Disclaimer: S.E. Hinton owns The Outsiders. I am not writing this for profit.
Dedication: It'll be pretty clear who this is dedicated to when you get to the end.
Ponyboy's POV
I stepped out of the shower and grabbed for the towel imprinted with the hotel's logo. They don't really work as well as the ones at home, but I'm not at home, so I can't complain. They feed me breakfast for free here, anyway. Well, okay, it's not really free. They just don't write it up as a separate part of the bill when you check out.
I could smell the brewed coffee out in the room as I pulled my pants on. Nice hotel, they give you a coffee maker in the room and everything. You'd think I had never stayed in a hotel before, but really it's just that I'm usually paying my own way. With three kids still at home and two still in college you tend to go to the cheap places and be thankful that there are blankets on the bed and windows that open in case you need a quick exit. Not that I ever have, but you never know.
So this place is pretty classy. I can't imagine what my publisher is paying for it, and in New York City no less, but they've got money coming out of their ears, so I'm sure they don't even feel it. Come to think of it, maybe I'll try something from that minibar later on.
I poured some coffee before pulling on my shirt and shoes and opening the curtains. Beautiful. I'm not big on cities usually, but this was just a beautiful, clear, crisp September day. I mean, really, one of those perfect days, when everyone greets you with a smile and nobody stays inside for lunch. It would be a good day for a walk.
I checked the time. We were meeting at eight-thirty, to give us a little time before my appointment. I was already late. I was actually feeling nervous, and it wasn't because of my appointment. I hadn't seen her in years. Would she look the same? Did I? Would we even recognize each other? These thoughts plagued my brain as I strolled along the sidewalk, breathing in the city air that had been rendered fresh and clean by the perfect day.
I checked the directions she had given me. I had two more blocks to go, and then had to turn east and go one block. Little café, makes good coffee. That's what she had said, anyway. I'm not a real aficionado of coffee, we just get whatever's on sale, but hey, maybe I would actually be able to taste the difference. Some people swear by the two-dollar-a-cup stuff that you have to stand in line for. I don't know, it all wakes me up.
Ah, there it is. Looks like a nice little place, some tables outside and a little green and white awning. I walked inside and let my eyes adjust to the slightly darker atmosphere. How would I even know if she…my brain stopped mid-thought when I caught sight of that red hair draped over the back of one of the chairs. She was sitting alone, paging through what looked like a playbook. I approached slowly, took one last deep breath, and stepped up in front of her.
"Cherry?"
She looked up quickly, then smiled and stood up. "Ponyboy! It's so good to see you!" There was an awkward moment when neither of us knew what we were supposed to do, where we both moved toward each other, then back again, until we finally hugged.
"Wow, you look great!" she told me, looking me up and down.
"Thanks, so do you." She really did, too. She was just over fifty, but didn't look it. The only thing I hadn't expected, that caught me off-guard almost, was that her accent had changed. She didn't sound like an Oklahoma native any more. But I guess when you spend more than half your life somewhere different from where you grew up that happens. "Here, sit down. Do you want some coffee?"
"I'll get it in a few minutes," I told her, pulling out the other chair and sitting down. "So how has life been? The last time I saw you was…" I tried to remember when exactly it was since I had run into her at the grocery store.
"It was about fifteen years ago, right after my dad passed on. I was down there helping Mom settle his affairs. She came up here to live with my family and me after that." She looked down at the table, and I could see that the memory of her father's death was still painful.
"Your family – I think you said you had three children, right?"
Cherry smiled. "You've got a good memory! Two daughters and a son. And I'll tell you, putting kids through college these days is no small affair."
"Oh, I know it. Two of mine are in college." I picked up a little stirring straw from one of those holder devices and fiddled with it. I needed something to do to ward off the nervousness. "So…how did you end up here in the city?"
She looked toward the window. "Well, you know, after Bob was killed, I felt like I needed to get out of there. I needed to see a different life, pull away from the constraints of the hometown. Know what I mean? So I moved up here with one of my girlfriends. It was a struggle at first, but my parents helped out, I got an internship, went on to business school, and found a good job. That was where I met my husband. He's one of the executive vice presidents now. I stayed home with the kids when they were growing up, and now I'm working for a little firm over near Wall Street."
"Wow. That's great, Cherry. I'm sorry…is that still what you call yourself?" It had suddenly occurred to me that maybe she no longer went by that nickname.
Cherry laughed. "Oh, it's fine. My husband calls me Sherri, and most of the people around here that I know do. But I always love hearing my old name, if you want to call it that. It's kind of like a connection to another time, another person that I used to be and sometimes still miss." She looked off beyond me for an instant, somewhere in the past, then snapped back to the present. "Well, enough about me. Tell me about yourself. You're meeting with a publisher today?"
"That's right. I've been writing for a while – things like newspaper stories, magazine articles, nothing real big. A couple of articles in Time, but that's as big as it got. Then a few years ago I started on a novel that I'd been wanting to write for a while. Up until then it was a struggle to make the time. You know, between work, and the kids…" I trailed off, and she nodded, understanding. "Anyway, I finished it, and it got picked up by a publisher. The book went straight to the bestseller list, so they asked me for a sequel. I'm meeting with them this morning to go over some of the details."
"Oh, Ponyboy, that's wonderful! I'm so glad you got in touch with me, it's been so great to…" Cherry stopped talking then. For that matter, so did everyone else in the room as the place nearly shook and a loud noise echoed through the streets.
We all sat there in silence for a moment, looking around with startled expressions. "What the hell was that?" It was a rhetorical question and one that everyone around us was either asking or visibly thinking. Some of the patrons headed for the door to take a look outside. Cherry and I exchanged glances.
"Let's go take a look, see what's going on," I suggested. She nodded and followed me out into the bright sunshine. We followed the group of people who were headed back the way I had come. When we got to the intersection I turned to face south, the direction people were staring and pointing, and my breath caught in my throat.
Thick black smoke was pouring into the bright blue sky from one of the two tallest buildings in the city. "Christ," I muttered, somewhere between a curse and a prayer, "that's where my meeting is." Some people were moving toward the scene, others were running from it. Was it a bomb? An explosion of some kind? Already there was a news helicopter circling the building. As Cherry and I moved along the street we heard more and more people talking about a plane hitting the building.
"Did he say a plane?" Cherry asked me.
"Yeah, that's what I heard. Glory, I never would have thought a little airplane could cause so much damage. I wonder how it happened?" I was picturing maybe someone with their new pilot's license, going out for a fly on a nice autumn morning, and panicking when they realized they had come in too close to a building. The thought that ran through my head repeatedly was, 'I hope to hell not too many people were in there yet.' The working day had barely started.
"Do you think there are many people up there?" Cherry's question echoed my thoughts.
"I don't know. There must be dozens of passages down, though. There's got to be a way to get out. And they have sprinklers in buildings like that. I mean, how big could the plane have been?" I was beginning to feel like I was saying things just to make myself feel better as I stared at all of that smoke. But there had to be a way for people to get out, right? I mean, thousands of people evacuated the World Trade Center several years back, when a bomb went off in the lower level.
Already there were sirens going off all around us and fire trucks coming from every direction. We kept walking, watching, like when you're on the beach and you don't realize how far you've made it, or even that you're moving at all, until you look for your blanket and see that you are half a mile away from where you started. We were close enough to see the firefighters hurrying into the buildings, carrying their gear and talking back and forth on their radios. I looked up to the black smoke filling the sky, then back to the firefighters, going about their business with a professionalism that made my heart swell. They were going up to help those people; they were packing it into a burning building to save lives, just like they did every day.
Abruptly my mind raced back thirty-five years, to another burning building, other people who needed to be saved, and the friend who had died because he carried within him the same unquestioning love of life that I was seeing in these people now.
"What's that?" someone shouted, pointing up. Without warning, without hesitation, a huge passenger jet struck the side of the second building and just melted right into it, vanishing in an explosion of fire and smoke as God only knows how many lives were snuffed out in just that instant.
"Oh my God," I said, simultaneously forgetting and being aware of absolutely everything else in my life, "it wasn't an accident. This was an attack." I was stunned beyond words, beyond thought, beyond comprehension.
Cherry had gasped beside me and was holding her hand to her mouth, staring in horror at the sight in front of us. I put my arm around her, as much to gain support as to give it. That was about when we realized what the objects falling from the upper floors were. People were jumping. People ninety and a hundred stories up in the sky were jumping out of windows to escape the pain that was contained within. Mothers, fathers, friends, husbands, wives…people who had kissed their families goodbye in the morning after pulling the chicken out of the freezer, or making the reservations for seven o'clock at the restaurant, or deciding that they could just pick something up on the way home. Now, they were jumping out of windows, knowing they were never going back home again.
'Please hurry,' I thought desperately, willing those firefighters some of my strength, some of my life, 'please get up there and help those people.'
Cherry was crying, and I think I was, too, I don't remember. "Let's go," I said, "let's go back the other way." Most people were now hurrying away from the buildings, fear and horror etched in their faces. How many more planes were there? What else was going to happen? Which direction held safety?
We moved along with the crowd for a bit, but hadn't made it too far when it happened – we heard a rumble, and the earth shook. We turned around just in time to see one of the buildings falling in on itself in a massive cloud of dust. As it descended my brain raced forward to what would happen in the next thirty seconds.
"Come on!" I shouted, dragging Cherry behind me as I turned and ran, checking doors along the sidewalk. "Let's go, hurry!" I found a door open at a small store, a boutique of some sort, and we race inside with a crowd of people on our tail.
"Shut the door!" someone shouted, and just outside the cloud appeared. The door was closed, but the fine dust somehow made it into the store, filling our lungs and bringing everyone instinctively to the floor. It wasn't ending, it wasn't ending…and then it did. People were coughing, choking, but the heavy dust began to settle and we could see again, and start to breathe again.
"Is everyone alright?" We all nodded, looked around at each other. The person who had asked the question spoke again. "We should all get out of here. If that one came down, the second one might not be far behind." It wasn't easy to think logically, but he was right.
"Where do we go?" I asked, unfamiliar with the city and feeling sick and vulnerable.
"Toward the river," he said with confidence. The group of us followed silently, and sure enough, there were more and more groups traveling in the same direction as us. Nobody spoke, partly because we didn't have the extra breath in our lungs, but even if we had, there was nothing to say. The feelings were too strong, they needed time to settle and be sorted through before words could be attached to them.
It seemed like we walked for hours. Sirens were still going off, firefighters were helping those who were having problems, and eventually the second building did go down. I think we were all in shock, and I noticed that I wasn't the only one looking nervously to the sky that had seemed so clear and beautiful only a few hours earlier.
We made it to the river, and after several failed attempts Cherry managed to contact her husband on her cell phone. We walked some more, to where friends of theirs lived, and by the time we arrived Cherry's husband had contacted them. They were waiting for us, weeping along with the rest of the country and half the world.
"Can I use that?" I asked Cherry. She handed me her cell phone as we made our way out of the city with the help of her friends. It took me an hour and a half of failed connections before I finally heard a ring on the other end. I tried to remember which number I had just dialed, after switching back and forth so many times.
"Hello?" asked a frantic voice.
"Darry? It's me."
"Oh, God, thank God. Pony, were you…"
"I was a few blocks away. I saw it. It was awful, Darry. Look, I'm okay, I'm leaving the city now. I don't want to stay on with all the people trying to find their families needing the phone lines. Tell Melissa and the kids I'm okay."
"Yeah, I'll call her right away. Pony…I love you."
"I love you too, Dar. I'll see you soon." I hung up. Darry had never said that to me before.
That night I stayed at Cherry's house. You couldn't turn on the TV without seeing images of those burning buildings, those dying people. We finally switched to an old movie channel just to get away from the horrors. I sat out on the back deck that evening watching the sun set through the lingering cloud of smoke that hung for miles over the city and the areas surrounding it. The burning smell of anguish and pain hovered around me.
I would be going back home later in the week, but the memories and their impact would stay with me forever, I knew. No matter how long I lived, or what else happened in my life, I would never forget that day, or the images of those firefighters moving with such cool efficiency into that burning building. I thought about the people who had been killed, and about the ones they had left behind.
I thought about Johnny, burned and dying, but knowing that he had made a difference. And I thought about Dally, unable to take the pain, and deciding that his best option was to join the only person he had ever loved.
What about all of the friends, the family, the children, of those who had died by the hundreds on that September day? How would they make it through this kind of pain? Would they be angry and bitter, like Dally had been? My heart went out to them, and I felt the intense guilt of one who could only stand and watch helplessly while the inevitable happened.
I wanted them to know how much I felt for them, how strong of a loss I felt just from being there and seeing what I had seen. We won't forget them, I mentally promised all of those people. We will never forget them. The world feels your pain; we're with you. Keep your head up. Be strong. And stay gold.
Because even if it doesn't feel like it right now, there's still lots of good in the world.
Author's Note: I was living in the middle of Pennsylvania, enjoying the morning for a little while with my one-week old infant and my almost-two-year-old son, before we got a call from my sister in New Jersey and turned on the news. I remember feeling vulnerable, even over two-hundred miles away, then even more so when there were reports that another plane had crashed in a field a little over an hour away from us. Two of my friends were watching everything from opposite ends of the city. Feel free to share your whereabouts in your review if you want, whether you liked the story or not. And yes, though I didn't expect to, I cried when I wrote this. It still hits me as hard today as it did then. Thanks for reading.