When I think about the terrorist attacks on 9/11, I don’t think just about the people who died. I also think about the lucky ones, the people who nearly died but didn’t. They missed the plane in Boston or were late to work that morning or had a stomachache and decided to stay home sick. They weren’t there when the planes hit and so they survived.

Afterward, a lot of them were on the news saying how God must have been looking after them that day. But my question is: Why wasn’t God looking after all the passengers on those planes and all the people trapped in the tower on the 106th floor, with the I beams melting under them and the smoke crawling under the doors? Where was God then?

Pastor Jay says there’s a pattern behind everything that’s just too big for us to understand. But I think he’s wrong there. I don’t think there’s any pattern at all. I think living or dying is just dumb luck. If Eli had taken a few minutes longer to lace up his boots that morning, or if he’d had three eggs for breakfast instead of two, maybe he’d have been in a different truck, one that didn’t run over the bomb.

Walter says that every time we make a decision, no matter how small, the universe splits into parallel universes, so that there’s a universe where one thing happens and another universe for something else. There are universes where Columbus sank on his way across the Atlantic and where Hitler won World War II. A universe where Eli never went to war, and one where the terrorists never got on the 9/11 planes at all, but decided instead to settle down in Florida and open up a little restaurant on the beach selling crab cakes and French fries and souvenir T-shirts.

“So how come I have to be in this universe?” I said. “How come I can’t be in some other one, with Eli still in it?”

Walter said it had something complicated to do with quantum physics.

I was in fourth grade the year the towers went down, and what I remember most about fourth grade is that I had a Hogwarts pencil box, with Harry Potter pencils that had wizards on them, and stars and owls. It’s weird after all that’s happened how well I can remember that stupid pencil box.

Everything was all Harry Potter that year. Ms. Mellinger, the fourth-grade teacher, had us all divided up into Hogwarts houses for reading and discussion groups, and I was busy hating her because I was in Hufflepuff. Being pissed at Hufflepuff is what I was thinking about on 9/11.

When we first heard about the attacks, I wasn’t scared. To tell the truth, I didn’t take it in what was going on, any more than all those little kids at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, understood right off why the president suddenly got that deer-in-the-headlights expression and stopped reading The Pet Goat.

Also I was sort of used to things crashing and blowing up, due to growing up with Eli across the hall blasting virtual orcs on his computer screen all the time.

That night, though, when my mom and dad and I watched the news, it got real. The news guys kept replaying those planes crashing into the towers, with people screaming and crying and running, and the buildings spewing out smoke and then just crumpling down like a house of cards. Crash and fall, over and over.

We heard about the nineteen hijackers with their box cutters, and the staticky voices of people who were about to die making cell phone calls. “We’re all gonna die! We’re all gonna die!” one woman said. She was so damned scared.

My mom cried and my dad drank Scotch and said a lot of the seven words that nobody is supposed to say. That I was even there shows how upset they were, because usually my mom didn’t let me watch stuff like that.

Eli called home in the middle of the third replay of the president talking about evil.

First he talked to Mom and Dad, and from the half I could hear, it didn’t sound like he was exactly defusing a traumatic situation.

“No,” our mom kept saying. “No. You should be home. We should be together at a time like this.”

At which point Dad took the phone because Mom had lost it and needed more Kleenex.

He listened for about six seconds, and then he said, “That’s very idealistic of you, Eli, but don’t be a fool. You can’t do any good there. You want to do something, you go down to the Red Cross and give them a pint of blood or something.”

Then he said, “Danny’s doing fine.”

And then our mom started crying harder, and our dad said, “Now, Ellen, please,” and they put me on the phone.

“You doing fine, Dan?” Eli said.

“Are they going to blow us all up?” I said.

“Hell, no,” Eli said. But his voice sounded funny.

“Did they kill kids?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Eli said.

“So what’s happening?” I said. “With you and Mom and Dad?”

Because they were talking and talking in the kitchen, and our mom was still crying and Dad sounded mad.

“Listen,” Eli said. “Me and some friends here, we wanted to go to New York and help out, is all. Stuff like this happens, and you want to do something. You don’t want to be one of those guys that just sits back on his ass. You remember when it’s okay to say ass?”

“When it’s a donkey or anything to do with Timmy Sperdle,” I said. “I wish you were home.”

“Danny, look, you’re okay,” Eli said. “They’ll figure out what happened and they’ll take care of it. It’s gonna be okay.”

Then he said, “So you still in Hufflepuff?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“That’s cool,” Eli said. “Hufflepuff sucks, but it doesn’t suck as much as Slytherin. Those Slytherin kids are totally screwed.”

“Our emblem is a stupid fat badger,” I said. “Slytherin has a snake.”

“Badgers are smarter than snakes,” said Eli. “Snakes suck. When is it okay to say suck?”

“Vampires, vacuum cleaners, and anything to do with Timmy Sperdle,” I said.

“Right,” Eli said. “So you just go to bed, okay? I’ve got a clock right here that says it’s past your pitiful eight-year-old bedtime. If you don’t get your sleep, you’ll grow up to be a midget. You’ll have to stand on a stool to pee.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“Well, it’s true,” Eli said. “I swear and double-swear on a two-foot stack of Bibles. So get your short, skinny ass into bed. Now say ‘Good night, Eli.’”

“Good night, Eli,” I said.

“Good night, kid,” Eli said.

Looking back, I think if my dad had just listened then, when Eli wanted to go help in New York, things would have turned out different. Maybe Eli wouldn’t have joined the army if he’d gone and helped in New York.

I think if my dad had listened, we’d all be in a different parallel universe now, one with Eli still in it.

This was one reason I hated my dad.