The Best Thing for You Read Online Free

you’re acting tricky, son. Did you watch?”
    “Jesus Christ of course he didn’t watch,” I say.
    “I once watched a group of white kids beat a black kid,” Liam says. “You know, beat him up. In high school. When I say watched, I was a distance away. I was aware of it going on, okay? Most of the school was aware of it going on, I would include some teachers. So I’m asking, did you watch?”
    “No.”
    “Why didn’t you say anything when you heard about it on the news?”
    He shrugs.
    I ask, “Who was the other boy?”
    “What?” Ty says.
    “You said Jason told you he did it with another boy. Who was that?”
    “I don’t know,” Ty says. “Somebody he met. Some kid. He might have been someone Jason knew but I didn’t know. Probably that’s who it was.”
    “Why didn’t you go out with Jason?” Liam asks again.
    Ty yawns. This time he says: “I wanted to use his computer.”
    I squint at him.
    “I pretended I was too tired so I could play on his computer while he was out. Like, how far away were you, Dad?”
    “What?”
    “From the black kid.”
    Liam looks out the window for a long time without answering. I don’t realize he’s actually looking at landmarks, gauging distances, until he says, “Basketball court.”
    “What were you doing on the computer?” I ask.
    “What?” Ty says.
    “Tyler.”
    He looks at his lap. He digs a finger under his sock to scratch an ankle and I see the shoes, the Nikes, and the Indiglo watch on his left wrist. It’s exactly eight o’clock and some split seconds. “I was looking at this web site,” he says next, softly.

    “What Mr. Parmenter told me,” Liam says later, “is that our son was the other boy.”
    It’s 10:10. We’re sitting in the kitchen, drinking the Cabernet. Ty is up in his room. We’ve got a call in to our shy lawyer friend to ring us when she gets in, no matter when. “I shouldn’t really be drinking this, in case,” I say, pouring us more wine.
    “Do you believe him?”
    I raise my glass, hesitate. “Have to.”
    He touches his glass to mine and I wonder what we’ve just decided, just done. “You?”
    “I believe the part about the dirty web site. Would he have told us that if he didn’t have to?”
    I take a deep breath, like I’m about to say something, and then I exhale.
    Liam taps his mouth with his fingers, thinking. Minutes pass.
    “Healthy curiosity,” I say finally, which is the succinct kernel of everything I want to say. I’m drinking faster than Liam. “At his age of fourteen.” The phone rings. “Finally.”
    “Shut up,” Liam says, and answers it. It’s our very good shy lawyer friend, Isobel. “Yeah, not so,” he says. “Our son might be looking at an assault charge.”
    What an amazing sentence. I shake my head. Assault charge, that’s the nut of it, right there. I’m blasted and I know it, but still I’m acting like I’m blasted. “Amazing,” I say.
    “Kate, quiet.” Liam looks at me while he listens to Isobel. Then he looks away. “Well, you know. You can pretty much guess.”
    “Hi, Isobel,” I say loudly.
    “She says hi,” Liam says to me, relaying. “She says she knows a great criminal lawyer.”
    “Great!” I say.
    I go upstairs to Ty’s room. “It’s me,” I say from outside, and then I go in. It’s dark except for the liquid crystal light of the computer screen on his face. He’s playing a green game. He plays a lot of games because we don’t let him have the Internet in his room. I lean in the door frame like he’s taken my crutches.
    “Mom.” He doesn’t look up, joylessly savaging the joystick.
    “You’re gonna be a pilot,” I say, and then he looks at me. I lean down to pull the plug out of the wall and the room goes dark. The computer takes a few last seconds to die, strangely lifelike with its falling whine.
    “Ah, Mom?” he says. “You could wreck it that way. You could have just wrecked it right there.”
    “You shouldn’t be playing games