane burrow into the side of the other tower, the tower that wasn't already on fire.
The newscasters were reacting much like the students in the class--shocked, confused, scrambling for something intelligent to say as they stared with dawning horror at what was clearly not an accident.
There was no calculus assignment that day. Instead, Mr. Hildy's math class watched history unfold. Maybe Mr. Hildy considered the seniors old enough to see the images that played out in front of them, to hear the speculation.
Mr. Hildy was an old, Vietnam vet, he didn't mince words, and he couldn't tolerate politics. He watched with his students as America was attacked and he didn't bat an eye. But he quaked inside. He knew, maybe better than anyone, what the cost would be. It would be young lives. War was coming. No way it couldn't after something like this. No way it couldn't.
“Wasn't Knudson in New York?” someone asked. “He said his family was going to see the Statue of Liberty and a bunch of other stuff.” Landon Knudson was the student body vice-president, a member of the football team, and someone who was well-liked and well-known throughout the school.
“Brosey, doesn't your mom live in New York?” Grant asked suddenly, his eyes wide with the sudden realization.
Ambrose's eyes were fixed on the TV, his face tight. He nodded once. His stomach was hot with dread. His mom not only lived in New York City, she worked as a secretary in an ad agency that was located in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. He kept telling himself she was fine; her office was on a lower floor.
“Maybe you should call her.” Grant looked worried.
“I've been trying.” Ambrose held up his cell phone, the one he wasn't supposed to have in class, but Mr. Hildy didn't protest. They all watched as Ambrose tried again.
“Busy. Everybody is probably trying to call.” He snapped the phone closed. Nobody spoke. The bell rang, but everyone stayed in their seats. A few kids trickled in for their third hour class, but word was spreading throughout the school and the regular schedule was no match for the unfolding drama. The incoming students sat atop desks and stood against the walls and watched the screen along with everyone else.
And then the South Tower collapsed. It was there and then it wasn't. It dissolved into a massive cloud that swept down and out, dirty white, thick and fat, bristling with debris, dense with devastation. Someone screamed and everyone was talking and pointing. Fern reached over and took Bailey's hand. A couple of girls started to cry.
Mr. Hildy's face was as chalky as the board he made his living writing on. He looked out over his students crammed into his classroom and wished he'd never turned on the TV. They didn't need to see this. Young, untried, innocent. His mouth opened to reassure them, but his intolerance for bullshit robbed him of speech. There was nothing he could say that wouldn't be a bald-faced lie or that wouldn’t frighten them more. It wasn't real. It couldn't be. It was an illusion, a magic trick, just smoke and mirrors. But the tower was gone. The second tower to be hit, the first to go down. It took only 56 minutes from impact to collapse.
Fern clung to Bailey's hand. The billowing cloud of smoke and dust looked like the batting from Fern's old stuffed bear. It was a carnival prize, filled with cheap, fuzzy, synthetic cotton. She'd conked Bailey in the head with it and the right arm had torn free, spewing fuzzy white fluff in all directions. But this wasn't a carnival. It was a spook alley, complete with maze-like city streets filled with people covered in ash. Like zombies. But these zombies wept and called out for help.
When they heard the news that a plane had gone down outside Shanksville--only 65 miles from Hannah Lake--students began leaving the classroom, unable to bear more. They ran out of the school in droves, needing reassurance that the world hadn't ended in Hannah Lake, needing their families. Ambrose Young stayed in Mr. Hildy's room and saw the North Tower go down an hour after the South Tower collapsed. His mother still wasn't answering. How could she when he couldn't get anything but an odd buzzing in his ear whenever he tried to call? He went to the wrestling room. There in the corner, in the place where he felt safest, sitting on the loosely rolled mat, he offered an awkward prayer. He was uncomfortable with asking God for anything when He so obviously had His hands full. With a choked “amen” he tried to reach his mother once more.
July, 1994
High up in the rickety brown bleachers, Fern and Bailey sat slurping the purple popsicles they'd pilfered from the freezer in the teacher's lounge, looking down at the bodies writhing and grappling on the mat with the fascination of the excluded. Bailey's dad, the high-school wrestling coach, was holding his annual youth wrestling camp, and neither of them were participating; girls weren't encouraged to wrestle, and Bailey's disease had started to weaken his limbs significantly.
Basically, Bailey was born with all the muscle he was ever going to have, so his parents had to carefully consider how much activity he should participate in. Too much, and his muscles would tear down. In a normal person, muscles that are torn down repair themselves and rebuild stronger than before, which is what creates bigger muscles. Bailey's muscles couldn't rebuild. But if he didn't get enough activity, the muscle he did have would weaken more quickly. Since the age of four, when he was diagnosed with Dushenne muscular dystrophy, Bailey's mother had monitored Bailey's activity like a drill sergeant, making him swim with a life jacket even though Bailey could navigate the water like a fish, mandating nap time, quiet time, and sedate walks in her busy little boy's life so he maintained his ability to avoid a wheel chair for as long as possible. And they were beating the odds so far. At ten years old, most kids with Dushenne MD were already wheelchair-bound, but Bailey was still walking.
“I may not be as strong as Ambrose, but I still think I could beat him,” Bailey said, his eyes narrowed on the match below them. Ambrose Young stood out like a sore thumb. He was in the same class as Bailey and Fern, but he was already eleven, old for his grade, and he stood several inches taller than all the other kids his age. He was tussling with some of the boys from the high school wrestling team who were assisting with the camp, and he was holding his own. Coach Sheen was watching him from the sidelines, shouting out instructions and stopping the action every so often to demonstrate a hold or a move.
Fern snorted and licked her purple popsicle, wishing she had a book to read. If not for the popsicle, she would have left a long time ago. Sweaty boys did not interest her very much.
“You couldn't beat Ambrose, Bailey. But don't feel bad. I couldn't beat him either.”
Bailey looked at Fern in outrage, spinning so fast that his dripping popsicle slid from his hand and bounced off his skinny knee. “I may not have big muscles, but I'm super smart and I know all the techniques. My dad has shown me all the moves, and he says I have a great wrestling mind!” Bailey parroted, his mouth turned down in an angry frown, his popsicle forgotten.
Fern patted his knee and kept licking. “Your dad says that 'cause he loves you. Just like my mom tells me I'm pretty 'cause she loves me. I'm not pretty . . . and you can't beat Ambrose, buddy.”
Bailey stood up suddenly and he wobbled a little, making Fern's stomach flop in fear as she imagined him falling from the bleachers.
“You aren't pretty!” Bailey shouted, making Fern instantly seethe. “But my dad would never lie to me like your mom does. You just wait! When I'm a grown-up, I will be the strongest, best wrestler in the Universe!”
“My mom says you are going to die before you are a grown-up!” Fern shouted back, repeating the words she had heard her parents say when they didn't think she was listening.
Bailey's face crumpled, and he began to climb down the bleachers, hanging onto the railing as he teetered and tottered to the bottom. Fern felt the tears rise up in her eyes and her face crumple just as Bailey's had. She followed after him even though he refused to look at her again. They both cried all the way home, Bailey pedaling his bike as fast as he could, never looking over at Fern, never acknowledging her presence. Fern rode alongside him and kept wiping her nose with her sticky hands.
Her face was a mess with snot and purple popsicle when she brokenly confessed to her mother what she had said. Fern's mother silently took her by the hand and they walked next door to Bailey's house.
Fern's Aunt Angie, Bailey's mom, was holding Bailey on her lap and talking quietly to him on the front porch as Fern and her mother climbed the stairs. Rachel Taylor slid into the adjacent rocker and pulled Fern onto her lap as well. Angie looked at Fern and smiled a little, seeing the tear-stained cheeks streaked with purple. Bailey's face was hidden in her shoulder. Fern and Bailey were both a little too old to sit in their mothers' laps, but the occasion seemed to demand it.
“Fern,” Aunt Angie said softly. “I was just telling Bailey that it's true. He is going to die.”
Fern immediately started to cry again, and her mother pulled her against her chest. Fern could feel her mother's heart pounding beneath her cheek, but her aunt's face stayed serene, and she didn't cry. She seemed to have arrived at a conclusion that would take Fern years to accept. Bailey wrapped his arms around his mother and wailed.
Aunt Angie rubbed her son's back and kissed his head. “Bailey? Will you listen to me for a minute, son?”
Bailey was still crying as he lifted his face and looked at his mother and then looked at Fern, glowering like she had caused all of this to happen.
“You are going to die, and I am going to die, and Fern is going to die. Did you know that, Bailey? Aunt Rachel is going to die, too.” Angie looked at my mother and smiled apologetically, including her in the gloomy prediction.
Bailey and Fern looked at each other in horror, suddenly shocked beyond tears.
“Every living thing dies, Bailey. Some people live longer than others. We know that your illness will probably make your life shorter than some. But none of us ever know how long our lives are going to be.”
Bailey looked up at her, some of the horror and despair relaxing from his expression. “Like Grandpa Sheen?”
Angie nodded, laying a kiss on his forehead. “Yes. Grandpa didn't have muscular dystrophy. But he got in a car accident, didn't he? He left us sooner than we wanted him to, but that's how life is. We don't get to choose when we go or how we go. None of us do.” Angie looked her son squarely in the eyes and repeated herself firmly. “Do you hear me, Bailey? None of us do.”
“So Fern might die before me?” Bailey asked hopefully.
Fern felt a rumble of laughter in her mom's chest and looked up at her in amazement. Rachel Taylor was smiling and biting her lip. Fern suddenly understood what Aunt Angie was doing.
“Yes!” Fern jumped in, nodding, her springy curls bouncing enthusiastically. “I might drown in the tub when I take my bath tonight. Or maybe I will fall down the stairs and break my neck, Bailey. I might even get smashed by a car when I'm riding my bike tomorrow. See? You don't have to be sad. We're all going to croak sooner or later!”
Angie and Rachel were giggling, and Bailey had a huge grin spreading across his face as he immediately joined in. “Or maybe you will fall out of the tree in your back yard, Fern. Or maybe you will read so many books that your head will explode!”
Angie wrapped her arms tightly around her son and chuckled. “I think that's enough, Bailey. We don't want Fern's head to explode, do we?”
Bailey looked at Fern, and everyone could see that he was considering this seriously. “No. I guess not. But I still hope she croaks before me.” Then he challenged Fern to a wrestling match on his front lawn where he soundly pinned her in about five seconds. Who knew? Maybe he really could have whupped Ambrose Young.
2001
In the days and weeks following the attacks on 9/11, life returned to normal, but it felt wrong, like a favorite shirt worn inside out--still your shirt, still recognizable, but rubbing in all the wrong places, the seams revealed, the tags hanging out, the colors dulled, the words backwards. But unlike the shirt, the sense of wrong couldn't be righted. It was permanent, the new normal.
Bailey watched the news with equal parts fascination and horror, tapping away at his computer, filling pages with his observations, recording the history, documenting the footage and the endless tragedies in his own words. Where Fern had always lost herself in romance, Bailey lost himself in history. Even as a child he would dive into stories of the past and wrap himself in the comfort of their timelessness, of their longevity. To read about King Arthur, who lived and died more than a thousand years before, was its own immortality, and for a boy who felt the sands of time slipping by in an endless countdown, immortality was an intoxicating concept.
Bailey had religiously kept a journal for as long as he could write. His journals filled a shelf in his bedroom bookcase, standing among the stories of other men, lining the wall with the highlights of a young life, the thoughts and dreams of an active mind. But in spite of his obsession with capturing history, Bailey was the only one who seemed to take it all in stride. He wasn't any more fearful or any more emotional than he ever was. He continued to enjoy the things he had always enjoyed, tease Fern the way he always had, and when Fern could take no more of the history enfolding on the television screen he was the one to talk her down from the emotional cliff everyone seemed to be teetering on.
It was Fern who found herself closer to tears, more fearful, more affectionate, and she wasn't the only one. A pervading sense of outrage and sorrow intruded on daily life. Death became very real, and in the senior class at Hannah Lake High School there was resentment mixed with the fear. It was senior year! It was supposed to be the best time of their lives. They didn't want to be afraid.
“I just wish life was more like my books,” Fern complained, trying to hoist both her and Bailey's backpacks on her narrow shoulders as they left school for the day. “Main characters never die in books. If they did, the story would be ruined, or over.”
“Everybody is a main character to someone,” Bailey theorized, winding his way through the busy hall and out the nearest exit into the November afternoon. “There are no minor characters. Think how Ambrose must have felt watching the news in Mr. Hildy's class, knowing his mom worked in one of those towers. He's sitting there, watching it all on TV, probably wondering if he's watching his mother's death. She might be a minor character to us, but to him she's a leading lady.”
Fern brooded, shaking her head at the memory. None of them had known until later how close up and personal 9/11 was for Ambrose Young. He'd been so composed, so quiet, sitting in math class, repeatedly dialing a number that had never been answered. None of them even suspected. Coach Sheen found him in the wrestling room more than five hours after the towers collapsed, after everyone else had long since gone home.
“I can't reach her, Coach.” Ambrose whispered, as if the effort it took to increase his volume would crack his control. “I don't know what to do. She worked in the North tower. It's gone now. What if she's gone?”
“Your dad is probably wondering where you are. Have you talked to him?”
“No. He's got to be going crazy too. He pretends like he doesn't love her anymore. But I know he does. I don't want to talk to him until there's good news.”
Coach Sheen sat beside the boy who dwarfed him and put his arm around his shoulders. If Ambrose wasn't ready to go home, he would wait with him. He talked about random things--about the upcoming season, about the guys in Ambrose's weight, about the strengths of the teams in their district. He strategized with Ambrose about his teammates, distracting him with inconsequential things while the minutes ticked by. And Ambrose kept his emotions in check until his phone peeled out in shrill alarm, making them both jump and reach for their pockets.
“Son?” Elliott's voice was loud enough for Mike Sheen to hear it through the phone, and his heart seized, afraid of the words that hadn't been spoken. “She's okay, Brosey. She's okay. She's coming here.”
Ambrose tried to speak, to thank his dad for the welcome news, but was unable to reply. Rising to his feet, he handed his phone to his coach. Then, overcome, he walked several steps and sat down once more. Mike Sheen told Elliot they were on their way to the house, snapped the phone shut, and put his arm around the shaking shoulders of his star wrestler. There were no tears, but Ambrose shook like he was overcome with fever, like he'd been stricken with palsy, and Mike Sheen worried for a second that the emotion and stress of the day had made him genuinely sick. After a time, the manic shivering eased, and together they left the room, flipping off the lights behind them and closing the door on an agonizing afternoon, grateful that on a day of unprecedented tragedy, they had been granted a reprieve.
“My dad's worried about Ambrose,” Bailey said. “He says he seems different, and he's distracted. I've noticed that even though he works as hard as he always has in practice, something's off.”
“Wrestling season only started two weeks ago.” Fern defended Ambrose even though she didn't need to. Ambrose had no bigger fan than Bailey Sheen.
“But September 11th was two months ago, Fern. And he's still not over it.”
Fern looked up at the grey-streaked sky hanging heavily above their heads, tumultuous with the predicted storm. The clouds were churning, and the winds had just started to kick up. It was coming.
“None of us are, Bailey. And I don't think we ever will be.”