story1298.xml

story1298.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-20

The phone kept ringing that morning. Karen and Melynda had left for class, and I never had class on Tuesday mornings so I slept in. The sound of the phone always startles me. I finally answered it, a little before eight in the morning.

It was Karen's mother, hysterical and shouting. She works at an airline in Houston. I switched on the television, and collapsed on the coffee table, clutching my bedspread around my body.

There was that long moment of "oh my god" and the longer moment of growing horror. I flipped through every cable news channel, looking for an answer.

Most of the day, I stayed in front of the television, absorbing the shock and the terror and the pain. I thought of my friends in NYC, and hoped desperately that they were safe. It was not until the sun was going down, and the President went on the radio, that I left the house.

We live under a flight path, and the silence of the sky was terrible. When I at last found my friends in a coffee shop by the university, we stayed there all night, unable to sleep. Just in case.