The Devil's Labyrinth Read Free

could.”
    His mother’s words burning in his head, Ryan ran up the stairs to his room. Damn right no one could replace his father, and especially not Tom Kelly, who seemed to be at their house all the time now, trying to be nice.
    As Ryan scooped his books off his desk and dumped them in his backpack, his eyes caught on the picture of his father that always sat right next to the desk lamp, and he paused.
    Something in his father’s gaze seemed almost to be speaking to him.
Grow up,
his father seemed to be saying.
You’re sixteen years old and you’re still sucking your milk from your bowl like a two-year-old. It’s time to be a man.
    His backpack clutched in his right hand, Ryan stood perfectly still, feeling his father’s eyes boring into him.
    Grow up. And be fair.
    Be fair. The words his father had spoken more than any others. Ryan sighed, giving in to his father’s silent command. If he was going to be totally fair, Tom Kelly wasn’t really all that bad. In fact, he’d been a lot of help to his mother over the past six months. When the car had broken down, Tom had fixed it. When the roof had leaked, Tom had known who to call and made sure his mother didn’t get cheated. And when the basement had flooded, Tom had helped move things upstairs then helped clean the place up again, and never said a word about the fact that Ryan had managed to avoid speaking to him through the whole long day.
    Still, nobody could replace his dad.
    It had been two years since his father’s deployment and less than two years since an Iraqi roadside bomb had taken out the Humvee his father had been in. When he wasn’t actually looking at his father’s image, Ryan was finding it increasingly hard to remember exactly what his father’s face looked like. But right now he
was
staring at that image, and he could see very clearly exactly what Captain William James McIntyre was expecting from his son.
    He sank down on his bed and thought about going to dinner with his mom and Tom Kelly.
    His mom kept saying that her liking Tom Kelly had nothing to do with her love for his father, but Ryan was very certain that wasn’t quite true. And despite his own determination to keep his father’s place open in this house—in this family—his mother might just try to fill that place with someone else.
    But what if it all turned out to be a horrible mistake? What if one of these days his father walked through the front door yelling, “Honey, I’m home!”
    But then, as Ryan gazed at the portrait again, he remembered what his dad said to him the day he left for Iraq. “You’re the man of the house now, Ryan, so take good care of your mother. I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone, but I know this is going to be harder on her than it is for me. So you be there for her, okay?”
    Ryan had nodded. They’d hugged. Then his father was gone.
    But his words were still there in Ryan’s mind, as fresh as the day he’d spoken them.
You be there for her.
    His eyes shifting from his father’s image to the mirror over his bureau, Ryan stared at his own sullen reflection.
    Not good enough, he told himself. Then he repeated his father’s words one more time.
Be there for her. And be fair.
    Grabbing his backpack, he ran down the stairs. His mother was still sitting at the kitchen table, cradling her coffee in both hands.
    “I’ll be home by five-thirty,” Ryan said, and kissed her on the cheek.
    The smile that came over her face told him that whatever he himself thought, he’d done exactly what his father would have wanted him to do. Kissing her one more time, just for good measure, he dashed out the front door just as the bus was pulling up to the stop at the corner.
Okay, Dad,
he thought.
I did the right thing. Now make the bus driver wait for me!
    But even as he broke into a run, he saw the bus doors close and watched helplessly as it pulled away.

    The peeling walls of the second-floor classroom of Dickinson High School’s main building felt like