Hold On Tight by J. Minter

Author:J. Minter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2006-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

i find out how dark it is when you care

I was really beginning to see how the world works sometimes, and after I watched Arno use our theater benefit as a way to pick up one girl so that he could fall in love with another (if I thought about this too hard, I would be thinking cynically, so I’m just not going to do it), I went home and folded up all the clothes I didn’t wear anymore and put them in Garden of Eden bags to send down to the Salvation Army. Or up to the Salvation Army—wherever it is.

I called my mom to ask her, because I knew she’s done that before. But she was about to be seated at Da Silvano, where she was having dinner with her business manager, so she said she was going to have to call me back.

In the meantime, I went for a walk outside. It was twilight, and there were people selling fake handbags in the streets. I walked all the way down to Houston, where the traffic was stalled in both directions, and then I walked back up toward my apartment. On the way, though, I passed through NYU territory. That was when I started spotting all these flyers for different collegey activities. None of them sounded all that altruistic, but they triggered my memory.

You know how I mentioned my stepbrother, Rob? Well, when he threw this big, illegal party a bunch of weeks ago that was supposedly to celebrate Arno but was actually just a big money-making scheme, he did this crazy lame thing. He went around tearing down a bunch of flyers for this do-gooder event that was happening on the same night so that there would be no competition for his party.

Anyway, all these flyers around Washington Square Park reminded me of Lily Maynard at Barton Day and all her altruistic event-throwing. She had really, really cared about that night, whatever it was, and had been devastated about Rob’s Machiavellian poster doings. So I looked through the phonebook on my cell and eventually, when I got down to the Ms, I found that she had somehow managed to get in there. Maynard, Lily, a 212 number. Of course Lily Maynard wouldn’t have a cell phone. Cell phones were only useful to people who were concerned about their evening plans. I wasn’t even sure why I had one anymore.

But as long as I still had a cell I could call Lily Maynard and ask her for some advice. As I walked out of the park, I listened to her home phone ring once, twice, three times. I was sort of relieved—this was one call that was going to voicemail. After all, I hadn’t thought at all about how I was going to begin this conversation. I was listening to the sixth ring fade away when the phone picked up and a girl said, “Barton Day Homeless Outreach HQ.”

I paused. “Are you at school?”

“This is Barton Day Homeless Outreach.

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