Chapter 21 Cass

CHAPTER 21 CASS

2000

Plattsburgh

I hadn’t touched Amanda’s things yet. I think on some level I thought I was going back—of course I was going back!—so maybe I figured why disturb them. Or maybe that’s not right. Maybe I thought not using Amanda’s things was a tiny patch of moral high ground I could claim. See, now there’s a line even I wouldn’t cross. And somehow, all the while, I never thought of myself as a bad person. I was just struggling, figuring out how to do life. Or maybe that’s what all rotten people tell themselves.

Then that terrible afternoon. Sidney saying those words. Saying, “Amanda is dead.” That’s what she said.

A minute prior, I was just a stretch of highway from seeing Amanda again; now, I’d never—

I couldn’t even think it. And no matter how hard I looked at Sidney—truly begging her, with all of me—she wouldn’t take it back. Then suddenly, I needed to get out of the car; maybe I could trap the idea of Amanda being dead inside. I got out and opened the trunk, quickly grabbing Amanda’s bag, the Strand tote, from the back right corner. Only once the trunk was closed did I exhale. I couldn’t let any more of the car’s air, tainted as it was, into my body.

Inside the bag were three meticulously rolled sweaters, tidiness being Amanda’s lone streak of OCD.

I squeezed the bag to my chest and disappeared into the row of trees behind the parking lot. Despite my best efforts, the reality of Sidney’s words had escaped the car and were, I was disturbed to acknowledge, surviving contact with the outside world. And so now this idea of Amanda being dead, I ignored it. Just let it be this thing in the world. Like words across a banner, pulled behind a plane: A MANDA I S DEAD . Written in the clouds. Either way, a thing apart from and outside of me. I could look up and engage or I could not.

I found a thick tree and slid down the trunk. I held the bag to my chest and that stupid thing Amanda always said about fashion kept running through my mind, how it’s about matching your outside to your insides. Currently my insides were melting. I brought the bag to my face and screamed into the canvas:

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry .

Maybe an hour later, I’m not sure, I finally pressed myself to standing. I felt wobbly. I was hollowed out everywhere except my head, which throbbed. I was walking carefully back toward the car and there, still, was Sidney. Exactly where I had left her.

I expected to feel annoyed, angry even, but I wasn’t. Maybe it was okay for something to be easy for once. For me to just let things happen because it was there, and it would feel good—being touched and held. Imagine being wrapped in someone’s warmth, the rush of their blood against your ear. Then Sidney saw me, and she was getting out of the car, walking toward me.

“Cass,” she said, pulling me into a hug, squeezing. “I’m here for you. I got you, okay? I got you.”

My chin was on her shoulder, and I nodded into her collarbone. We stood hugging for a few seconds. Then I brought my hand to the back of her neck and guided her lips to mine. Amanda being dead—I just couldn’t look in that direction for a little while.

That night, when Sidney brought me back to her apartment, we went straight to her bed. She knew what she was doing. When I finally touched her, slipping my hand inside her jeans, she was dripping wet, and my eyes flicked to hers, a reflex.

“You do that to me,” she said, and I realized it turned me on—being wanted that much.

That night, Sidney fell asleep with her arm across my chest. I was staring at the ceiling, terrified to have no more distractions. Again, those three words appeared above me: A MANDA IS DEAD . Black letters, font like on a marquee. I closed my eyes, but the words had already seared my vision. I cried until the pillow was wet against my cheek.

Later that night, I started writing The Very Last .

CATE KAY

The Very Last

Jeremiah and Samantha had just finished their overnight shift at ANC. The morning sun was turning the skyscrapers golden, and Samantha hated to miss the show, but Jeremiah had forgotten his sunglasses in their car, which they kept in monthly parking in the basement of the building and mostly only used on the weekend. They took the elevator deep into the bowels of the garage. Four floors down. The car wasn’t much—an old green Mazda they’d nicknamed Pacino because it was scrappy. Pacino had taken some licks: dinged bumper, cracked rearview mirror, floorboards worn through. But it gave them freedom to get out of the city, listen to music, feel the wind in their hair. They were California kids at heart; they needed a pair of wheels.

Jeremiah was in Pacino’s front seat, leaning across and rummaging through the glove compartment. Samantha was waiting, her back against a thick cement pillar. She was thinking about the mixtape he’d made her years before, just before they’d driven east to chase their dreams. He’d titled it Freedom at Last. They’d taken a spin, listened to the songs, arguing about where to place the best song on a mixtape. She said third track; he said fifth.

She looked at her watch: 6:44. The sun was up. Samantha couldn’t know, but these were the last seconds before the city exploded.

From up above, Flight 1602 was descending into La Guardia. A nine-year-old girl with shiny brown hair, wearing rainbow jellies, had her face pressed against the oval window. She thought she noticed something weird happening on the ground and she reached for her mom. But just as she did, the plane shook, and the girl’s mom pulled her away from the window. A second later, a cloud like a big mushroom bloomed above the tall buildings, growing upward and outward and the pilot told them they weren’t going to land, that they were going to keep flying, and all the people around them started crying.

Standing in the garage, Samantha felt a pulse of energy within the concrete pillar. The structure seemed to vibrate against her back, a distant rumble. A subway car running near them, she thought. The vibration felt similar, but this energy was on fast-forward somehow. Her whole body became alert.

“Get out!” Samantha yelled, her voice unrecognizable. She lurched forward, grabbed for Jeremiah, pulled him out of the car. They huddled together against the pillar, covered their ears. The lights blew out first. Then, sections of the ceiling fell—thick slabs of concrete—and crushed the cars around them. Pacino’s door was still open, and Samantha watched as their green car was flattened by a chunk of the building. Who cared about a cracked rearview mirror now? She pressed her eyes closed and held on to Jeremiah.