Harlan Coben - Hold Tight

They both stood there. Mike broke the silence.

“So,” Mike said, “what do you have planned for the night?”

“Might take them to the movies,” Guy said. “Ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery. I, uh, hope you don’t mind. I have a girlfriend coming out tonight. She’ll go with us.”

“No problem,” Mike said, thinking: Even better.

Guy glanced behind him. When he saw both girls were out of sight, he turned back to Mike. “You got a second?” he asked.

“Sure, what’s up?”

Guy stepped outside onto the stoop. He let the door close behind him. He looked into the street and put his hands deep in his pockets. Mike watched him in profile.

“Everything all right?” Mike asked.

“Jill has been great,” Guy said.

Mike was not sure how to react to that so he stayed silent.

“I’m not sure what to do here. I mean, as a parent, you do all you can, right? You try your best to raise them, feed them, educate them. Yasmin already had to deal with a divorce at a very young age. But she adjusted to that. She was happy and outgoing and popular. And then, well, something like this happens.”

“You mean with Mr. Lewiston?”

Guy nodded. He bit down and his jaw began to quake. “You’ve seen the changes in Yasmin, haven’t you?”

Mike opted for the truth. “She seems more withdrawn.”

“Do you know what Lewiston said to her?”

“Not really, no.”

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, opened them again. “I guess Yasmin was acting up in class, not paying attention, whatever, I don’t know. When I confronted Lewiston, he said he gave her two warnings. The thing is, Yasmin has a little facial hair. Not much, but you know, a bit of a mustache. Not something a father would notice, and her mother, well, she’s not around, so I never thought about electrolysis or whatever. So anyway he’s explaining chromosomes and she’s whispering in the back of the room and Lewiston finally snaps. He says, ‘Some women display male traits like facial hair-Yasmin, are you listening?’ Something like that.”

Mike said, “Awful.”

“Inexcusable, right? He doesn’t apologize right away because, he says, he didn’t want to draw more attention to what he said. Meanwhile every kid in the class starts cracking up. Yasmin is beyond mor- tified. They start calling her the Bearded Lady and XY-for the male chromosome. He apologizes the next day, implores the kids to stop, I go in, shout at the principal, but now it’s like unringing a bell, you know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“Kids.”

“Yeah.”

“Jill has stuck by Yasmin-the only one. Amazing for an eleven-year-old to do that. I know she’s probably taking some ribbing for that.”

“She can handle it,” Mike said.

“She’s a good kid.”

“So is Yasmin.”

“You should be proud. That’s all I’m saying.

“Thanks,” Mike said. “It’ll pass, Guy. Give it some time.”

Guy looked off. “When I was in third grade, there was this boy named Eric Hellinger. Eric always had a huge smile on his face. He dressed like such a dork, but he seemed oblivious, you know? Just always smiling. One day he vomited in the middle of class. It was nasty. The smell was so bad we had to leave the classroom. Anyway, the kids start picking on him after that. Called him Smellinger. It never ended. Eric’s life changed. The smile fled, and to tell you the truth, even when I saw him alone in the halls in high school years later, it was like the smile never came back.”

Mike said nothing, but he knew a story like this. Every childhood has one, their own Eric Hellinger or Yasmin Novak.

“It’s not getting better, Mike. So I’m putting the house on the market. I don’t want to move. But I don’t know what else to do.”

“If there is any way Tia or I can help…” Mike began.

“I appreciate that. And I appreciate you letting Jill sleep over tonight. It means the world to Yasmin. And to me. So thank you.”

“No problem.”

“Jill said you’re taking Adam to a hockey game tonight.”

“That’s the plan.”

“Then I won’t keep you any longer. Thanks for listening.”

“You’re welcome. You have my cell number?”

Guy nodded. Mike patted the man’s shoulder and headed back to the car.

That was how life was-a teacher loses his cool for ten seconds and it changes everything for one little girl. Nuts when you think about it. It also made Mike wonder about Adam.

Had something similar happened to his son? Had one incident, maybe something small even, changed Adam’s path?

Mike thought about those time-travel movies, the ones where you go back and change one thing and then everything else changes, a ripple effect. If Guy could go back in time and keep Yasmin out of school for that day, would everything be as it was? Would Yasmin be happier-or by forcing her to move and maybe learning a lesson about how cruel people can be, will she end up ultimately better off?

Who the heck knew?

The house was still empty when Mike got home. No sign of Adam. No message from him either.

Still thinking about Yasmin, Mike headed into the kitchen. The note he left still sat on the kitchen table, untouched. There were dozens of photographs on the refrigerator, all neatly aligned in magnet sleeve-frames. Mike found one of Adam and himself from last year when they went to Six Flags Great Adventure. Mike was normally ter- rified of big rides, but his son had somehow persuaded him to go on something aptly called The Chiller. Mike loved it.

When they got off, father and son posed for a dumb picture with a guy dressed like Batman. They both had their hair messed from the ride, arms around Batman’s shoulders, goofy grins on their faces.

That had been just last summer.

Mike remembered now sitting in the coaster, waiting for that ride to start, heart pumping. He turned to Adam, who gave him a crooked smile and said, “Hold tight,” and then, right then, he flashed back more than a decade, when Adam was four and they were at this same park and there was a crush of people entering the stuntman show, a total crush, and Mike held his son’s hand and told him to “hold tight,” and he could feel the little hand dig into his but the crush got bigger and the little hand slipped from his and Mike felt that horrible panic, as if a wave hit them at the beach and it was washing his baby out with the tide. The separation lasted only a few seconds, ten at the most, but Mike would never forget the spike in his blood and the terror of those brief few moments.

Mike stared for a solid minute. Then he picked up his phone and called Adam’s cell phone again.

“Please call home, son. I’m worried about you. I’m on your side, always, no matter what. I love you. So call me, okay?”

He hung up and waited.

ADAM listened to the last message from his father and almost started to cry.

He thought about calling him back. He thought about dialing his dad’s number and telling him to come get him and then they could go to that Rangers game with Uncle Mo and maybe Adam would tell them everything. He held his cell phone. His father’s number was speed-dial one. His finger hovered by the digit. All he had to do was press down.

From behind him a voice said, “Adam?”

He moved his finger away.

“Let’s go.”

BETSY Hill watched her husband, Ron, pull his Audi into the garage. He was still such a handsome man. His salt-and-pepper hair had gone pretty much to salt, but his blue eyes, so like his dead son’s, still shone and his face remained smooth. Unlike most of his colleagues he’d kept the gut off, worked out just enough, watched what he ate.

The picture she’d printed off the MySpace page sat on the table in front of her. For the past hour she had sat here wondering what to do. The twins were with her sister. She didn’t want them home for this.