They were running late on this, their fifth day of the new school year.

Paola Conery, 14, a thin girl with blue-green eyes, rushed out of the subway stop at Chambers Street with her childhood friend, Alexandra Menglide, 14, who stands half a head taller than Conery at five-feet-eight.  They were racing to the elite Stuyvesant High School, located virtually in the backyard of the World Trade Center.  "It's the same subway stop, but we get out of a different entrance," said Conery, looking at Menglide for confirmation.  Menglide nodded.

Though in the same grade, the teenagers, who have lived on the Island all their lives, are in separate classes.  "I don't remember hearing anything at first," said Conery.  But Menglide jumped out of her seat and ran to the window when she heard what she calls "the loudest sound ever."

"Our teacher shouted at us to sit down so we did, but all of us looked out of the window.  We saw the World Trade Tower smoking.  Actually, we could not even see the towers.  We just saw lots of smoke," remembers Menglide, who was on the seventh floor of her school building.  "We heard another boom and our building shook.  The lights began to flicker and we could hear crackling sounds on the P.A. system."

When the principal announced that a plane had hit the Twin Towers, the girls thought it was a small bi-plane.  They ran to the library on the fifth floor from where they could see more of the towers.  "I saw a huge slice missing in one of the buildings and I knew it could not have been a small plane," said Conery.  "Then, we saw the bodies falling.  They were like black stick figures falling out of the sky.  After a while, I could not watch any more."  Menglide says she saw some people jump out: "It was unreal.  We could not believe what we were watching."

The students saw a light flash and thick, gray smoke engulfed their building soon after.  Their teachers ushered them out of the building.  Three thousand students began to walk on the West Side Highway.  "It looked like a marathon.  There were people all mushed up.  You could see heads everywhere.  Policemen were shouting directions," said Conery.

One student shouted, "Bomb!" Everyone screamed.  Many students were crying.  Some were hugging their parents who had biked to the school to fetch them.  Some tried to call their parents but none of the phones were working.

Menglide and Conery managed to find each other in the melee.  They walked to 16th Street where Conery's father, Kevin, an advertising executive, works, only to find that he had gone to look for them at the school.  They decided to wait.  Kevin Conery returned to his office after what seemed like hours.  He had picked up his son, Jack, from his school on 23rd Street.  The Conery trio were re-united.  They, along with Menglide, began to walk to the Tram station, only to find the Tramway closed.  They walked to the subway stop at Lexington and 63rd, and managed to get home before service was shut down.

After much hugging and crying, the girls watched television non-stop for many hours.  "It was then that it sank in.  It became reality," said Menglide, who says she is happy to see American flags flying everywhere she goes.

The teenagers' lives have changed since the collapse of the Towers.  They cannot go back to Stuyvesant until November 1.  "Our school is being used to house the work force that is clearing the rubble," said Menglide.  Their classes will be held at Brooklyn Technical School.

Conery said she has begun to appreciate life more ever since the events of that fateful morning.  "I will never take each day for granted," she said.