Teen Talk 
Thick, Black Blanket
By Stephanie Courtois
The thick, black smoke rose into the air making a blanket across the New York sky. Terror ran rampant across the city and fear was the only thing that could occupy the mind.
On that morning, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial planes. Two smashed into the World Trade Center; the third went into the Pentagon. The fourth did not make it to Washington D.C. as planned and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.
Although I was only seven years of age, the day I will forever remember is known as the 9/11 terror attacks. I was not centrally located at the heart of the city, but its impacts greatly affected my life in Queens. I was in second grade and class was in full session. I even recall doing my daily journal at the time when the chaos was taking place.
Before I could even grasp what was going on, my teacher had left the school. Her sister worked in the World Trade Center and she rushed home immediately. Not even ten minutes after my teacher dashed home, parents were pulling their children out of school, myself included.
My mother was in distress, I sensed it in her voice even though she did not inform me of the havoc going on at the time. Everyone was rushing to get home safely. Shortly after my mother and I arrived home, my father joined us after leaving his bakery.
He was shocked by what he viewed on the way home from work and his story is so surreal that I had a difficult time illustrating the images in my mind. He described how the people who worked in the city walked home across bridges and roads covered in white dust and ash. The subways were shut down and there was silence amongst the devastated crowd. No one could even put what they had witnessed in to words because it was too overwhelming.
For a long time, the inhabitants of New York lived in apprehension and looked at the sky with fear every time a plane flew overhead. Peace has been restored for the most part back in the Big Apple, but I can never put the image out of my mind of the thick black smoke that blanketed the sky.
Stephanie Courtois is a senior at Wellington High School. She is involved in tae kwon do, French, National and Chemistry Honor Societies, and is the Editor-in-Chief of her school newspaper. She loves journalism and plans to continue working for a magazine in her career after college.