We All Die Once

And isn’t that plenty?

“When was the last time you saw Jen?”

I was confused. My principal had called me to her office and the last thing I had expected was this. The towers had just fallen three weeks before, the local sandwich shop owned by a Sikh had been vandalized, American flags had cropped up everywhere along with the ubiquitous push to “buy goods” to prove you were a patriot, and we were charged with comforting students whose parents worked at the Pentagon. How was my former coworker’s whereabouts relevant to our new reality?