Hold Tight

He thought of Cassandra. His heart felt heavy, but it gave him strength too.

“Nash?” Pietra said.

He gave her a small smile and got back into the van. Pietra put the van in drive and they were gone.

MIKE stood by Adam’s door, braced himself, opened it.

Adam, dressed in black goth, swung around quickly. “Ever hear of knocking?”

“This is my house.”

“And this is my room.”

“Really? You paid for it?”

He hated the words as soon as they came out. Classic parental justification. Kids scoff and tune it out. He would have when he was young. Why do we do that? Why—when we swear we won’t repeat the wrongs of the previous generation—do we always do exactly that?

Adam had already clicked on a button that blackened his screen. He didn’t want Dad knowing where he’d been surfing. If he only knew . . .

“I got good news,” Mike said.

Adam turned to him. He folded his arms across his chest and tried to look surly, but it wasn’t happening. The kid was big—bigger than his father already—and Mike knew that he could be tough. He’d been fearless in goal. He didn’t wait for his defensemen to protect him. If someone had gone into his crease, Adam had taken them out.

“What?” Adam said.

“Mo got us box seats to the Rangers against the Flyers.”

His expression didn’t change. “For when?”

“Tomorrow night. Mom’s going to Boston to take a deposition. Mo’s going to pick us up at six.”

“Take Jill.”

“She’s having a sleepover at Yasmin’s.”

“You’re letting her overnight at XY’s?”

“Don’t call her that. It’s mean.”

Adam shrugged. “Whatever.”

Whatever—always a great teenage comeback.

“So come home after school and I’ll pick you up.”

“I can’t go.”

Mike took in the room. It looked somehow different from when he’d sneaked in with the tattooed Brett, he of the dirty fingernails. That thought got to him again. Brett’s dirty fingernails had been on the keyboard. It was wrong. Spying was wrong. But then again, if they hadn’t, Adam would be heading to a party with drinking and maybe drugs. So spying had been a good thing. Then again Mike had gone to a party or two like that when he was underage. He had survived. Was he any worse for wear?

“What do you mean you can’t go?”

“I’m going to Olivia’s.”

“Your mother told me. You go to Olivia’s all the time. This is Rangers-Flyers.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Mo bought the tickets already.”

“Tell him to take someone else.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Yeah, no. I’m your father. You’re going to the game.”

“But—”

“No buts.”

Mike turned and left the room before Adam could say another word.

Wow, Mike thought. Did I really say No buts?

6

THE house was dead.

That was how Betsy Hill would describe it. Dead. It wasn’t merely quiet or still. The house was hollow, gone, deceased—its heart had stopped beating, the blood had stopped flowing, the innards had begun to decay.

Dead. Dead as a doornail, whatever the hell that meant.

Dead as her son, Spencer.

Betsy wanted to move out of this dead house, anywhere really. She did not want to stay in this rotting corpse. Ron, her husband, thought it was too soon. He was probably right. But Betsy hated it here now. She floated through the house as if she, not Spencer, were the ghost.

The twins were downstairs watching a DVD. She stopped and looked out the window. The lights were on at all the neighboring houses. Their houses were still alive. They had troubles too. A daughter on drugs, a wife with a wandering eye and hands to match, a husband who’d been out of work too long, a son with autism—every house had its share of tragedy. Every house and every family had its secrets.

But their houses were still alive. They still breathed.

The Hill house was dead.

She looked down the block and thought that every one of them, every neighbor, had come to Spencer’s funeral. They’d been quietly supportive, offering shoulders and comfort, trying to hide the accusation in their eyes. But Betsy saw it. Always. They didn’t want to voice it, but they so very much wanted to blame her and Ron—because that way something like this could never happen to them.

They were all gone now, her neighbors and friends. Life never really changes, if you’re not the family. For friends, even close ones, it is like watching a sad movie—it genuinely moves you and you hurt and then it reaches a point where you don’t want to feel that sadness anymore and so you let the movie end and you go home.

Only the family is forced to endure.

Betsy moved back into the kitchen. She made the twins dinner—hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. The twins had just turned seven. Ron liked to barbecue the hot dogs, rain or shine, winter or summer, but the twins would complain when the hot dog got even a little “black.” She microwaved them. The twins were happier.

“Dinner,” she called out.

The twins ignored her. They always did. So had Spencer. The first call had become just that—a first call. They’d grown accustomed to ignoring it. Was that part of the problem? Had she been too weak a mother? Had she been too lenient? Ron would get on her about that, how she let too much slide. Had that been it? If she’d been tougher on Spencer . . .

Lots of ifs.

The so-called experts say that teenage suicide is not the fault of the parents. It is a disease, like cancer or something. But even they, the experts, looked at her with something approaching suspicion. Why had he not been seeing a therapist steadily? Why had she, his mom, ignored the changes in Spencer, written them off as just typical teenage mood swings?

He’d grow out of it, she’d thought. That’s what teenagers do.

She moved into the den. The lights were out, the TV illuminating the twins. They looked nothing alike. In vitro had gotten her pregnant with them. Spencer had been an only child for nine years. Was that part of the reason too? She had thought that having a sibling would be good for him, but really, doesn’t any child just want his parents’ unending and undivided attention?

The TV flickered off their faces. Children look so brain-dead when they’re watching TV. Their jaws slackened, their eyes too wide—it was pretty horrible.