12

I am entering stegosaurus. btw, I think I know where she might have gone. <3 u!!!

As he left the C train at the Fulton Street subway station, Corey sent the text to Papou. The old man would know what it meant.

If you had to go back in time, this seemed like the right place to start. The station was called the Oculus and looked like some kind of movie superhero lair. Its floor was the size of a football field, with walls of curved white metal crossbeams that arched upward like giant ribs. At the top the ribs met at a thin glass ceiling, like a spine. When he first saw this as a little kid, he felt like he’d been swallowed up by a stegosaurus.

Corey rode the escalator to an exit marked the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Outside, a crowd had begun to form even though it wasn’t even 7 a.m. The glass skyscrapers blazed in the morning sun. It was much hotter than usual for an early November morning and already he had broken a sweat. From the outside, the Oculus looked less like a dinosaur than a giant white hair clip. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the old photo of his grandmother in front of the World Trade tower. Her face was slightly blurry, her head thrown back in laughter, as if Papou had just told a joke.

If you can, go to the same spot as the photo, Papou had said. Block out everything else. Don’t be nervous. It doesn’t work if you’re too nervous. And clutch tightly to that token.

How could he know what the “same spot” was? Everything from 2001 was gone—destroyed, and then rebuilt into something completely different looking. As he reached for his phone again, a tiny girl with curly red hair thrust a drippy rainbow-colored ice cream cone practically into his face.

Corey sprang back. “Gaaah!”

“You want this?” she asked. “I hate it.”

“No!” Corey squeaked. “I mean, no thanks, I don’t!”

The girl seemed offended. She stuck out her tongue and let the cone drop at his feet. He was vaguely aware of her mom pulling her away and apologizing.

Don’t be nervous. It doesn’t work if you’re too nervous.

Corey took three deep cleansing breaths. He told himself to chill. Now he noticed a small crowd heading toward the black marble wall that surrounded one of the two giant reflecting pools. The pools were supposed to represent the footprints of the two towers. His grandmother had worked in one of the towers. So there was a logical place to start.

He made his way over, breathing in . . . breathing out. . . .

Just an ordinary day . . . traveling into the past, la-la-la . . . to the worst domestic attack in US history . . .

From around the pool’s entire square perimeter, water cascaded gently down into the deep, shadowy pit. He tried not to think of what had been there. The mangled mass of offices, restaurants, bathrooms, computers, paper, water coolers, carpets, paintings, phones. Three thousand human beings, who had done nothing more than show up for work on a clear, gorgeous day.

Breathe in . . . breathe out . . .

Corey held up the photo and tried not to think of all that. In the image’s background, behind his grandmother, were a couple of tan brick Art Deco buildings. Had they survived?

Yes. They were still there. Across the vast plaza, over the heads of the tourists. The same wall of windows looked down on the scene. As if nothing had ever happened. He tried to tune out the crowd. He still wasn’t sure how this worked. The only other times he’d time-hopped were accidents. He’d never tried to do it on purpose. Did you have to be in exactly the same place? Like, be in the footsteps of the photographer?

“Is that your mommy?”

The little girl, now without an ice cream cone, was staring up at his photo and pointing to his dead yiayia’s smiling face. A few steps beyond, her parents were looking at their phones, arguing about how to get to the South Street Ferry.

“It’s my grandma,” Corey said. “But a long time ago.”

“Is she dead?” the girl asked.

“How did you know?”

The girl shrugged. “People died here. My mom and dad knew somebody, too. That’s why everybody comes. Can I see?” As Corey crouched to show her the photo, the girl smiled. “She’s pretty.”

“Was,” Corey said.

“You can see her again, you know.” The girl cast a quick glance toward her parents, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “When my doggy died? Fluffy? I cried so much. I took his picture to bed with me. I looked at it and looked at it and pretended he was alive. I told him how much I missed him. ‘I miss you I miss you I miss you. . . .’ I was holding his collar, too. It still smelled like him. And then . . .” She thrust out her arms as if to say TA-DA! “There he was! He licked me and everything! Then I had to come back.”

Now she had Corey’s attention. “Come back? From where?”

“From when he was alive, silly. I think it was like last June. ’Cause when I saw Fluffy, I saw me, too. I was in bed wearing Pete the Cat pj’s. And I stopped liking Pete the Cat in June.”

“Wait. You saw yourself in bed?” Corey said.

Before the girl could respond, her mom lunged toward her and took her hand. “I’m soooo so sorry!” she said to Corey with a nervous laugh. “Maddie likes to talk. She has such an active imagination. Let’s say goodbye now, sweetie! Mommy and Daddy are going!”

Maddie heaved her shoulders wearily. But as she turned to go, she called back over her shoulder. “Remember, talk to her. Say how much you miss her!”

Corey waved back to her with his free hand. He was shaking.

Active imagination. Right.

She was like him. Did she understand?

How many were there?

Corey had to block it out. He had a job to do. He held up the photo again, using it as a guide, lining up the angle. Trying to guess where his grandmother had been standing. Wandering left and right.

From behind, someone banged into him. “Oh. Sorry,” Corey said.

A man in a sleek suit sneered at him. “Tourist.”

Corey ignored the comment. Wandering was not good when you were among New Yorkers, who liked to walk very fast in very straight lines. But you couldn’t walk fast if you didn’t know where to go. And now the voices were clamoring all around him:

“Excuse me. . . .”

“Whoa, traffic jam . . .”

“Keep it moving, bud. . . .”

“This isn’t Iowa. . . .”

He blocked out the nastier remarks. He didn’t care. All he saw right then was his grandmother’s face. The kindness in her eyes leaped out of the photo.

Talk to her. Say how much you miss her. . . .

The little girl’s words seemed silly, but he took a deep breath and said, “Hi. Um, yeah, so this is your grandson? Corey?”

A guy with slicked-back hair bumped into him from the left, nearly knocking the photo from his hand. “Dude, can you please move to the curb?”

A street sweeper was barreling down the block, brushing up clouds of dust in the gutter. Corey edged toward the curb, out of the flow of foot traffic but a few feet from the street sweeper’s path. “Okay, I know this is ridiculous because you’re just a photo,” he continued, “and I never even met you. But I just wanted to say, I miss you. I know all about you and I miss you so much. But most of all . . . Papou misses you, too. Every day. More than anything in the world . . .”

His eyes were moist now. The throng of people became a blur, the voices fading to a murmur—until someone knocked into him from behind. Again.

The photo flew from his hand and drifted to the ground, where it landed in the gutter. The street sweeper was only a few feet away. He saw Corey and jammed on his brakes.

All Corey saw was the massive, filthy, rotating brush. And the image.

Her eyes.

He reached out to grab the photo. He felt the spray of water and debris on his back. Heard the raucous clang of a horn.

He scrambled for the curb and felt the pressure of bristles on his back. Pulling him down, taking him to the street. Behind him someone shrieked.

And everything went white.