Part I (pages 3-39) Summary

CLAIRE- My First Thought (page 3-16)

Claire, seventeen years old, is in class when news arrives that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. The following events are told from her perspective. Confusion ensues with cell phones ringing and general panic. Eventually Claire's twelfth-grade class joins another class that has a television, and the students see live coverage of the burning building.

Claire's immediate reaction is to try to reach her mother but neither she, nor her mother, has a cell phone. She wants to collect her brother Sammy from his second-grade class in the school across the road, and she leaves the high school with Marisol, a classmate who also wants to get to her younger sibling.

Once outside, Claire sees the hordes of people, all looking up. Strangers are talking to each other...