Hold On Tight Read online

  Arno shrugged. “It was just a good time …”

  “Perhaps what you need, in your life right now, is more than a good time.” Dr. Beller stood up so that he was looking down on his patient. “Rather than fun—a very overrated pursuit, in my opinion—and rather than ‘hot chicks,’ perhaps you should be seeking a meaningful relationship.”

  Arno noticed for the first time how well-dressed Dr. Beller was, and how totally tall, and that made Arno respect him just a little bit more. “Meaningful relationship?” he repeated.

  “Arno, what I’m trying to say is, I think you need some depth.”

  “Depth?” Arno said. He was still trying to get a handle on the word when his cell went off in his pocket. “Wildenburger,” he said, flipping open his new phone. It was silver and tiny, and just as he had expected, it made him feel very cool and tech-savvy.

  “Hey, man. It’s Jonathan. Listen, have you seen Patch?”

  “No. Where are you?” Arno asked, signaling to Dr. Beller that he would just be a moment. Dr. Beller gestured to him that it was all right.

  “Mickey’s house.”

  Arno stood up and turned away from Dr. Beller, as though that might prevent him from hearing Arno’s conversation. “I’ll come over,” he said. “What’s brewing?”

  “Mickey, believe this or not, was asked to lecture at Vassar.”

  “On what? The hazards of substance abuse?”

  “Maybe you forgot your friend is a big artist now? Anyway, you haven’t heard from Patch? We need someone to drive us up there, and Patch is the only driver we know.”

  “Can I come?”

  “To Vassar? Why do you want to come to Vassar? You know you wilt like a daisy when you’re taken outside urban areas.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Arno said, glancing toward Dr. Beller. “But I’ve been thinking about getting a new girl, and that maybe it should be a … you know … meaningful relationship. That’s what college girls are into, right?” In Arno’s mind, he pictured an ivory skinned creature lounging on a settee with a book by one of those French guys, Camus or whoever. They could read it aloud to each other and hold hands and he could stare deep into her eyes. That sounded pretty meaningful.

  “I guess,” Jonathan said doubtfully. “Anyway, you want in? Then get over here and help us find Patch.”

  Arno hung up the phone, and turned back to his therapist. “Look Doc, I gotta run.”

  “That’s too bad,” Dr. Beller said evenly. “I thought we were really getting somewhere.”

  “But I’ll see you next week, right?” Arno said. He actually wanted to, too.

  “Of course. But Arno? Try and think about what we’ve discussed for next week. Depth, Arno. Think about depth.”

  Arno promised he would think about depth, and then he headed for Mickey’s house.

  the new new david grobart

  David Grobart was lounging in his bedroom in the West Village, making weekend plans with a girl he couldn’t quite remember meeting but who definitely remembered him. She even knew about the long scar that ran from his hipbone to his lower rib, a souvenir from that time in sixth grade when he’d tried to be a skateboarder. David had always been the guy in his group who was the least smooth with girls, but ever since he’d been prominently featured in his friend Mickey’s nude photo shoot, his relative lack of smoothness had become pretty much irrelevant.

  He’d been told there were whole websites dedicated to his abs.

  David was the best basketball player at Potterton, and he had long, powerful, basketball-player arms. He stretched them over his head in a big, yawny gesture and listened to this girl Mia, who knew all about his scar, tell him what she was going to wear to the party at Lisa Brenner’s that weekend.

  “So, you’re coming with me?” she asked breathlessly. He had no idea who this girl was, but he loved the sound of her voice.

  “Yeah, I don’t think I have anything to do that night,” David said. “Oh wait, can you hold on a sec? I have someone on the other line.”

  “Okay, but don’t leave me sitting here forever,” she said, in a way that was jokily chastising and kind of made him think that was exactly what he should do, just to find out what the consequences were.

  David hit the flash button. “What’s up?”

  “David? It’s Jonathan. Have you seen Patch?”

  “Um, no,” David said. It was a weird question, because if Jonathan hadn’t seen Patch, it probably meant that David hadn’t seen him, either.

  “Damn, all right,” Jonathan said disappointedly. “You don’t have basketball practice tonight, do you?”

  “Nope, season’s over.”

  “Good. Because we’re going to Vassar.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah. Mickey’s going to lecture to the Art Department, and Patch has to go because he’s the only one who can drive, and Arno wants to go meet some un-shallow girls, and I’m going to try and hang out with Ted. Obviously, you should come, too.”

  “I think I have a date,” David said. That thought, which had made him so happy a minute ago, made him feel sort of sad when he said it now.

  “You think you have a date? With who?”

  “Um, this girl Mia. She says we met her at the Hudson Hotel bar a couple of weeks ago?”

  “Oh. Huh. Do you remember who she is?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I think you should postpone the big date with the girl you can’t remember and come to Vassar with us. There will be girls you don’t remember there, too.”

  David thought about this for a moment, and was about to say that canceling the date like that didn’t really seem like a very nice way to treat a girl, when his mom, Hilary Grobart, came barging through the door. His mother, like his father, was a therapist, and she talked a lot about how she protected and valued and believed in David’s privacy. Apparently, this was in contrast to a lot of her patients. It was also more in theory than in practice.

  “David, have you seen the phone?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m talking to Jonathan on it,” he said, and then added, unnecessarily, “He’s going up to Vassar this weekend.”

  “I didn’t know Jonathan was considering Vassar,” his mother paused, twisting at her Live Strong bracelet. “Maybe you should go, as well?”

  “Can I?”

  “Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

  All the attention from mysterious girls with soft, girly voices, like Mia, was new, and David felt nervous giving that up for even a couple days, as though it might all evaporate. But he also hated being left behind by his friends. That was something he had already experienced plenty.

  “Jonathan, I gotta go. I’ll meet you at Patch’s?”

  “Great,” Jonathan said. “I’ll see you soon, man.”

  As soon as David hung up the phone, his mother took it out of his hand and began dialing. She walked out of his room, and as she headed down the hall, he could hear her saying, “Who? Mia? Could you maybe be trying to reach a different David Grobart?”

  David decided that if he were Arno, he wouldn’t feel bad about ditching this Mia girl, and that got him as far as stuffing a change of clothes, his iPod, and some English homework into his backpack. Then he pulled his oversized Potterton hoodie over his head and walked into the living room.

  “Right, right. Thanks. Bye-bye,” his mother was saying. She was sitting on the black leather couch in the living room, underneath the collection of African masks that she and David’s father had acquired while on their midlife crisis stint in the Peace Corps. She hung up the phone and looked at David. “Well, you can’t go in that.”

  “Go where? In what?”

  “To your interview. In a hoodie.”

  “Um, interview?”

  “Yes, sweetie. We’re extremely lucky because they usually don’t give interviews on the weekends, but I guess spring is a very busy time of year for prospective student visitors. Frightening, I know. But they do, occasionally, hold weekend interviews, a
nd now you’ve got one. I just called. So I really don’t think you should wear a sweatshirt. It would send the wrong signal, don’t you think?”

  “Uh, this was more of an informal, checking-out-the-school kind of thing,” David said. He sounded unconvincing even to himself.

  “David, this is a very competitive time of year. If you’re not going to make this trip a meaningful one, you should stay in the city. After all, there’s the SAT to study for, you should keep in shape for basketball, there’s volunteering, your schoolwork, and … well, just so many things.” His mom looked kind of exhausted just thinking about it. David, as usual, didn’t have the heart to fight her when she was down.

  “Okay, Mom. When’s the interview?”

  “Eleven-thirty, tomorrow morning. Here’s the information,” she said, handing him one of her business cards, which had the name and office location of his interviewer scrawled on the back. On the front side it said Hilary Grobart, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist, Intuitive. Lately his mother, who had made her name with a line of self-help books, was expanding her practice to include more “experimental” treatments. David took the card and watched as his mother stood up and walked to the closet in the hall where they kept all their winter coats. “Now, where’s your suit?”

  “Mom, that’s the suit I wore to Great Aunt Edie’s funeral. Two years ago.” David winced at the black wool suit his mother had pulled from the closet. It had been too small when she bought it for him, and he feared what it would look like on him now. “Don’t you think it’ll fit sort of funny?”

  “David, I really think you’re making a problem where there isn’t one,” his mother said. “But put it on, let’s see.”

  David tried to make a face that would make his mother understand that she was treating him like a child, but the phone rang so she didn’t notice. She answered, and then handed the phone to her son. “It’s for you,” she said.

  “Hello?” he said into the receiver.

  “David, why haven’t you left yet?” Jonathan asked.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming!” David said.

  “Well, hurry up, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, and hung up. David turned to his mother; she was giving him a stern look, so he went resignedly into the hall bathroom and put on the suit. It was worse than he could have imagined. The pants were a good five inches above his ankles, and his wrists were entirely exposed. He stepped back into the hall. “Mom,” he whined, sounding a little bit like a five-year-old, “I look like a clown.”

  “I think you look handsome,” she said. “And you have to wear a suit. Otherwise, what will they think? They’ll think you were raised by wolves!”

  The phone rang again. David picked it up. “What’s up …,” he said.

  “Why haven’t you left yet?” Jonathan asked.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming.” David shot back nervously. He hung up and looked at his mother. There was nothing about her that suggested she was going to budge. David weighed the embarrassment of going out looking like his mommy had dressed him in his junior high graduation suit versus the misery of being left behind.

  “Thanks again, Mom,” he said. “I’ll see you Monday!”

  “But David, you can’t wear your suit now!” His mother called after him, as he hurried for the door and the safety of his nice, sane friends.

  Of course, it wasn’t until he saw Jonathan standing outside the Floods’ house that David realized he’d left his duffel—and all his normal clothes—behind.

  it’s a brave girl who tries to domesticate patch

  “But the thing is, you look adorable in surf shorts. And how often are you going to be wearing surf shorts at Yale or Swarthmore or some other stuffy East Coast school?”

  Patch Flood, who was tall and lanky, had been called adorable before, but hearing it never got any easier. He twisted uncomfortably on the soft, light-gray leather seats of his parents’ yellow Mercedes, stretching his legs out so that his ankles rested against the open window frame. Then he pulled his faded Yankees hat down over his overgrown sandy hair as though that might convey to his girlfriend, Greta O’Grady, who was currently sitting on her deck in Santa Cruz, California, looking at an ocean that was not the Atlantic, how weird that word made him feel.

  He had taken to making calls from the car, because he lived with two sisters who were very into eavesdropping.

  Patch had met Greta on an educational cruise over the winter, and he was now having a bicoastal, cell-phone enabled relationship with her. It certainly wasn’t convenient, but then, he’d never met a girl remotely as cool as Greta. She was so cool that he was willing to have the millionth argument with her about whether they should go to college together on her coast or his.

  “I think you might be forgetting that college only takes up like eight months of the year,” he said. “I mean, don’t you think we should spend our collegiate years in a classroom instead of at the beach?”

  “Patch Flood, attendance king of the eastern seaboard,” Greta hooted. “You can’t tell me you’re going to stop playing hooky now. Besides, hello, redwoods? I mean, you’ve been to California. I can’t believe I have to convince you how nice it would be for us to live here. Together.”

  “Hey, I know California is gorgeous. But realistically, you’re about as much gorgeous as I can handle.” Patch rarely resorted to lines of this kind, but when he did, they were frighteningly effective. Except, perhaps, on Greta, who was a little bit shy and a little bit wild and didn’t seem remotely interested in being romanced in any of the usual ways.

  “Flattery is not going to make me want to go live in an overcrowded, bricked-in city that’s freezing four months out of the year. Four months of the academic year.”

  “Maybe you’d end up liking it. You know, learning about the seasons, watching fall turn to winter. That’s when snow falls from the sky. Then you can roll around in it. It’s very academic.”

  There was a long silence, and then Patch could hear Greta standing up and walking somewhere. He could tell from the sound that she was wearing flip-flops. Greta had a body that was strong and freckled from crew practice, but she had small, perfectly pale feet with toenails like little red jewels. Patch was thinking about them distractedly, when she cut in with a hushed “Look, Patch, do you want to go to the same school as me and live together and be crazy and fun and in love or not? I mean, it seems to me like you can’t let go at all. I mean, really, seriously, what is so great about New York? What are you so afraid of leaving behind?”

  At the abrupt change in tone, Patch pulled his legs in and jerked himself upright. That was when he saw three sets of eyes peering down on him—Mickey, Arno and Jonathan. Patch immediately fumbled his cell phone.

  “Patch,” Jonathan said, leaning in against the window frame, “you’ve been wearing that hat since 1999. Don’t you think it’s time to get a new one?”

  “Hi guys,” Patch said as he tried to locate his phone. “Can you give me a couple?”

  “A couple what?” Mickey said. “Cuz I think you’re already in one.”

  “Mickey, shut up,” Jonathan scolded.

  “A couple minutes,” Patch said. “Can you give me a couple minutes?”

  “Patch?” he heard Greta say, as he grabbed the phone from the floor. He reached for the window crank, and then he remembered that the windows were automated.

  “Yeah, I’m still here. My friends just showed up. Look, all I want to do is go to the same school as you. I just never considered going West Coast. And that’s weird for me.”

  “I know,” Greta said. “I’m sorry. I know this is a decision we really have to make together and …”

  “Um, excuse me, Patch?” Jonathan was sort of leaning in through the window now, and he had a very urgent look on his face.

  “Greta, can you hold on?” Patch asked. “What’s up, J?”

  “We have to go to Vassar. Now. Can you drive us?”

  Patch considered this for a moment, and then he said into his ph
one: “Hey apple blossom, if I check out Vassar for us this weekend, will you check out Stanford?”

  “You mean, you’ll consider going to Stanford?”

  “Yes,” Patch answered.

  “If we do go to Vassar, can we get a puppy?”

  “Two,” Patch said.

  “Okay, yes then.”

  “Great. I’ve got to go now.”

  “Yeah, me too. I miss you.”

  “I miss you too,” Patch said, noticing as he did that Jonathan was rolling his eyes.

  “Call me tonight?” Greta asked.

  “Okay.” Patch hung up and tossed the phone onto the front passenger seat. He looked at his three friends, who were all trying in a sort of half-assed way not to giggle. Patch climbed into the front seat and put the key in the ignition.

  “You all can laugh if you want to,” he said. “But I’m still the only one who can drive you weirdos to Vassar.”

  Jonathan opened the back door and scooted into the middle seat with Mickey behind him. Arno walked around and took shotgun. Patch was about to pull out when he saw a tall guy walking toward them in the middle of the street. He was wearing a suit that made him look like the stranger in a black and white movie.

  “Who’s the bible salesman?” Jonathan said from the backseat.

  “Who died?” Mickey shouted out the window.

  David came trotting up to the car and bent over to peer in. “You guys weren’t going to leave without me were you? Because I left all my clothes at my house and—”

  “Dude,” Anro interrupted. “That suit is not going to make girls think you are hot.”

  “Except in the literal sense, of course,” Jonathan said. “Why are you wearing a dark-colored, wool-blend suit on one of the warmest days of the spring? Also, is that a mod outfit? Because unless you’re trying out for a part in Austin Powers 4, I think that suit is a shade too small for you.”

  “Ha, ha,” David deadpanned. “Now, can we just swing by my house and grab my stuff?”