“Fine. Go away.” He turned up the volume on Dylan.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

The way she kept turning the argument around on him—this drove Dan nuts.

“Stop!”

“If you were just civil to me for once.”

“Stop!”

Dan was trying to end the fight, but his mother just provoked and prolonged. A pressure inside his head and chest started to pulse.

Anne threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this type of treatment!”

“Get out!” Dan screamed, and then swiped the books off his bed.

“Calm down.” Anne took a step out of the room.

“Get the fuck out!”

Pat hobbled into the hallway. “Stop it! Dan, stop screaming.”

Dan looked at his father in his light blue pajamas and saw how worn down and upset he was. And he just started crying.

“Please, just leave me alone. Please!”

“What is wrong with you?” Anne sneered.

“Leave him be.” Pat put his hand on the doorknob and moved them both back into the hallway.

“Your answer to everything . . .” And the door shut on Dan’s mother as she pivoted like a mongoose toward Pat, their bickering carrying down the hall.

Dan wiped his tears.

Dylan was bouncing through the bars on “Corrina” and a bird that sings, and enough—Dan popped the tape. He sat for a long minute trying to calm down, but he could hear nothing but the muffled, aggrieved inflections of his parents. He moved back to the desk and turned on his Commodore, staring at the blue field of the monitor as it booted. He didn’t feel like reading or writing anymore.

The rest of that morning and afternoon Dan gave his mother the silent treatment, but there was a problem: he had a date that night with Cady Bloom. Inspired by Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! and driven mad by holiday wish fulfillment, he had called her, and Cady said “sure” in a way that was a little underwhelming and hard not to read into. So now he was stuck, and before dinner he ignominiously asked his mother for a ride. He caught her in a reflux of guilt about the ruined Christmas, and she muttered something about getting out of this godforsaken house. A begrudged accord was struck; both sides had lost and left it at that.

It was a cold, clear Saturday night when Dan hopped out into the Chili’s parking lot off Montfort Road. Cady Bloom was standing out front and gave him a small clandestine wave. She was cuter than Christmas—a holly-green argyle sweater with suede elbow patches, a crisp white oxford shirt, a gray skirt, and gray tights. Dan reached her, smiled, and hadn’t thought about how he was going to greet her, and now this was painfully obvious.

“Hi. Sorry . . . well . . .”