Hold Tight by Harlan Coben Read Free Book Online Page B

boy was already somewhat broken. Better someone broken gets tossed away than someone whole. And the worst part of that, for Betsy at least, was that it actually made some sense, this awful rationale. You hear about a child who was already starving, dying in some African jungle, and it isn’t nearly as tragic as the pretty little girl who lives down the street getting cancer.
    It all seems relative and that’s pretty damn horrible.
    She typed in the MySpace address-hillmemorial. Spencer’s classmates had created this page for him a few days after his death. There were pictures and collages and comments. In the spot where one usually placed the default picture, there was a graphic of a flickering candle.
    The song “Broken Radio” by Jesse Malin with some help from Bruce Springsteen, one of Spencer’s favorites, played. The quote next to the candle was from that song: “The angels love you more than you know.”
    Betsy listened to it for a while.
    In the days after Spencer’s death, this was where Betsy spent most nights-going through this Internet site. She read the comments from kids she never knew. She looked at the many pictures of her son throughout the years. But after a while, it turned sour. The pretty high school girls who’d set it up, who also bathed in the now-deceased Spencer, had barely given him the time of day in life. Too little too late. All claimed to miss him, but so few seemed to have known him.
    The comments read less like epitaphs than some arbitrary scribbling in a dead boy’s yearbook:
    “I’ll always remember gym class with Mr. Myers…”
    That had been seventh grade. Three years ago.
    “Those touch football games, when Mr. V would want to quarterback…”
    Fifth grade.
    “We all chilled at that Green Day concert…”
    Eighth grade.
    So little recent. So little truly heartfelt. The mourning seemed more for show than anything else-public displays of grief for those who really didn’t mourn all that much, her son’s death a speed bump on the way to college and a good job, a tragedy, sure, but closer to a résumé-enhancing life requisite like joining Key Club or running for student council treasurer.
    There was so little from his real friends-Clark and Adam and Olivia. But maybe that was how it was. Those who really grieve don’t do it in public-it truly hurts, so you keep it to yourself.
    She hadn’t checked the site in three weeks. There had been little activity. That was how it was, of course, especially with the young. They were on to other things. She watched the slide show. It took all of the photographs and kind of made them look like they were being tossed on a big pile. The images would rotate into view, stop, and then the next one would come circling down on top of it.
    Betsy watched and felt the tears come.
    There were many old photographs from Hillside Elementary School. There was Mrs. Roberts’s first-grade class. And Mrs. Rohr- back’s third grade. Mr. Hunt for fourth grade. There was a picture of his intramural homeroom basketball team-Spencer had been so excited by that victory. He’d hurt his wrist the game before-nothing serious, just a little sprain-and Betsy had wrapped it for him. She remembered buying the ACE bandage. In the photograph, Spencer was holding up that hand in victory.
    Spencer hadn’t been much of an athlete but in that game, he had hit the winning basket with six seconds left. Seventh grade. She wondered if she’d ever seen him happier.
    A local policeman had found Spencer’s body on the roof of the high school.
    On the computer monitor the pictures continued to swirl by. Betsy’s eyes grew wet. Her vision blurred.
    The school roof. Her beautiful son. Scattered amongst the debris and broken bottles.
    By then everyone had gotten Spencer’s good-bye text. Text. That was how their son told them what he was about to do. The first text had gone to Ron, who’d been in Philadelphia on a sales call. Betsy’s cell phone had received the second, but