Hothouse (18 page)

Authors: Chris Lynch

“God, put that
awful
thing away,” she says, squeezing her eyes tight and holding out the stop hand as if the tattoo is going to come after her.

She hates tattoos. She hates the notion of my body compromised by any additions to what she gave me off the assembly line. But I know my ma, and she does not hate my tattoo.

“A party?” I ask in some disbelief.

“Yup,” Adrian says confidently. “I just had a spontaneous great notion, and my parents have their flaws but they do know when they are powerless in the face of a spontaneous great notion.”

I sigh. Sometimes his spontaneous great notions can really wear me down.

“What's the notion?”

“Bonfire on the beach. Right? Right? I figure, as long as you have a resource, a celebrity or something in your circle, you need to take advantage while you can before they get all famous and don't want to know you.”

“You are drinking already, aren't you?”

“Yes. It's raining. Shush. So I was reading our little weekly local rag, and the story about DJ's wig-out was there, with a nice photoâ”

“Idiots with camera phones â¦”

“God love 'em, where would society be without them? And I was thinking, DJ's performance art is just the kind of centerpiece that makes a party special. So, as his manager, I figure you bring him over, he MCs with his firebug thing, everybody goes wow, and we'll sell the embers on eBay for a cool million. We knew him when, right?”

I am shaking my head at the phone. This works for the room I am in, making everybody smile, and works for the guy on the line because he knows just what I'm doing.

“Don't shake your head,” he says, “it's already in motion.”

“To be honest, Adrian, who's going to come?”

“I invited everybody, just like usual.”

Like usual. What's that?

“Again,” I say, “to be honestâ”

“Listen, my friend,” Adrian says in a voice two octaves more serious, “how many people have you ever met who were invited to one of my beach parties and did not come?”

That, is an extraordinarily good point. But it's all new now.

“I don't know, Adrian,” I say. “I am afraid nobody will come. Then, I'm afraid of maybe who will.”

“Hey,” DJ says to me, “ask him if there is going to be unlimited free beer like last time.”

“Excuse me?” DJ's mother fairly shrieks. She needs the extra volume to be convincing, because her face betrays how much she would love this party to happen.

I relay both ways. “Adrian says the talent is always taken care of,” I tell DJ.

DJ claps once and rubs his hands together like let's-get-to-work. “Right,” he says, “as long as we're going to be pariahs anyway, we might as well be pariahs at the beach.”

I pass along the good news, and hear Adrian get right up into the next gear. Just before hanging up I tell him quietly, “You're a good man.”

“Do the words
no, shit,
and
Sherlock
mean anything to you, Russ?”

Nicest swearing to come out of that phone in a while.

It is raining as we make the walk to the beach.

“Of course it's raining,” DJ says. “Anything else wouldn't be right.”

We have Windbreakers onâyes, FD Windbreakers, we didn't even think about it, the only kind we have ever knownâand they just about hold off the rain. The sea is just a little bit stormy, kind of churny. And like DJ said, appropriate.

“What are you expecting?” he asks as we bump along, heads down against the weather.

“My expectations are â¦ modest,” I say.

“A lot of beer for us.”

“True. Upside.”

We walk a bit more before he says, “I think you should do something about that tattoo.”

The words instantly sting. We haven't really talked about it. I didn't expect it to stay that way.

“I have to keep it, DJ. I have to.”

“I wasn't suggesting you wipe it off.”

“Really?” This is good.

“No, just an alteration. I think, if you just take off the bottom bit, the
Courageous
, then it totally works for me.”

First, I am jolted. Then I look over at him. He is all but bursting to laugh at his gag.

It is the world's most welcome, joyous vision right now.

“Put a lot of effort into that, did you?” I ask.

“No,” he says, like he needs to. “But if you think about it â¦
Outrageous
. They were that, man.”

A crack in DJ's shield. And the sunlight comes pouring in.

“They were that,” I say, and we both get the notion to put an arm around the other's shoulder at the same time. “But
Courageous
stays.”

We are walking up the beach this way as we close in on the house. There, arranged sitting along the wet seawall are the full array of party guests awaiting us. Adrian, Cameron, Jane, Lexa, Philby, Burgess, and a few people I don't even know. The people you would expect, if you had any expectations. I could scream with happiness at the dull wonderful reliability of them.

The music is louder than the last party, booming out over the beach.

Melanie is right there at the top of the stairs. And even a couple guys from Young Firefighters.

“Not bad,” DJ says, gesturing for me to go first up the crunchy old stairs.

“It's a start,” I say.

“Quality, not quantity.”

Melanie gives me a kiss on the cheek, then hugs DJ. Cameron comes up, slaps my back and says, “Montgomerie says he'll be a little late. There was another party without an asshole.”

That's the stuff.

“Are ya winnin'?”

My dad is not great at basketball, but he is effective. He plays rough-and-tumble, and every trip to the hoop by either one of us is a threat to my health.

We are at the playground just at the end of our street, the place that always inspires him to taunt and rile me up something fierce. I have just boldly driven the lane against him. He slid his bulky self over there, in my way, planted, and blocked me soundly. It was not exactly like hitting a wall, more like, if you've ever done it, running into a telephone pole that you never saw coming.

He is standing over me as I lie flat on my back on the buckled, cracked asphalt. I can see out of the corner of my eye as the ball rolls farther and farther down the street.

“Can ya take it?” he says, smiling, provoking me.

The sun is behind him, peeking over his shoulder so I have to fight that, too. I squint to catch his expression.

“Course I can take it,” I say, “I'm a firefighter.”

“Ha,” he says, satisfied. He sticks out his hand for me.

“Are ya winnin', son?”

I take his hand.

“I'm winnin', Dad. Hurtin', but winnin'.”

“Ah,” he says, yanking me to my feet, off my feet, “that'd be about right, then.”

About the Author

CHRIS LYNCH
is a National Book Award finalist and the author of many highly acclaimed books for young adults, including
THE BIG GAME OF EVERYTHING, WHO THE MAN
, and the Michael L. Printz Honor Book
FREEWILL; ICEMAN, SHADOW BOXER, GOLD DUST
, and
SLOT MACHINE
, all ALA Best Books for Young Adults; and
EXTREME ELVIN
. He also mentors aspiring writers and teaches in the creative writing program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You can visit him online at www.chrislynchbooks.com.

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UST

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AN

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E
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EAD
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AME OF
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Credits

Cover art Â© 2010 Sean Freeman
Cover design by Ray Shappell

Copyright

HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Hothouse

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www.harperteen.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lynch, Chris.

Hothouse / Chris Lynch. â 1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: Teens DJ and Russell, life-long friends and neighbors, had drifted apart but when their firefighter fathers are both killed, they try to help one another come to terms with the tragedy and its aftermath.

ISBN 978-0-06-167379-5

[1. Fathers and sonsâFiction. 2. DeathâFiction. 3. FirefightersâFiction. 4. FriendshipâFiction. 5. HeroesâFiction.] I. Title.