Hold On Tight by J. Minter Read Free Book Online

happened to Jonathan and Ted …” He twisted his head around to make sure that they weren’t somewhere in the crowd, and was met instead with the sightof a very large, fratish-looking dude with a flashlight and a plastic badge. He was also yelling.
    â€œHey!” he shouted at them. “Let’s see those armbands!”
    â€œUm, armbands?” Patch looked at him coolly, like a person who has just been spit on and is trying not to be irritated about it.
    â€œYeah, kiddo, there’s no drinking in here if you don’t got an armband. And you can’t get an armband if you’re under twenty-one.”
    â€œWell,” Patch frowned, “I’m over twenty-one, and I don’t have an armband.”
    This seemed to confuse the guy for a few beats, but then he returned to the idea that an armband equaled ability to drink. “My job is to kick out anyone out who has a beer but doesn’t have an armband. And that’s just what I’m gonna do,” he grunted. Then he grabbed Patch by the wrist and seemed about to pull him out of the bar when a blond girl in converse high-tops and a sleeveless dress that looked like it could also have been a tube-top came skidding up next to them.
    â€œLou,” she squealed excitedly, “you caught him!”
    â€œWho?” asked Lou. He was confused again.
    â€œThe
real
Hottest Private School Boy. Can I have him, please?”
    â€œHe’s underage,” Lou said, “At least, I think he is.”
    â€œOf
course
he is. He’s the HPSB. He’s still in high school, duh!” She sighed in exasperation, and turned toward Patch. “I see that you’re trying to hide underneath that old baseball hat, but I would have recognized you in a paper bag.” The blond grabbed Patch by the hand and pulled him into the crowd on the dance floor. Arno looked up at Lou disgustedly, and realized instantly that he wasn’t going to get any sympathy there.
    As he was being dragged toward the door, “Rebel Rebel” started up, so Patch couldn’t even hear his friend calling for him. Arno felt his mood sink and rise at once. Getting kicked out—that made him an outsider, didn’t it? And all outsiders had depth, didn’t they?

i am now known as …
    â€œTed’s brother!?” squealed the pretty, neo-boho girl my brother had just introduced me to. She had a wide, genuine smile on her face, and she twisted her head left and right so I could give her the double-cheek-kiss treatment. “I can’t believe there are
two
of you.”
    â€œNaw,” Ted said, and to my embarrassment he seemed to be blushing. But then I realized that this was different blushing—not the full-on, please-shoot-me blushing of high school. It was more like his face had just gotten some flattering coloring. “I’m like a paler, very unexciting version of J.”
    This was the kind of thing I’d been angling to hear by coming to visit my brother, but hearing it now, I was filled with a queasy suspicion that it just wasn’t true anymore. I smiled weakly at the girl, trying to show her that I did have some humility. She patted the lush patch of grass next to her.
    â€œI’m Zelda,” she said as I sat down in the spotshe had indicated. There were a bunch of other people sitting around on the field, too, smoking cigarettes and looking pretty relaxed for college students at the end of a semester. They were all dressed like Zelda, in loose-fitting peasant gear that looked kind of comfy and expensive at once.
    We had been slowly making our way from Lathrop to this campus bar, where everyone supposedly hangs out, but we’d been stopped on the way by a lot of people who wanted to talk to Ted, a surprising number of them hoping he could tell them what was happening that weekend.
    So we were running a little late.
    Ted sank down on the lawn, and I sat down, too—hesitantly, because grass