Addie's P.O.V
"Adalynn Miles get your skinny ass over here." Blair held her arms wide open and rushed to surround me. Her bad ass appearance was continuing. Today she wore ripped skinny jeans, Doc Martens and and a red flannel. Her ombred hair was curled loosely and a wide smile was plastered on her face.
"Hey B." I wrapped my arms tightly around her neck. Her hair smelled slightly of pineapples and coconuts.
"Happy birthday little bitch." We exited our hug with cheesy smiles on our faces. "Hey Haz." Harry gave her a wave and ushered her towards him. They jumped into a conversation and included everyone, but Calum, Ashton, Luke and I. Their looks contrasted heavily against their usual looks. Ashton wore khakis, something I'd never expected to see, and a gray hoodie. He wore his glasses, something he never did in public. He claimed they ruined his "image". Calum wore gray sweats that hung loosely on his hips and a black North Face. Luke wore normal jeans, a nirvana hoddie and vans. They all wore various colored beanies to keep their ears warm from the cold.
"So where we going first Ads?" Calum wrapped his arm tightly around my waist. It didn't go around as far as usual due to puffiness of my coat. I nestled my head into the crook of his neck.
"Well the first one is kind of lame, but Blair and I love this place." We walked the couple blocks to Washington Plaza. In front of us was a ten story antique building that held more graves than any other building in New York.
"No way Ads, you still remember this place?" Blair's smile grew at the sight of the building we fell in love with. Most of the group looked confused except Luke and Louis who must've studied something like this in school.
"Okay so back story. Those top three floors were home to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory back in 1911. The owners were a bunch of assholes who didn't give a shit about the people who worked there. They hardly paid them and made them work in the smallest spaces imaginable." As soon as I began to explain it became known who knew the back story. Luke, Louis and Niall all nodded along as if proving they understood and knew what was happening. Everyone else listened intently and their eyes begged me to continue.
"So later in 1911 during work this massive fire started. The fabric in the factory made the fire grow. Almost everyone tried to go sown the elevator shaft that held 12 people each trip, but it could only make 4 or 5 trips down. Everyone else either got burned or jumped out the windows. In total 145 of the 600 employees died that day including my greatgrandma's sister." As usual I felt the pang of pain in a hidden part of my heart. It wasn't like I knew the woman, but she died in the worst way possible. My grandma was just a little child when she knew her yet the way she talked about her blew my mind. Apparently we looked very similar with our ashy hair and blue-green eyes. Her face structure only varied slightly from mine which may have made my grandma spoil me as a child. I didn't mind it when I was little, but now it felt terrible to do.
'How did you know that all?" Harry's voice was full of question. Most of the boys had confusion etched into their expressions. I didn't blame them, I knew way more than I should've about this place.
"Well a lot of kids in America had to read this book Ashes of Roses in 8th grade so that's when I originally heard of it and when I moved here I fell in love with the story."
"Then Ads and I became obsessed at learned everything about this place." Blair added giving me a crooked grin. Calum wrapped his hands tightly into my own. He must have sensed my nervousness about the next location. Blair and I had talked about visiting it for months, but after my parent's death I couldn't bring myself to reopen another wound. Blair fetched us two taxi's and the seconds seemed to crawl by, but soon enough I was faced with a massive tower glowing in the sky. It's all glass exterior caused the clouds and sun to reflect off of it. Blair had studied the layout of this place since the day it opened. She left the group and walked directly to the site of her cousin. I knew my uncle was on the south pool, but I couldn't bring myself to walk that way.
"Umm you guys can go get pizza over there." I pointed to the street adjacent to me. I hoped their was a pizza place, but luckily one lined almost every corner of this city. Calum remained by my side as if knowing I couldn't do this alone. I found flight 175 and his name stood out like a sore thumb. It was the only thing I could see even though it was surrounded by thousands of other names. My index finger traced along the letters. Garnet Ace Bailey. The more I stared, the more wrong this all felt. Uncle Gary was way more to me than a carved in name among the thousands.
"Hey Ace, I miss you." My eyes were already filling with tears. "Those guys that did this were bastards you know. I hope they rot in hell for doing this to you." I couldn't tell if Calum could hear me and I'm sure if he did he wouldn't be staring off at the water filling the pool. It was a beautiful sight filled with horrible memories.
"I don't know why you couldn't quit while you were ahead. You didn't need that King's job you know? Your whole family was here and you were being a selfish asshole. But god dammit Gary I can't ever be mad at you for that. You were the best uncle in this entire world you know? Mom and Dad loved you so much and so did Lexi. Noah's never been more upset growing up knowing he'd never met you."
The tears were flowing steadily at this point. The day still burned in my mind. I was in kindergarten when Lex and I got picked up halfway through the day. Almost everyone in our school did that day. We still lived in LA at the time so the heat was terrible that day. Our Mom cried in the seat ahead of us. She knew a bunch of people who worked in the Twin Towers. At the she didn't even think of her brother in law.
By 3 we'd heard of the flights that had crashed. We had no word on Uncle Gary, but we couldn't stop thinking about him. He hadn't called us or his wife since the time he should've landed. By 7 we knew we'd been right all along. Aunt Kathy called us with a shaking voice saying the only Uncle I'd been close with in my life was dead. My father didn't leave his room for days and Lexi was stuck cooking me mac and cheese for nearly a week. My mother met our Nana in Chicago to meet with Kathy leaving us alone with our crumbling father. It was by far the worst week of my life, besides this year in a while.
"Ace, I love you. I don't know if you can hear me, but man I love you so much. Please don't ever forgot that." My eyes had cried as much as physically possible for one day. Internally I could feel my broken heart molding together in one place and cracking apart in another. In that moment I knew death was inevitable, but it somehow was still the worst thing in the world. The worst things in life really did come for free.
