“BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!” screams your clock again, but later now. Does it hate you? Yes.

Anyway, probably time to get up, right?

You keep hitting snooze, and eventually, your clock gives up, because humans will always beat machines in the end.

You sleep for a long, long time. You dream about gliding over a small island nation ruled by batteries, and about French-kissing your cousin with the two lazy eyes. You manage to lucid dream for a little while too, but, like, barely, if that makes sense.

Suddenly, someone’s shaking you awake.

Bam! You’re up and moving. Shower, shit, shave: You tackle ’em all with the bright-eyed ferocity of youth. Obviously, you are a good person.

From downstairs, you can hear your parents going through their morning routine.

Your beautiful white parents greet you, radiating love and self-importance.

“Child!” says your mother.

“Our child!” says your father.

“Take your gut medication and listen up—we have an announcement.”

“Here’s the deal,” says your mother. “It’s our 25th high school reunion this weekend.”

“Our beloved principal’s been sitting pretty in hospice,” says your father, “and they’re going to euthanize him in a cream-filled pool at the center of our old gymnasium and loose black doves right there in the gym.”

“It is what it is,” says your mother. “Point is, starting tonight, we’ll be away all weekend.”

“You’re welcome to have a few friends over, but don’t you dare forget our Three Major Rules.”

“Major Rule One: Don’t even touch our sprawling collection of tiny airplane liquor bottles. We flew far and wide to amass them.

“Major Rule Two: Our bedroom is completely off-limits, no matter what. We know exactly how many coins are in our bed’s Magic Fingers box; you’re not getting one past us.

“And, of course, Major Rule Three: Don’t invest in wearable tech. It’s nothing but a losing bet.”

“Remember,” says your father, “we don’t make the Major Rules. We’re just trying to keep the family curse from befalling you, as it befell us.”

“Anyway, there’s sorghum in the freezer and a few bills scattered around the house if you want to order a rice dish,” says your father. “Have fun, and we love you!”

Your parents embrace you. They smell like a cave.

Phew! You manage to slip into first period while your teacher’s back is turned, and your classmates let you know that they’re not going to rat you out. The Truant’s Crown stays put. We’re all we have in this fucked-up world.

All through class, your thoughts keep turning to your empty house. With your parents gone, there are no limits on what you could do. You could quietly watch a movie by yourself, quietly read an atlas by yourself, rearrange furniture, or even...

No.

Could you?

Yeah. Yeah. There hasn’t been a good party in this town since Chet Dwyher’s summer thing where Emelia Barlow full-on yakked in the saline pool and gave the whole debate team staph. Kids are craving a rager; you can feel it in the hallways.

You’ve got the means, the motive, and the opportunity. It’s finally time for you to commit the perfect crime of throwing a big, fun party for young people in your home.

You bounce the notion off of a few of your chiller classmates, and they’re nothing but enthusiastic. Time to get the word out.

But how?

At lunch, you track down Theo, hunk supreme. His popularity’s undeniable; hook him and he’ll bring everyone worth partying with. Plus, he’s secretly your everything.

Per usual, he’s at his favorite brooding spot by the school koi pond, dictating Medium article drafts into Evernote. Your heart pounds as you approach. Better play it cool.

“Oh. Hey,” says Theo, flicking on his shades with sexual grace. Then he does the thing where he makes his voice sound like a DJ: “Wicky wicky what up.”

Your heart’s leaping out of your throat. Maybe he forgot to turn off dictation and this whole conversation’s going to end up in one of his Medium articles. Those things pull down 40, 50 likes, easy.

“A party? At your place?” he says, gears turning in that beautiful goddamn head of his. “There hasn’t been a good party in this town since Yoni’s Halloween sangria thing where Buck Dade’s hand got fused to that bottle of Mexican Coke he microwaved. That ruled.”

“Yeah, all right,” he says finally. “I’m down. Expect me at midnight.”

He doesn’t crack a smile, but he does give you a long look. Like, almost a pre-sex look, kind of?

You spend the rest of the day in a blur of pedagogy, consumed by fantastic visions of the party to come. Games of Flip’s Cup...popular inside jokes...sexual reckonings.... Also, the stupid fucking word “debauchery” keeps popping into your head.

Whispers and glances follow you through the halls. Looks like word’s spreading fast. Could this party truly be “all that”?

At home, you spend hours painstakingly prepping a sumptuous tandoori buffet. Just as you light the last chafing dish, the doorbell rings.

Of course the first ones to show up are freshmen. And of course it’s exactly 8 p.m. They giggle in some dog-whistle register and twirl their youthful forelocks. One offers you a handful of cheddar popcorn from her pocket. Jesus, these kids.

Oh, well. Parties need bodies.

They scuttle past you and start climbing into cupboards and drawers in search of sweets and dampness, gibbering in their larval patter at a breakneck pace. It makes you shudder to think you were once one of them.

The doorbell rings again. Looks like the varsity wrestling team’s here!

Hanging their heads, they scuttle off the porch and into the night in search of sweets and dampness, gibbering in their morose larval patter at a breakneck pace. It makes you shudder to think you were once one of them.

The doorbell rings again. Awesome, looks like the varsity wrestling team’s here!

“Go Feral Children!” they trumpet, hailing your school’s universally despised mascot. The volume makes your parents’ liquor nip collection clatter in the next room. They roll in a glass keg of cranberry juice and set up shop on the stairs. Okay!

Kids are arriving steadily now—some you know, many you don’t. They track mud on your Brazilian cherry floors and probably have diseases. You’ve never felt so free in your own home.

There’s a knock at the door, loud and powerful.

Whoa, damn! College kids! Probably from the local Inland Coast Guard Academy. These guys absolutely radiate cool, and their effect on the vibe is palpable.

“We heard you’re having a party,” they say. Their breath smells like unsmoked cigarettes. “No such thing as a party without several college kids. Glennon, Dashley, James, Turrell: let’s lurk.”

They breeze past you with barely a nod. Damn.

Things are finally heating up. Some senior brought his own DJ equipment and plugged into your house’s intercom system, and a dance floor’s picking up in the basement. The ESL kids are setting up Flip’s Cup in the dining room. And out in the backyard: groping!

The only thing that would make this more fun is if you had any friends at all in the whole world. Oh, well.

Where will you hang?

Contemporary music envelops you as you descend the stairs. Human sweat chokes the air, but it’s the good, consensual kind of choking. Your basement’s been transformed from your dad’s furtive jerk-off nook into a roiling discothèque.

Time to get busy.

Whoa! Whoa!! You landed it! First try! A front flip! Right on the dance floor in front of everyone! People are screaming, howling, crossing themselves. What an absolute high point of your young life.

“Another!” the other kids bellow. “Again!”

You flop your developing body around in a way that’s hopefully not sickening, and you know what? It feels pretty good! Lyrics wrap around you as you groove:

There is a place
Called Rhythm
Where my family’s got a condo

You’re flying now. The beat’s in your spine, in your fingertips, driving you on and on.

There’s only two beds,
But the couch pulls out,
And we’ve got air mattresses,
Child

You’re so cocooned in rhythmic bliss that it takes you a minute to notice someone’s tapping your shoulder.

It’s your lab partner, Nico something! In your basement! Incredible. What a party. What’s up, Nico?

“Hey!” he says. “This dance floor sucks. Your party sucks. Everyone’s dead sober and afraid of each other. Everyone’s too busy thinking about the bad choices they’ve made in their lives to make more bad choices. Fix it—with alcohol.”

“Please,” he adds, “I need this.”

The dining room scene is way less fun up close. Flip’s Cup is fully assembled and polished, and the chalk lines are all drawn, but nobody’s playing. The ESL kids are all kind of standing around silently.

Your state defunded its ESL programs to keep young people who don’t speak each other’s languages from radicalizing each other in English, so when they see you, the ESL kids can only gesticulate meaninglessly, trying to make themselves understood. It’s hard to watch.

The ESL kids stare at you with pleading eyes, gesturing frantically and pointing to Flip’s Cup. Christ, they just sit in silence all day in their bare ESL classroom, don’t they? Can’t understand each other, can’t understand their classmates, confined to their immediate families, imprisoned in their own heads....

You’re so wrapped up in your rhapsody of woe that it takes you a minute to notice someone’s tapping your shoulder.

It’s your lab partner, Nico something! In your house! Incredible. What a party. What’s up, Nico?

“Hey!” he says. “They want alcohol. Everybody does. Your party sucks. Everyone’s dead sober and afraid of each other. Everyone’s too busy thinking about the bad choices they’ve made in their lives to make more bad choices. Fix it—with alcohol.”

“Please,” he adds, “I need this.”

The odorless night air is shot through with the comingled sounds of the human grope-sperience. Three, even four couples are out here, straddling your parents’ demodernist patio furniture, getting at each other with hand and knee.

This must be what Greece was like, you marvel.

Somebody unmistakably a sophomore saunters your way, introducing himself in a throaty voice as Ulrich. Like a perfect gentleman, he asks if you’re in the mood to grope, light as you please.

Things are still bumping. Still no friends.

Where will you hang?

With a gentle hand, you flutter your fingers up and down over Ulrich, lingering here and there, ministering to sensitivities over his fabrics. The steady clacking of the several Halls in his mouth sets the tempo. “Dulce,” he breathes.

After the standard two minutes, Ulrich gives your shoulder an appreciative pat and offers to return the favor, in grope form.

Ulrich swallows one of the Halls in his cheek and cracks his knuckles. His finger-touch roaming your body feels like the sure, agile scrambling of a circus raccoon. He manages you and your this-and-thats with the practiced ease of a street magician. It’s nice enough for Friday night.

The standard two minutes up, he thanks you generously for your time, turns, and walks into the swallowing dark of the yard. Bye, Ulrich.

Reminiscing about just now, you’re caught off guard by a tap on the shoulder.

Ulrich swallows one of the Halls in his cheek and cracks his knuckles. His finger-touch roaming your body feels like the sure, agile scrambling of a circus raccoon. He manages you and your this-and-thats with the practiced ease of a street magician. It’s nice enough for Friday night.

After the standard two minutes, Ulrich gives your shoulder an affable pat and offers to let you return the favor, in grope form.

With a gentle hand, you flutter your fingers up and down over Ulrich, lingering here and there, ministering to sensitivities over his fabrics. The steady clacking of the several Halls in his mouth sets the tempo. “Dulce,” he breathes.

The standard two minutes up, he thanks you generously for your time, turns, and walks into the swallowing dark of the yard. Bye, Ulrich.

Reminiscing about just now, you’re caught off guard by a tap on the shoulder.

It’s your lab partner, Nico something! In your yard! Incredible. What a party. What’s up, Nico?

“Hey!” he says. “Me and this one had to get out of there. We don’t even want to grope. I mean, we will anyway, but either way, you should know...your party sucks. Everyone’s dead sober and afraid of each other. Everyone’s too busy thinking about the bad choices they’ve made in their lives to make more bad choices. Fix it—with alcohol.”

“Please,” he adds, “I need this.”

You turn to head inside and manage to walk straight into someone. It’s your lab partner, Nico something! In your yard! Incredible. What a party. What’s up, Nico?

“Hey!” he says. “Me and this one had to get out of there. We don’t even want to grope. I mean, we will anyway, but either way, you should know...your party sucks. Everyone’s dead sober and afraid of each other. Everyone’s too busy thinking about the bad choices they’ve made in their lives to make more bad choices. Fix it—with alcohol.”

“Please,” he adds, “I need this.”

Woof. Nico’s right. This party is sputtering fast. Conversations end before they begin. Tongues remain firmly locked in their respective mouths. Nobody’s doing anything to anyone. It’s sickening, frankly.

If this goes south, what little reputation you’ve eked out for yourself to date will be erased overnight, and you’ll get stuck forever with a nickname like “Challenger” or “Columbia” or “Loose Stool.”

Gotta do something to defibrillate your party, and quickly.

You head to the upstairs walk-in that houses your white parents’ miniature plane liquor collection and punch in the code. The door swings open.

Inside sits the product of decades of sober flying: hundreds of miniature liquor bottles from the world over. Your parents openly refer to this collection as their second child. You’ve always resented them for it.

Surely they won’t miss a few dozen of these. Your party needs them.

A shiver moves through you. You’ve never broken a Major Rule before. You feel rambunctious and beautiful, like a pageant child.

You unscrew the tiny cap and shoot back the snake wine, little bitsy snakelet and all. The taste is completely different from the artificial snake flavor you’re used to—more serpentine—and it burns all the way down, but here’s the thing: It burns so good.

Congratulations! You have unlocked your Snake Animus. This will definitely be invaluable to you during some future internship. Great choice; no consequences.

As soon as you return, alcohol sloshing in your arms, a cry ripples through the house and teen hands swoop down, picking your bounty apart. There’s a moment of profound silence while all available teen mouths are occupied in suckling down adult milk, and then, with a roar, the party roars back to life.

Through the crowd, you catch Nico’s eye. He nods, eyes smiling, and fades, just like that, into a flutter of sparkling dust. Whoa....

A shiver moves through you. You’ve never broken a Major Rule before. You feel rambunctious and beautiful, like a pageant child.

As soon as you return, alcohol sloshing in your arms, a cry ripples through the house and teen hands swoop down, picking your bounty apart. There’s a moment of profound silence while all available teen mouths are occupied in suckling down adult milk, and then, with a roar, the party roars back to life.

Through the crowd, you catch Nico’s eye. He nods, eyes smiling, and fades, just like that, into a flutter of sparkling dust. Whoa....

The new vibe is out of fucking control. Kids are climbing on each other like furniture and fingering the furniture like pop culture taught them to. Shirts are practically flying off their bodies. Like, they’re not really, but they practically are.

If anything, it’s too out of control. What if someone gets dehydrated, or tries to incite a pogrom? This town definitely doesn’t need another teen pogrom on its hands.

Maybe you should say something?

It accomplishes nothing. Your gut churns as you wonder if encouraging underage drinking could possibly have been a mistake.

“Hey!” yells a track kid, holding one of your monogrammed towels to a cut on his forehead. “Who wants to play Not My House? There are no rules because it’s not your house!” Everyone in earshot wants to play.

If only Theo were here. He knows how to command a room. He says fascism both repulses and transfixes him, and considers himself “a future leader of men.”

Wait, what’s that police-sounding siren?

You beat a retreat into the backyard, where the night air is struck through with loud-ass police sirens. The thick sea of groping bodies is curdling into the tourists, who love freedom more than groping, and the diehards, who’ll go down groping. No one notices you in the confusion.

You hop the fence and turn onto a country road. The sirens are fading in the distance. The dark stretches ahead of you, unbounded.

You run and run, wending your way through back roads, crossing fields and farmland, drawing on reservoirs of strength you never knew you had.

The sun’s coming up now. The memory of your botched party fades further with every footfall. Fields stretch ahead of you, endless, splendid with morning dew.

You run and run, and run some more. That turns out to be enough running, because here you are at a farmhouse. God only knows where you are; all you know is that you can never go back.

You catch sight of an old farmer tending to his cattle. As you come closer, he waves you over.

“Traveling, huh?” he says. “I’ve met enough travelers in my time to know not to ask too many questions. Well, if it’s work you’re wanting, I could use a pair of steady hands. Since Madge passed on, I’ve had a good load more than these old two can handle.

“I can’t pay much, but it’s honest labor, and you’ll have room and board. What do you say?”

Oh, okay.

Yup. No doubt about it: It’s the police. Here’s one now. He introduces himself as Officer Rick.

“We got a noise complaint about this house,” says Officer Rick. “Me, I’d never file a noise complaint. I love noise. When I get off patrol, I’m planning on putting my ear to my infant son’s screaming mouth and just kind of blissing out. But ‘Protect and Serve’ and all that, so here I am.

“Mind if I come inside?”

Officer Rick laughs in a way that makes you feel smaller.

“Boy, okay, you have no idea how to handle this, do you?

“Listen, the only way you’re keeping this party going and not taking a ride with me tonight is if you and I work out a little ‘arrangement.’

“And what I’m talking about, to be clear, is the illegal transaction of bribery.”

“Glad to hear it,” says Officer Rick. “But listen, this isn’t just any bribe. This is an opportunity. I designed a game-changing piece of technology, and I need investors.

“So, let’s say you want to listen to the radio, but it’s all the way in the other room, or you’re out and about. Problem? Not anymore. Because I built a little radio you strap to your head. Bring it wherever. Wearable tech, see?

“I call it the Radiohead,” says Officer Rick.

“What band?” says Officer Rick. “Listen, kid, I need a hundred bucks to hire a graphic designer. Do you want to go to jail or what?”

You hand Officer Rick the $100 bill your parents have you keep in your cheek for emergencies.

“You just made a winning bet,” he says. “Wearable tech is the future.”

A shudder moves through you as Officer Rick struts back to his car and peels out. Somehow, you’ve managed to break two Major Rules in one night. That’s insane. But you’re positive that no beast, man, or god can compel you to break the third.

Far away, the church bells ring out the 12 dongs of midnight. And from the dark street, a voice like a DJ’s calls out, “Wiggita wiggita what’s good.”

It’s Theo! Sweet Theo! Looking like an absolute millionaire, ditching his tandem bike on your lawn, walking up to your doorstep. He came! To your party! He came!

“I saw you handling the cops there,” he says, pocketing a comb. “Mondo copacetic, buddy. Cool under fire. I love it. I love that you keep money in your cheek, too. Very Japanese. I love Japanese. Bento, you know?

“Looks like there’s a lot to love about you,” he adds, and you practically juiceblast your little Under Armour shorties off.

Your return to the party is greeted with the jubilant roar of a lion made of teenagers. Everyone is so fucking stoked on you and how you dealt with the cops. They’ll never know what you’ve sacrificed for this party.

Theo follows you through the sea of reaching hands as your peers grow increasingly desperate to touch the hems of your garments. They’re chanting your name. The air’s buzzing with spittle.

“Whoa,” says Theo, “this is a lot.”

Theo backs off, and the liquored-up teen crowd presses in around you. Your classmates’ faces jab out at you, distended and twisted, whipped into a convulsive frenzy of joy and admiration and adrenaline. More and more hands are finding holds on you or your clothes and digging in tight. Too tight.

They’re still chanting your name, but now they’re starting to pull.

Theo nods, and you lead him through the crowd and upstairs, trying not to tremble. It’s not working.

At the top of the stairs, you pause. Should you take him to your room? But what about—

“Let’s go in there,” he says, pointing to the door of your parents’ room. “Definitely that one.”

You do your best to explain to Theo your white parents’ Major Rules, and how bad an androgyne you’ve been tonight, and how every societal constraint is basically arbitrary when you think about it but no less legitimate for it. You’re painfully aware of just how goddamn lame you sound doing it, too.

“I don’t even have to be here, you know?” he says, scrolling through Kik messages. “I could be volunteering at the nocturnal animal shelter or breaking into the regular animal shelter. I’m very fun.”

You’ve always hated this door. Its eyes seem to follow you around the hallway, and it smells dead. You realize you kind of hate your parents’ taste in home decor. Then you realize you hate a lot about your parents. You decide to spend the next 10 years really digging around in those feelings.

Theo’s getting impatient. Better get this door open fast.

Your fingers press deep into the hot facial meat and come back sticky, but it looks like you did it. The door swings open with a yawn, and you and your popular crush are at last alone together in your parents’ room, which, frankly, looks way more normal than you’d imagined.

Theo puts his sunglasses in his breast pocket and looks at you with those eyes of his. He runs his thumb across his lips and somehow makes it work.

“We’re alone,” he breathes. “By the way, what’s your name again?”

You feel a shudder come over you, and then a churning in your gut. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Too late. Whatever’s happening is happening. A wad of something works its way up out of you, and with a “GHORK,” you gulp it out into the world. A thick white wad lands on the carpet. It starts to wriggle and grow, bigger and taller, until finally...

Your parents, or something like them, stand before you. They speak with one voice. Theo takes Vines.

“Child,” they say, “in breaking the Three Major Rules, you have brought on yourself the curse of our lineage, as has befallen every generation.

“Now face your fate: You, child, will never be cooler than you are tonight, when you threw the greatest party this town has seen since Evie Vitigliano’s thing where Russ Faber lit a pelican up with a tiki torch.

“You are doomed! Now and forever! To have peaked in high school!”

At lunchtime, you slip down a back staircase, jimmy the boiler room latch, crawl under steam pipes, grope around in refuse for a hidden switch, and slither down a trap hatch to stand bathed in the pale light of the gossip hole. Here’s where all the school’s juiciest gossip is whispered so it can spread instantaneously through the minds of the student body.