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Keep it a Secret

The Beginning

Chapter 1:
At 8:46 A.M., everything seemed to freeze. Even the ferry ceased to move as choked gasps escaped the passengers’ lips. A raven-haired man looked up from his sketches, dropping his coffee as he gripped the railing and stared blankly at the scene in front of him. All he could see was the chaos. Chaos and smoke. The man tore his eyes away as he started to shake. He saw the people around him either hugging their loved ones or getting out their phones and sobbing incoherently into them.
All he could think about was home. He needed his mother. He needed his father. He needed his brother. He needed his ears to stop ringing so that he could actually think. He needed to stop shaking so that– no. He wasn’t the one shaking. And the ringing wasn’t just in his ears.
At 9:03 A.M., for the second time, a plane carrying precious human cargo sped over the Manhattan skyline and plummeted into the second tower. The raven-haired man looked up again as it crumbled. It didn’t fall, though. It seemed to just disappear as the rubble and smoke twice its size swallowed it up.He squinted through the specks of debris and smoke that surrounded the ferry like a dusty wave. He could see more chunks of debris falling off the side of the building as it raced to the pile of rubble on the ground like the first one. With a sick twist of his stomach, the man realized that he wasn’t watching debris fall from the sides of the towers.
“Oh g-god” he muttered to himself. It was people. The man was watching people plummet to their death as the twin towers crashed to the ground with a deafening roar. If he wasn’t shaking before, he definitely was now. Slowly, he picked up his feet and started on his way back home.
He walked on, forgetting what he was supposed to do that day. Forgetting why he even got on that ferry in the first place. The walk was excruciating. All around him, people were grabbing each others hands, making a run for it. He could see others huddled in the corners covering their faces and sobbing. Obviously, the streets weren’t the safest place to be right now, so why was he walking right in the middle of them? And why was he walking so slowly?
No matter how much he pondered this question, he just couldn’t pick up his feet faster. Was it his love for destruction? Or did he have a death-wish? He decided it was maybe a mixture of both. After an hour and a half of dazed walking, the man eventually got to his apartment and locked himself inside. That’s when reality took a hold of him.
He didn’t believe it. It made no sense. His brain couldn’t process it. There was about three- or four-hundred people on that ferry with him. He realized all these people, they all had friends and family in those buildings. He didn’t. He thought back to when that first building went, it was like an A-bomb went off of pure emotion that clung to him and made him nauseous.
The man ran to the bathroom and wretched up all he had eaten that morning. His palms clamming up and slipping as he desperately tried to grip the porcelain. He winced as his stomach acid went up his nasal passage and burned. When he was done, he sat there staring at the cabinets in the bathroom just trying to solely think of how good the cold porcelain felt on his now feverish head. He flushed the pungent bile down and closed his eyes. Watching as the back of his eyelids played through the events of that morning.
The raven-haired man woke up with a start. He hadn’t known he had dozed off. His racing heart and clammy skin was just a bad reminder of the contents of his dream. But was it just a dream?It all seemed so realistic. He groaned as the phone rang. It must have been what had woken him up. The man got up and quickly rinsed the stale-bile taste from his mouth as he hurried to answer the phone.
“H-hello?” he answered groggily.
“Jesus Christ, Gerard!” shouted from the other end. “We’ve been calling and calling you for the past hour!”
The man, Gerard, winced. Had it really been an hour? He looked at the clock on the stove which read 11:45 A.M. Shit, not only had he managed to sleep through the constant ringing of the phone, but on a toilet seat, for God’s sake? “I’m sorry mom. I should have called. I –”
“You’re damn right you should of!” His mother cut him off. “Gerard Arthur Way, do you have any idea how sick your father, brother, and I have been with worry? We started to think the worst! We thought you would be lost among the destruction.” By this point, she was sobbing uncontrollably.
Now Gerard felt worse which he didn’t think would be possible after all that had happened already. He didn’t even think that his family would consider him to be lost in what was left of the twin towers. How could he be so selfish? “I’m sorry mother.” He muttered softly. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have called you as soon as I got home.” He heard his mother choke out a last sob and then sigh.
“It’s alright, honey. As long as you’re okay, that’s all that I need to hear. You are okay, right?”
Gerard furrowed his eyebrows and pondered the question carefully. Was he okay? “Well yes, I guess. Physically at least. But mom, I saw it happen. I didn’t see the planes actually hit but I saw both towers fall down and the people jump. I was right up close. It was like something out of a movie. I just couldn’t believe it!”
“I don’t think any of us could believe it. It’s going to be a while before any of this sinks in.” She sighed again but at least Gerard could tell that she was more at ease with his safety. At least somewhat. “Please tell me you don’t plan on staying there any longer.”
This surprised Gerard. He hadn’t actually planned on leaving Manhattan but how could he even think about staying? Sure he came here to chase the dreams he had. He wanted to draw and create and he was fairly good at it. In fact, he had been on his way to pitch a show called “Breakfast Monkey” to Cartoon Network. Unfortunately, this was where he was going to when the Twin Towers were hit. Now, he couldn’t help but think. Was he sure that he wanted to draw for the rest of his life? Sure he liked it and everything but one could only get shot down so many times before they doubt themselves.
Gerard then thought about the people falling from the sky. He thought about how their lives were forced short. He didn’t know any of them and if someone presented him with a list of their names, he probably wouldn’t recognize them either. He didn’t want to be like that. He didn’t want to be a no-name artist who constantly had their dreams shot down pitch after pitch. He decided he wanted to make something of himself. He wanted to make a difference. If another catastrophe occurred and he wasn’t so lucky to make it out, then he wanted to know that at least what he was doing with his life meant something. And if someone had written a list of all who died in the event, he was going to be damned sure that his name would be recognized.
“No mom.” Gerard stated confidently. “I plan on coming home.”
He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he knew he was going to make a difference. Gerard was going to change people’s lives. That he was sure of.