Pass It On (25 page)

“I'm going to stop seeing him too,” Allie said.

“Will you also stop seeing Mickey's dad?” Arno asked, quickly. But Allie only stared at the river of antique rug that covered the great length of the living room floor.

“I don't know about her, but you can be assured that
I
will,” Alec said, “but we will continue to represent and sell his work, so maybe that's not even true.” And then Alec sat down, suddenly, in a chair across from his wife and son.

“This is hard,” Alec said. “Really hard. This will take some time.”

And after a few minutes of silence, the three Wildenburgers got up and went into the dining room to have Thanksgiving dinner with their fifteen guests, who had been sitting there the entire time waiting for them and whispering about all they knew that could be the matter. Alec took his place at one end of the long table and Allie sat down at the other end, and the Thanksgiving dinner began with the guests chattering at each other in German and Swiss and Italian about what would happen to the great Wildenburger art dynasty now that the troubles on the domestic front could no longer be hidden.

Arno, meanwhile, ate a bit of turkey and then got up from the table and went to make some phone calls. Everyone had agreed to meet at Man Ray at ten if not before, since everyone had also agreed that the real home was wherever the other four guys were, and certainly not among all the squabbling adults.

At the last minute, the Flood family had decided to have Thanksgiving in New York rather than in Greenwich. Nobody could find February, and that was so unusual that they all wanted to be near home in case she returned from wherever she was. All the Floods were equipped with cell phones and pagers, since it was one thing for Patch to disappear, but February? That meant trouble.

Frederick and Fiona Flood had taken over the kitchen, along with a housekeeper and a cook, and they'd begun to make dinner. All this activity had prompted Patch to go horseback riding in Central Park with Flan.

Patch and Flan had had a great time, cantering down the paths and chasing pigeons and the one bald eagle that was known to roost near the Alice in Wonderland sculpture. And when they were done, they'd driven around in the yellow Mercedes for a while, not even
talking, just listening to Flan's new Fiona Apple CD on the stereo and enjoying a New York that was nearly emptied of people now that the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade had ended and everyone was back home getting ready to tuck into some turkey.

Eventually, Patch pulled up in front of the Floods' house and idled the car.

“That was fun,” Patch said. “Flan, you're a cool girl. So long as you don't grow up too fast.”

“That's funny, I feel the opposite about you,” Flan said, as she hopped out of the car. “You're a cool guy, so long as you remember to grow up a little. Now listen, remember, all you're supposed to do is drive to the garage and leave the car there, and then come home for Thanksgiving dinner.”

“I know. We just talked about this five minutes ago.”

But Flan didn't move. She looked searchingly at her big brother. On Perry Street, leaves swirled down around them. It was just beginning to get dark.

“Promise me you'll come home.”

There was quiet between them. Patch smiled his golden smile at his beautiful little sister.

“Go in and tell mom and dad not to wait—get started without me.”

Flan set her jaw then, and turned quickly from her big brother. It was as if somehow she understood him,
that his destiny was not necessarily to always be at dinner, to say the least. But before she went in the house, Patch called out the window to her.

“Yeah?” Flan cocked her head.

“It's okay with me if you go out with Jonathan. I mean, I think you should.”

And Flan smiled, because it was always weird when her brother knew more than anyone thought and could see things other people couldn't.

Patch waved at her, and drove down the street. When he got to Seventh Avenue, he turned right. The garage was down here somewhere. Of course he knew where. He'd been driving there with his parents since he was like, one. But suddenly, he passed it. He knew he had, but the leaves were so nice on the trees as he turned right and went back into the West Village, and then left onto the West Side Highway, in order, he thought, to simply catch one last glimpse of the failing light.

He turned off the music and just listened to the quiet city. The sun began to set to his left, over New Jersey, beyond the water. And it felt so right to just … keep going north, toward upstate, and then maybe west, out of town. He wasn't sure yet. He'd have to see. Just keep going.

I sat in the middle of a booth in the back of Man Ray with David, and Mickey, and Arno. It was just before midnight and Thanksgiving was definitely over. We were all drinking Stellas and generally being relieved that we'd made it through dinner with our families. And then I tapped my glass with my knife, which was something annoying that only our parents ever did, and said I had an announcement to make.

“I talked to my Dad and you are all invited on the honeymoon. And Patch, too, if we can find him before then.”

Everyone cheered and I kept talking. “Because I know this sounds cheesy, but the last week and a half has made me realize that I really need you guys and I think we all need each other.”

Arno started laughing first, but pretty soon they all were.

“Dude, that is so cheesy, but yeah, you're
right.” David threw his arm around my neck and mussed my hair. I spilled a little beer on my new olive G-Star cargo pants that I was trying to break in for the trip, but I didn't care too much since Billy had broken me of being quite so uptight about my clothes.

“Hell,” Mickey said. “Better to be a cheeseball than to say, get caught in an Upper West Side bathroom with your pants down and a bronze penis-boy standing over you!”

I touched the bruise on the side of my forehead.

“Oh, I'm sorry—that happened to you, didn't it?” Mickey snorted.

“Yeah.”

My friends were laughing, hard. David had tears running down his cheeks and Mickey was banging his head on the table. Arno was laughing too, but not as hard.

“Everything go okay with your family?” I asked.

“No,” Arno said. “Not at all. But we're going to figure it out. One thing's for sure, I can't wait for us to be seniors and then head off to college, because this living at home is really hard.”

“Well, it's not like we live at home in any
normal kind of way,” I said.

“I know. That's what's hard.”

“My dad says that's a problem.” David caught his breath from the giggles and sipped at his glass of Stella.

“Your dad …” I trailed off.

“I know, I know. I definitely won't be sharing much with him anymore—especially not about you guys, or me and Amanda.”

“You two got back together?” Mickey asked.

David nodded a guilty yes.

“She's getting comfortable with how cool I am,” David said. And everyone just stared in shock, and tried not to laugh. Because of course the only person who thought David was
that
cool was Amanda.

“What'd Philippa say, anyway?” David asked Mickey, suddenly.

“Just that she acknowledged that we're totally in love but we can't ever really go out unless we end up at Brown together. But I took her on a motorcycle ride she won't forget, and then we shot the bike off a pier into the East River, and we made out for a while, even though yeah, we're over.”

So that relationship wasn't going away, either.
Then everybody turned to Arno.

“Don't worry about it. I'm definitely done with Liesel.” Arno shook his thick black hair back and forth. “Definitely.”

“Then what's she doing here?” I asked. And all of us looked, and sure enough, Liesel and Ruth and some girls I didn't know were headed right toward us. One of the girls came right up to our table. It was Selina Trieff.

“Have you seen Patch?” she asked. Of course Ruth wouldn't meet my eyes because she'd broken up with me only the night before.

“Not since the weekend,” Mickey said. “You should call Flan and ask her.”

“Yeah,” Selina said. “That's a good idea.”

I'd looked away when she mentioned Flan. And all of a sudden I realized I didn't want to see Ruth at all. I wanted Flan.

“Wait, I'll call Flan,” I said. “I've been meaning to do that anyway.”

I shifted my phone out of my pants pocket and dialed Flan's number. The phone started to ring.

Then they all joined us, and suddenly our booth was very crowded and loud. And Selina was talking to Arno, and suddenly she didn't seem as worried about where Patch was.

“Excuse me for a second,” I said. And Ruth didn't seem to want to look at me, which was okay, because I didn't really want to look at her, either. It had been a fun crush, but I realized that the whole time with Ruth, I never really stopped comparing her to Flan. And even I got what that meant.

“Hello?” Flan said.

“What are you doing?”

“Um, nothing. Eating leftover turkey and watching TV.”

“Well, can I come over and hang out?”

“Sure,” Flan said. “Actually, I've been wondering when you were going to call.”

First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square
London
WC1B 3DP

This electronic edition published in July 2012

Copyright © 2005 by J. Minter and 17th Street Productions, an Alloy company
The moral right of the author has been asserted

Produced by Alloy Entertainment
151 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher

A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1619-6304-99 (e-book)