Rowan walks past us into the kitchen, sets the beers on the counter, exhales like a man who has been the only adult on a road trip for thirteen straight hours, and starts re-organizing the kitchen island in a way it does not need.
The laminator hums. Blue feeds the poster through. It comes out the other side glossy and rigid. It’s exactly as bad as we want it to be. I look at the kitchen clock. Six-forty.
“Where do we hang it?”
“Over the keg.”
We walk it together to the dining room. The keg is in the corner where it always is for a Hawthorne House party, in a galvanized tub Stanley bought at Lowe’s two years ago and named Geraldine for reasons he has not explained. Blue has already pre-taped the top of the laminator. He hands me the right side. We line it up over the wall above the keg. I press it on.
We step back. It is, against the white wall, beautifully terrible.
“Percy.”
“I’m coming.” He stops in the dining room doorway and looks at the poster. He sips whatever he has put in his cup so far and nods once. “It is going to age well.”
The front door slams.
We freeze, all three of us in the dining room, like third graders.
Stanley’s voice comes down the hall.
“Reeve. Laurens. Golding. Deveroux. I’ve had a day. I’m going to shower, and I’m going to be funny again in approximately—” He walks into the dining room and stops. He stares at the wall above the keg.
“What the hell is that?”
Blue, who has somehow already arranged himself on the couch in the next room with a beer he didn’t have thirty seconds ago, “What is what?”
He points. “That sign over the keg.”
I glance up at it like I’m noticing it for the first time. “Oh. The house rules.”
“That is not how I—”
“It’s a direct quote, Stan,” Blue calls.
“It’s—”
Percy, walking past with his cup, voice mild, “Ratified by majority vote.”
“It’s fucking beautiful. Good job, boys. Let everyone at the party know what’s up.” He goes up the stairs three at a time. The bathroom door slams.
Blue, still on the couch, sips his beer. “Do you think he had a hard day because of a girl?”
Rowan chuckles. “I don’t want to know.”
I laugh, “I do. I want to know who it is and why.”
By eight-thirty, the house is full enough that the front door doesn’t bother closing all the way.
Freshmen always come first. They come in a clump, and they always hover near the kitchen. They don’t drink anything for the first twenty minutes because they don’t know who is going to look at them sideways for drinking. And I always have to tell them — this year I tell Wexler, because Wexler is the one staring at the wall — to grab a beer and go stand somewhere that is not the kitchen island. He goes.
The upperclassmen come next. They come confident. Walsh slaps me on the shoulder hard enough that it wakes up an old bruise. Carlson tells me he heard Coach in the office last Tuesday saying I’m playing the best hockey of my life right now, which I don’t believe Carlson actually heard but appreciate him saying. Two of the defensemen show up with girls. The girls are nice. I know two of them by face.
A group of four girls comes in together, and one of them waves at me. I know her face too, but I don’t recall her name. I wave back but don’t add a smile because that insinuates an open door.
Rowan is at the kitchen island with Jess on a stool next to him. He’s listening to her tell a story with his whole body angled toward her. She’s in a green sweater that she keeps pulling at the sleeves of. He hasn’t introduced her around, but it doesn’t matter to me.
Stanley is already on his second beer. He is the loudest person in any room he enters, and tonight is not an exception. He appears at my elbow with two beers.
