The Best Thing for You by Annabel Lyon Read Free Book Online Page A

a message.”
    I explain about that. “I meant the police. Presumably it’s our right to be there. Why did they call you and not me?”
    “Apparently they did what Ty asked them to.”
    “Oh,” I say.
    On the counter is a bowl of mints. Liam gets up, takes one, sits back down, and pulls on the plastic-wrapper ears with both hands. The candy falls into his lap. With his right hand he puts the candy in his mouth. His left, holding the wrapper, trails beside the chair. He lets the wrapper fall to the floor.
    “Why didn’t he want me?” I ask.
    “Hello, your order,” the girl says, coming back with two big Styrofoam tubs. “Ten ninety-five.” She pulls two plastic-wrapped packages from under the counter, which from past experience we know to contain paper napkins, plastic spoons, and balsa chopsticks. “You want a bag?”
    Counting coins, I dismiss the bag.
    “So, is hot.” She blows on her fingers and gives Liam a smile.
    In the car we bite open the packages, snap separate the chopsticks. Rush hour and the street is lined with parked and moving cars. A sport-utility vehicle hovers, seeing us sitting, but we wave him on: we aren’t leaving yet. He fingers us. Our tubs of soup are lidded with more plastic, like coffee cup lids but bigger. We toss them on the dash. Liam dives straight in with his chopsticks and extracts a tongue-shaped piece of pink meat, while I spoon. I say, “This lawyer.”
    “I phoned him on my way to the station. He told me we should sit tight until he got there, I should tell the police we had a lawyer on the way.”
    “Did they seem surprised at that?”
    “I don’t think so. Ty and I sat in somebody’s office while we waited. He told me the assistant principal pulled him out of English class and walked him to his locker for his jacket and when they got to the office there was a cop waiting there. The cop drove him to the station and told him he could phone whoever he needed to before giving his statement. He phoned me.”
    “Thank god you were there.” I spoon-slice some noodles. “You could have been in class.”
    “I
was
in class. Ty told the departmental secretary it was an emergency and not to hang up the phone until she found me. She called Campus Security. I had to tell a hundred and fifty first years to go home.”
    “Wow,” I say. “I guess we should be proud of him. That’s pretty together.”
    He shakes his head. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell the Dean tomorrow.”
    With my chopsticks I transfer a piece of beef from my cup tohis. “Sounds like they were trying to scare him, coming to the school.” Together we watch a Camry parallel park in the space which has opened up in front of us. Eyeing us, she takes her time. The
phô
place is hopping now, takeout mostly. “Was Officer Stevens there?”
    “Yes.” Liam slurps up some noodles. “It was just like when she came to the house, all the same questions.”
    “That’s good,” I say, meaning it as a question.
    “The lawyer thinks we’re not done. I made us an appointment for the day after tomorrow.”
    “Have you paid him yet?”
    “Some.”
    “Some,” I repeat. I re-lid my soup, prop it between Liam’s knees, and start the car. “Can we go home now?”
    “Seat belt.”
    I hesitate. “You don’t think he was there, do you?”
    He shakes his head.
    At home, I knock on Ty’s door. “Minute!” he says.
    “No, now.” He opens the door, a little flushed. “Am I bothering you?”
    “Can I come out now?”
    Instead, I go in and look around. Bed rumpled but made. Window open so things are smelling good, better. On the computer, his screensaver – a multicoloured, gyrating webbing, expanding and contracting like something vaguely undersea – tells me he hasn’t been on in at least five minutes unless he’s changed the settings I fixed for him when we last upgraded, three months ago. I give the mouse a flick to see what he’s doing and get an empty page of Word.
    He’s watching me from