United We Stand Read Online Free Page A

really couldn’t even taste the food. It was like when you have a really bad cold and all your food tastes bland, except now it just didn’t taste like anything at all.
    “It’s so good to see you both eating,” my mother said.
    “The food is great,” my father said.
    “It is great,” I agreed. I wasn’t going to tell her I couldn’t taste it. With my mother it was like,
Love me, love my food
.
    Both my father and I had coughing fits during the meal. My mother warned us to “stop wolfing down” the food, but we knew what was really going on. There was just no point in talking about it and scaring her. She refilled my glass with orange juice. I’d already drained the glass three times. I wasn’t really thirsty; it was more the way it felt going down. My throat was raw and sore. Who knew what was in that air that we’d had to breathe when the building collapsed? Was that why I couldn’t taste anything? Maybe it was best for now that I didn’t think about it.
    The doorbell rang and I started to get up to answer it, but my mother put a hand on my shoulder to keep me in my seat.
    “You eat, I’ll get it.” She left the kitchen and went to the door.
    “She’s just worried about us,” my father said quietly.
    “Yeah, but there’s nothing to worry about now.”
    “I don’t know. I’m worried about you.”
    “Me? I’m here and I’m fine. A little cut up, but these are nothing,” I said, holding up my hands.
    “That’s not what I’m talking about, Will. We almost died yesterday. We saw people die—you saw people choose to jump from the tower rather than die in the flames. There’s no way something like that doesn’t have an impact.” He leaned across the table and gently took both of my hands in his. “But we’re going to get through this. I’m going to help you, and you’re going to help me. We’ll get through this the same way we got through yesterday. Together.”
    “Together.”
    My mother walked back into the kitchen, smiling. “Your guest has arrived.” Suzie was right behind her.
    My father got to his feet and gave her a big hug. She was so little and he was so big that she practically disappeared into his arms.
    “You’re next,” she said to me.
    I felt uneasy, but she came over and gave me a big hug as well. She started to cry. There was a lot of that going on.
    “No time for tears,” she said as she brushed them from her face. “We have to get down to business.”
    “No, you have to sit down and have some coffee, and maybe a bagel,” my mother said.
    “But we have—”
    “Don’t even try to argue with my wife,” my father said. He pulled out a chair for Suzie.
    “Tell me … tell us what happened to you after we last saw you,” my father said.
    “You know what happened,” she said.
    “I want to know what happened to
you
, how you got out.”
    She shrugged. “I walked down the stairs.”
    “I know. How far did you get before the plane hit?” my father asked.
    “Pretty far. Maybe around the sixtieth floor.”
    “That’s good. You were well below the crash floors.”
    “It didn’t feel like that. The whole building shook. It felt like it was right overtop of us. And that’s when everything changed.”
    “Changed how?” I asked.
    “There were people on the stairs before, but after that it just became a flood of people. It wasn’t like they were pushing or shoving, but they were scared. Everybody wanted to hurry now, but because of the crowd we had to move slower.”
    “Did you go down with anybody else from the office?”
    She shook her head. “I started down last, remember?”
    Suzie had wanted to stay with us, and it was only after my father had pushed her into the stairwell that she’d joined the others already on their way down.
    “Then everybody else should have been on a lower floor than you,” my father said.
    “Everybody except you two. About the twentieth floor I saw the first firefighters going up. I asked them what had happened …