The Girl He Used to Know (Page 42)

Ray gives Henry a few sips of water and when it doesn’t come back up immediately, he gives him a little more. Henry wants to drink it all down because he says it tastes so good. Ray doesn’t want to try the juice yet, but he gives Henry one of the saltines to nibble on.

“Would you like me to drive?” Ray asks.

“Do you want to drive?”

“Yes, but only if it’s okay with you.”

“Sure.” I climb into the backseat and as Ray drives us down the dark interstate, I recite for Henry the play I’m currently writing, the one about the blue duck who knows he could be a good friend to the yellow ducks if they’d only give him a chance. Henry takes sips of the water I offer and eats another cracker. I sneak him some of the juice, because I can’t say no to him when he asks. He does not throw up, which is good, because if he does, there’s a one hundred percent chance I will, too. I’ll feel bad about it, but I won’t be able to help it.

We cross the state line into Pennsylvania at midnight. I read off the directions for Ray so he can find the hotel, and we pull into the parking lot. Ray lifts a sleeping Henry from the backseat. “His forehead’s cool,” Ray says.

They have another available room, so I slide my credit card across the counter and tell the man we’ll take it. Ray doesn’t protest. Instead he says, “Thank you,” in a voice so soft I can barely hear him. He probably doesn’t want to wake Henry.

“I’ll call my aunt and let her know where she can pick us up,” Ray says when we get off the elevator on our floor.

“Okay.” I’m beyond exhausted and I’ve reached my limit for interacting with people today. It has been a good distraction from worrying about Jonathan, but I’m fading fast. I slide my key card into the door of my room and go inside, leaving Ray and Henry in the hallway.

My parents say they have never been so happy to hear from me. They’ve been calling my cell phone for hours, and I tell them it’s at the bottom of a gas station toilet. Then I tell my mom about Ray and Henry, and all she says after that is “Oh my God,” over and over.

“It’s okay. Henry is fine now. He didn’t throw up again and Ray said his fever was gone.”

“You can’t take risks like that.”

“Everything turned out fine.” My mom probably thinks she was right and I’m not capable of making a trip like this on my own without someone to guide me and keep me safe. But someday they’ll be gone, and I’ll have to live my life without their guidance. Maybe without Jonathan’s, although that thought fills me with immeasurable pain and sadness. This road trip isn’t my first or only attempt at independence, but it’s an important step toward laying down a foundation for the years to come. And I’m not so dense that I don’t know that most people are younger than thirty-two when they achieve it.

I’ve lagged behind everyone my whole life, so why would my adulthood be any different?

“I spoke to Janice. She’s been frantic with worry because she couldn’t reach you on your cell phone. I’ll call her and let her know you’re okay. Do you know what time you’ll reach Hoboken?”

“I’m going to leave here by nine. Tell her I’ll call her right before I get back on the road.”

“Okay.” My mom sounds really tired.

“I need to go to bed,” I say.

“I’m so happy you’re safe. Don’t pick up anyone else. Please be careful and call me the minute you arrive at Janice’s.”

“I will. Bye.”

There’s a knock at the door, and when I open it, Ray is standing there, alone. “Henry’s asleep. I locked the door in case he wakes up and tries to leave.”

I’m not sure what this means. Am I supposed to invite him in? I don’t want to. I’m too tired.

“I just wanted to thank you.”

“Oh. You’re welcome.”

“Annika. Listen to me. Don’t pick up anyone else, okay? You have a wonderful heart and your kindness astounds me. But what you did was very dangerous and there are people in this world who would not have cared about your safety.”

“I know that.” I mean, I know that now.

“Could I have your address? I’ll pay you back when I get on my feet.”

I tear a page from the notepad on the dresser and write it down for him.

He takes the piece of paper, folds it, and puts it in his pocket. “I better get back to Henry. I hope you find your boyfriend. No one deserves a miracle more than you.”

41

Annika

SEPTEMBER 14, 2001

I leave the hotel an hour later than I planned, because I was so exhausted I somehow shut off the alarm and fell back asleep, although I have no memory of it.

It’s hard to follow the MapQuest directions, because I don’t want to take my eyes off the road and Janice’s urban neighborhood has a lot of streets. She’s waiting for me in the driveway when I pull in, Natalia on her hip.

“Thank God,” she says when I get out of the car.

“I did it,” I say. “No one thought I could, but here I am.”

Janice squeezes me tight and says, “Yes. Here you are.”

* * *

Clay and Natalia accompany us as far as they can, and then Janice and I head toward lower Manhattan on foot. Clay made us take surgical masks, and as we draw as close to Ground Zero as they’ll let us, which isn’t really close at all, I finally understand why. The smell of acrid smoke is overpowering, and ash fills the air like we’re walking around near some kind of smoldering urban volcano. It coats our skin and hair, and I cough uncontrollably. Soldiers stand on corners with assault rifles slung over their shoulders. There are shrines and missing-person posters. We make the rounds of the hospitals closest to the World Trade Center, but we don’t find Jonathan and I blink back tears because I’ve made it too far to just give up now.

We go uptown, to the hotel where Jonathan’s company has set up an emergency center in the grand ballroom on the second floor. No one is wearing a tuxedo or fancy gown, but there are bottles of water and soft drinks in buckets on buffet tables; waiters circulate with trays of sandwiches no one wants. The round tables for eight are all numbered, and it takes me a moment to realize these are the floor numbers where the missing had been seen last.

“Do you know what floor he was on?” Janice asks.

“No.” We pick a table at random and introduce ourselves to the people standing next to it. We share what we know, which isn’t much, and in return we receive snippets of information, most of it things we already know: They tried to leave the building. They went down, were forced back up. A man from New Hampshire draws a diagram for us on a paper napkin showing the possible routes they could have taken. “If someone is strong, they could have survived if they made it low enough. We can’t give up hope.”

The people in this room are wearing the same clothes they’ve worn for days and many of them have shadows under their eyes. Jonathan’s company has lost approximately seven hundred of its employees. We are just two out of hundreds, all despondent and desperate for information.

A long table near the front of the room holds information packets. There are phone numbers for surrounding hospitals, and we check them against the list Janice typed up, making sure that we’ve been to them all. We stand in line to fill out a missing-person report; it’s eight pages thick. Unfortunately, Jonathan has very few unique identification markers. No tattoos, piercings, or facial hair that will separate him from all the other dark-haired, blue-eyed clean-shaven men who shared his fate. He does have a scar on his knee from a torn ACL he suffered during his sophomore year of college when he went skiing, but it’s a common injury and is hardly worth mentioning. I list it anyway.

On the walls, people are putting up pieces of paper with pictures of their loved ones and their names and details. Janice made one for Jonathan with her computer using a photo I brought, and we tack it up with pushpins we take from a box on the floor. There are so many pictures, and I feel compelled to look at each one and read the information.

Someone lays a hand on my arm, and I flinch. “I’m sorry,” she says. The middle-aged woman wears a name tag that says Eileen. “I’m a grief counselor if you’d like to talk.”

“I don’t need a grief counselor,” I say, because I don’t. “That’s for people whose loved ones have died.”

She pats my arm again and drifts toward a sobbing couple standing a few feet to my right.

A man steps up to the podium near the front of the room. “Please, if you haven’t filled out a missing-person report, you need to do that now.”

The crowd murmurs their assent, but then angry voices overpower them. “Why isn’t the company trying harder to rescue the survivors?” a woman yells from somewhere in the middle. “Bring in experts. People trained to comb through the rubble.”

“We are a financial services company. We are not in the business of search and rescue,” the man says.

“But the company has considerable financial assets at their disposal. Why aren’t they using them to help the people who made all this money for the company?”