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Caitlin Mathis

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Short Story Assignment It was a good place, twelve year old Caitlin Mathis thought to herself. She'd declined coming there in 2011 when it opened. She wanted to go when she was ready and she wanted to go alone. She was in lower Manhattan, at the World Trade Center Memorial. A couple years ago she'd refused to accompany her teary-eyed mother there for the ten year memorial. She'd refused to stand in the crowd and listen for her father's name. She'd refused to bring a flower. Her mother understood. Or perhaps not, maybe her mother didn't understand; maybe her mother just tolerated her decision and didn't feel like fighting.
Caitlin waited in line with a throng of people. It was starting to drizzle. She had a ticket printed out in her hand that was crumpled, and now getting wet. The idea that she had a ticket in her hand to see her father's name, carved in metal, wafted in and then out of her head. No one knew where she was right now.
No one knew where he was either.
His body incinerated in on the 98th floor of tower one, she imagined her dad's remains exploding like a charcoal dandelion; shivering and shimmering over the city. He was nowhere. He was everywhere. She missed him.
Caitlin felt that dull ache start up again in her chest, that thudding sob start to begin and the line trudged ahead forward. A raindrop fell on her right cheek.
She thought it was a raindrop.
Caitlin walked forward, emerging onto the memorial park. The footprints of the towers were now twin

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