The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand

splash, and have a strawberry back from the impact. But there was no impact. She was still falling, keening, the air ripped her hair out, her teeth out, she was blind, she was deaf. There was so much air, she couldn’t breathe. The wind ripped her up. It rubbed against her like flint and she ignited. She burst into flame, like a star.
    Reed was gone. And so was she.
    She did not cry. She curled up on the sofa and shivered. The phone rang. At first she checked the display in case it was Reed, in case he had decided in a rush of fraternity-brother camaraderie to go downstairs with Ernie and Jake to watch from the ground, but it was everyone else calling. Delilah again. Ellen Paige. The Chief. Andrea. Tess. Phoebe’s mother. Ellen Paige. And finally Addison. She did not answer. These people left messages on her machine. She sensed concern (the Chief), she sensed hysteria (Ellen Paige, her mother), but she could not hear anything clearly. She was deaf from the wind in her ears.
    She couldn’t watch the TV anymore, but she couldn’t stop watching. The plane hit the building; it pushed right through it like a poison dart through the wall of a straw hut. She thought of people jumping. It was jump or melt, and Reed, whose life had been just as blessed as Phoebe’s until this very morning, would have weighed two impossible options and decided to jump. Would his red cape work? He chose to believe it would—for Domino’s sake, Ellen Paige’s sake, their mother’s sake, Phoebe’s sake.
    Freebird. Sweet Reedy Bird.
    I’ll call you back when the dust settles here.
    When the dust settles.
    On TV, the buildings collapsed like a house of cards.
    By the time Addison got home, sunburned and smelling strongly of fish, Phoebe had vomited all over their seventeen-thousand-dollar silk Oriental rug, hand-knotted in Tehran, and she had wet herself. Her gym shorts were soaked. She didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore, not even when Addison gasped and said, “Jesus, Phoebe!” And she realized that she had not wet herself. She was sitting in a pool of her own blood.
    It was now eight years later, and everyone had healed and moved on. Phoebe’s parents had started a scholarship at Reed and Phoebe’s high school in Reed’s name. It was a large scholarship with elaborate requirements, and they spent many of their postretirement hours administering it.
    Keeps me busy,
Phoebe’s father said.
    Domino was in fourth grade, living with Ellen Paige and her new husband, Randy, whose wife had been a restaurant manager at Windows on the World. They met at a support group.
    It was only Phoebe who was stuck in an acrylic box. She could see out, but she was alone. Untouchable.
    It was the drugs. Phoebe was on antidepressants, pain medication, and sleep aides. She had the drugs that Dr. Field liberally prescribed, and she had black-market drugs that she got from Brandon Callahan, Reed’s roommate at Wisconsin, who was a drug rep with—well, Phoebe was hesitant to name the company that Brandon worked for. It was a big company; the drugs were good.
    There were those people—Addison, Phoebe’s mother, and to some extent Delilah—who felt that the drugs were harming Phoebe, killing her even. Look what they had stolen from her already—her consulting business had gone under; her body, once fit and toned, was now a bunch of twigs with skin hanging off them like cobwebs. And her personality had vanished. She smiled once a month, she never cried, she never laughed. She had, however, become an excellent listener. Listening was something she could do; many times the drugs made her feel lofty, like she was floating on air above everyone else, a Buddha on a pedestal, a deity calling in from the clouds. She gave sage advice now, everyone (meaning Delilah) said so, because she had no ego. She spoke only the truth because she no longer cared.
    Addison and Dr. Field had tried to get her off the drugs. They wanted her to cut back with the eventual goal of