Twenty-Two Minutes, Six Seconds
A/N~~ I watched 'Remember Me' with my 15 year old daughter last weekend and loved it. I wasn't a big Rob Pattinson fan beforehand, having thought his acting in the 'Twilight' movies was bad (of course KStew's acting in 'New Moon' was horrible, so that probably colored my judgement there) and I haven't seen anything but the Harry Potter movie with him.
I do wish I hadn't Wiki'd the plot for the movie first, because the ending would have been far more dramatic if it had been a surprise. That'll teach me! I liked how Tyler changed everyone around him, but I have to admit that Aiden's character was my favorite in the entire movie. So here's what I think he might be ten years after the incident. I might continue this if there's an interest or if I just feel like writing more.
Stuff in italics are flashbacks or memories.
Leave me love at the end! Or leave me some randomly typed words I have to decipher 'Di Vinci Code'-like. Please enjoy. Marti
^^^^RM^^^^
I taught freshman and sophomore level English classes and have been for the last five years. As I looked out at the sea of 15 year old children I let my mind drift back to what had happened a decade ago to change my life. We heard the explosion, felt the walls around us start to shake and shudder. Ally looked at me with fear, turned off the stove, and we ran up the stairwell to the roof. My phone rang as we stared in horror at the scene. The tower had smoke wafting from it in the Indian summer weather, a horrible contrast to such a beautiful morning.
I'm glad I'd answered the phone without looking at the display.
"Mr. Hall, are you alright?" One of my students in the front, a girl that reminded me of Caroline Hawkins with her long brunette hair, glasses, and the air of intelligence, asked.
I smiled at the class and shook myself out of the memories of that day.
"I'm fine. Thank you, Bethany. Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, so we'll have a few quiet moments at the beginning of class and I'll have each of you write an essay on it."
"We were five. I don't even remember it." Jason Feinman in the back called out. A few of his friends laughed, but a glare from me shut them up. I walked to the back of the class and stood next to him.
"I do. I remember it very well, and I plan on mourning the death of my best friend tomorrow. I'm usually a pretty laid back teacher, Mr. Feinman, but on this, I won't allow you to make fun."
He gulped and looked down at his desk. His cocky attitude was successfully nipped in the bud.
"Sir, what happened?"
I looked down at the phone, back at Ally and then at the smoking tower in the distance. They were the tallest buildings in New York City and we had no trouble seeing what happened. I hoped Tyler wasn't in the tower that had been hit, but it was only a fifty/fifty shot.
I answered the phone without checking the caller ID, a shaky 'hello' croaked into the mouthpiece.
"Aiden! Fuck, my phone's cracked, and I could only call the last number I'd dialed. What the hell is going on?"
"Oh my god, Tyler? Tyler, you're alive?" I pulled away from Ally, who was clinging to me like a life preserver. I could barely hear him, there was too much background noise, but I listened hard.
"I'm on the nineteenth floor. There's a coffee shop. When I got off the elevator, I got slammed into the freaking wall. The whole tower is shaking, man and there's dust and rubble. What's going on?"
"There's a plane, it crashed into the tower, Tyler. You gotta get the fuck out of there, man!" I screamed into the phone. Ally grabbed at the phone, but instead of giving it up, I turned on the speaker. We heard the screaming of other people in the background as they all wondered about what was happening. I heard Tyler cough and yell at people as he rushed into the stairwell. It was only the nineteenth floor; he could make it to the ground level before anything else happened. Ally was thinking the same thing as she talked to Tyler, tears streaming down her cheeks. She was gripping my arm tight enough to leave bruises, but I wouldn't find those until the next day.
"Ally, I love you! I'll be there for you, I swear!"
"Run, Tyler. Get out of there."
The two of us urged him repeatedly as we heard him pounding down the stairs, running past other people, even stopping to help when he could. I wanted to be selfish and tell him to forget about other people, but he had never been like that, not in the entire time I'd known him.
"I'm on the third floor. Almost out, baby."
"I'm holding you to that, Keats." Ally laughed, tears of joy now coming from her.
Then, I saw it and gasped in horror. Ally followed my gaze and I almost dropped the phone.
"What's going on, Aiden?" Tyler wheezed from the phone.
"Another plane," I whispered just as I saw it collide with the second tower farther down, closer to where Tyler was in the first tower.
Everything happened at once. The people in the stairwell started screaming, Tyler yelling as they felt the second impact. I could hear the structural damage happening around them, could hear the parts of the railing strain and start to break apart, the cracking in the walls as they fell around them. Tyler screamed then and I heard the phone crash against something solid.
"Tyler! Tyler, answer me!" Ally and I cried out at the same time, trying to get him to respond to us. I was frantic. I wished I could get the landline phone or Ally had remembered hers when we came up. I wanted to call someone to help him. Tyler was more than a friend or best friend to me. He was like a brother.
I heard him coughing and groaning in pain after a few minutes. I hadn't had the heart to close the phone and disconnect. I had to have some faith.
"Fuck. Wall… on my… legs. Can't move. Something is… stuck, ow fuck me! There's blood… my stomach. Everything's swaying. No light."
I let Ally go as she turned away from me and threw up all over the weights.
"Ty, man. Hold on. Someone's there to get you guys out. I can see the lights from the cops and fire trucks. Just… hold on." I was impotently watching from the other side of the city, knowing in my heart that this was going to be the last time I talked to my best friend.
"Can't breathe."
"Tyler Keats Hawkins, you promised you'd come home to me!" Ally screamed hysterically.
"Don't think… that's happening, Ally. I love you, Ally! Don't you ever… forget! Aiden, man… love ya too. Tell my mom… and dad… tell Caroline… love them so much. So… sorry, Ally. Forgi-," he was cut off by a rumbling on the phone, a crash. Then the phone went totally dead. The quiet was disconcerting now after having listened to him for the last twenty minutes. I looked down at the display on my phone, barely able to focus on the numbers. We'd been on the phone with him for twenty two minutes, six seconds. He'd been so close to getting out.
I landed on my ass on the roof, the phone still clutched in my hands in a death grip. Ally had stumbled down to the apartment I think. I wasn't sure.
I wasn't sure how long I sat there, and through my tears I watched first one tower followed soon after by the second implode and crash into the ground, a mushroom cloud of debris and rubble the only sign that the towers had ever stood there so tall and stalwart.
I closed the phone and with shaking fingers, dialed Charles Hawkins' number. It rang three times, and I considered hanging up in case it went to voice mail, but he picked up.
"Now is really not a good time, Aiden."
"Tyler was at the coffee shop on Nineteen. He called my phone."
"He got out?" I could hear the hope in his voice and I hated that I'd have to kill it so thoroughly. He'd already lost one son, now he was left without Tyler too.
"No, sir. We heard the stairwell. He was stuck under a wall, pinned. Something was in hi stomach. The stairwell collapsed while we were on the phone. It disconnected. Nothing." I couldn't get a real sentence out to save my life. I'd have written a goddamned epic poem if it could save Tyler though.
I heard the tears first, followed by a wail of such loss I closed my eyes and wished I could close my ears. They had just reconciled, and were going to work at becoming closer. The incident with Caroline's hair had brought the entire family together after having been ripped apart by the suicide of Michael six years ago.
"Mr. Hall!"
The chorus of voices in my Freshman English class woke me from my memories. I turned away and wiped my eyes surreptitiously before donning my educator's persona and returned to teaching.
"Like I said, we'll all write something about the 9/11 attacks. It doesn't have to be about the towers, it could be about the crash into the Pentagon, the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. It could be about the change in security or travel into and out of the United States. For instance, before that day, it took only a few minutes to get on to a plane and be underway. Now, if you've ever tried to travel across the country, you have to practically strip and get searched before stepping foot on the airplane. And heaven forbid you have something verboten in your luggage!"
I got the class to laugh now. I smiled, but I knew it didn't reach my eyes. Tonight, I'd be going to the cemetery to pay my respects to my best friend. His life had changed mine. I'd become friends with a great guy, a fun-loving but totally screwed up guy with a heart of gold who loved his little sister more than life itself.
His death had shown me how to grow up and accept my adulthood. He had shown me how to be a man in those twenty two minutes and six seconds.
The End.