It was my first week of high school. We were sitting in our first assembly of the year. It lasted from 8:30 to 9. I remember almost a collective vibration from cell phones that us students shouldn’t have even had. And then the whispers began. The dean of the high school ignored it and continued his inspirational speech. But as quickly as he dismissed us, he asked us to return to our seats. I finally checked my silenced cell and read that one of the twin towers had been hit by a plane.
What the fuck?
I showed my homeboy next to me as our dean said that one or both of the towers had been struck by a plane. I laughed at the notion, “What? Did the plane hit one tower and it tipped over to the second? Fuck out of here, how do you even hit the twin towers?”
We were dismissed and allowed to call any family members that we might be worried about. I called my grandmother to make sure my uncle was alright. He worked in the Federal Reserve NY Branch, which was down the street from WTC. She was reluctant to say anything so I knew she hadn’t heard from him yet. He was like a father figure to me until I had met my actual father a year before. My father wasn’t answering his cell either, he also worked downtown, and would occasionally take walks through Lower Manhattan.
Every TV in the school was turned to a news station. Rumors that the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower and the Pentagon were also hit were flying rampant. I soon found out that the Pentagon wasn’t a rumor. When the north tower fell after the south, the emotions within me burst. I pictured my uncle and father caught in the collapse. I ran to the locker room to compose myself, and stayed in there until the buses were loading. All the Manhattan kids were matched up with Brooklyn and Staten Island families because the city was on lock down. Some of my friends on my bus joked that they weren’t coming to the hood no matter how big the crisis.
My bus has to travel on the Goawanus Expressway, which has a clear view of lower Manhattan. Where those two towers once stood proudly there was a pillar or smoke. It was the quietest bus ride I had ever been on. No one commented, no one even prayed.
I got home and my grandparents hugged me. They told me that both my uncle and father had called the house to tell them that they were okay. One of my many church aunts was walking the Brooklyn Bridge as we spoke. A family friend, an uncle to me, hadn’t gotten back to my grandparents yet, but they were sure he would be alright too. It would be days before I found he was caught on a floor above the fire at the north tower.