7 p.m.: Dinner

As soon as you walk in, you get it. This is the appeal of “fashionably late.”

“Not yet,” Chris kept saying, and you tried to play it cool, right, right, I know, not yet, trying to not sound or come across as anxious or stressed or overeager, until it turned into a joke. “Nowwww?” you’d ask, all whiney, not quite like any of Sandler’s voices but not unlike either. Like your own riff on a They’re All Gonna Laugh At You kind of skit. Chris started answering with similar exaggeration, “Nahhhhhhhhht yet,” sounding almost parental, or at least authoritative. It felt good, you two figuring it out as you went, improv’ing, discovering and sliding into these characters, this bit. It seemed not-impossible to imagine being on SNL together one day, the two of you so hilarious you’d somehow get discovered, an agent or talent scout or writer or director or someone seeing you joking around together at the mall or a restaurant or a friend’s or colleague’s birthday party or something. He’d ask you both to come out to New York and try out, you’d both get hired, you’d end up sharing an office like Sandler and Farley and David Spade and Chris Rock like you’ve read in Rolling Stone. You’d share that office, maybe just the two of you, maybe with whoever would become your Spade and Rock to your and Chris’ Sandler and Farley, even though neither of you were big like him, but never mind that, and you’d spend your days writing sketches together and making each other laugh, creating characters, recurring characters who you’d perform as every weekend, live… from New York… on Saturday nights, and into early Sunday mornings, past when you’re even allowed to stay up until now, though you set the VCR every week to record it for you. These jokes and bits you made up to make each other laugh, these characters you created with your best friend since you were eight, would make the whole country laugh. Future fifteen-ear-olds would set their VCRs to record your episodes, they’d buy your comedy tapes when they came out or they’d record the audio of their favorite sketches off their TVs and onto tapes that they could listen to while talking to school or mowing their yard or just sitting in their rooms, cocooned away from the rest of their house and then transported by way of magical headphones into an even smaller world within the world of their bedroom, escaping the rest of their lives and living in their own little personal bubble, even for just a few minutes, and maybe even for an hour or two, and at school they’d reenact your sketches, they’d repeat your catchphrases with their friends, your inside jokes and little catchphrases would become broadcast as entertainment to then be repurposed as their inside jokes and little catchphrases.

“Nahhhhhht yet,” Chris kept telling you, holding out that doctoral, telling you to stick out your tongue and say “ahhhh,” almost a little reprimanding, but playfully so, and then a couple minutes later you’d ask again, “Nowwwwww?,” more and more whiney each time, your baby voice so obviously a character you were playing, a bit you were building from the inside out, a whole world you were creating, all of it, you hoped, disguising by way of exaggeration and caricature and “Who’s on First?” give-and-go the underlying earnestness of your question, your actual anxiety over being late. And then, finally, when you’d really hit your stride, when you’d almost even actually let go of your impatience and wholly embraced the back-and-forth, Chris mixed it up. “OK,” he said. “Now,” he said, dropping the playful-slash-parental-slash-anticipation-building voice he’d created and, instead, he went monotone, exacting like a team leader in a heist movie. His timing was so perfect, it took you a minute to realize what he’d actually said, what he’d meant, you were so busy admiring and proud of him having discovered the way to end the cycling repetition and wrap it all up. “What? Now?” you asked, one more time, back to your own normal voice, the sound of it almost surprising yourself at first, the sound of your own voice sounding almost foreign after leaning so heavily into the whine. You just wanted to double-check. You wanted to be sure. “Now,” Chris said again. And then you both shuffled backwards to the bottom of the roof, looked around, jumped off, and now you’re here. Walking in, fashionably late.

And everyone is looking at you. Everyone is excited to see you! Or, they seem like they are anyway. Some might be faking, some might just be going with the flow of what everyone else seems to be doing, like an excited welcome is the proper response to those who are late, with fashion. Right now, in this moment, you realize it doesn’t really matter. Sincere or just being polite or not even realizing what they’re doing but just following along with what everyone else is doing or even if they’re being sarcastic or ironic or whatever, it feels good no matter, you think to yourself. A decade from now, you’ll meet and start dating a girl, a woman, the love of your life, you’ll tell each other, for a while, and you’ll get married, and she will hate this kind of attention. One of the things that will start cute and then become just a neutral attribute and then something that will drive you crazy, though, for whatever reason, it will never remind you of or make you thinking of your mom, will be her inability to be on time. She will always be running late—always, for everything. It will often be a source of stress for her, though not the inability itself to be on time, her unawareness or disregard, you’re never fully sure which, for other people’s time, but her knowledge that her tardiness will mean late arrival will mean just this—everyone’s eyes on her. Everyone’s attention, a whole room of earnest or faking or just going through the motions because that’s what people do big hellos, excited “you’re here!”s, a pause in whatever had been happening only a moment before while everything stops to focus on the late arriver. You’ll always think of yourself as shy—you did when younger, you do now, you will continue to as you get older, albeit much and much less so—but your wife’s response will define for you that there are different kinds of being shy. You actually like attention. You like receiving a whole room’s worth of hellos and smiles and big waves and open arms, honest or not. All you have to do is stand there. Receive. You’re shy not because you don’t like other people or conversation or group activities or attention on you but because, too often, sometimes seemingly always, you just don’t know what to do. And, maybe even more than not knowing what to do, you don’t know how to do it. You’re afraid of doing it wrong. Of being wrong. Of the kind of attention not from being late, not from being fashionable, not from excitement at your arrival, but attention borne out of disapproval, confusion, mocking.

Chris and you make a big show of receiving everyone’s attention. Another bio, different characters than before, from on the roof, but characters nonetheless—thank you, thank you, we’re excited to be here! You don’t stop and talk or high five or hug or any other greeting of welcome other than big waves to everyone. You airport welcome wave and you Queen of England wave and you big, 180 degree arc wave and you slugger acknowledging the crowd after a homerun wave and you just plain, normal wave and you wave like a little kid who just learned how to wave, all fast, short, excited and jerky motion, all while heading straight to the tables set up with all the pizza. Ron told you all that there would be pizza and Chris just reminded you that there would be pizza and there was almost always pizza, but with that first wig inhale of pizza smell as you approach the tables, you get excited. What’s better than pizza?

You start at one end, grabbing your paper plate and walking down the line, opening each box and verifying what is inside, even though each is labeled on the outside. Cheese and veggie and pepperoni and then another cheese and then another veggie but with different veggies and you wonder what the first veggie had been. Why not another meat? There are multiple variation on veggie; why not a sausage? A meat lover? Would those have been extra? Too expensive? Maybe. But still! You know people like veggie pizza, though you’re years away from knowing anyone who is actually vegetarian, and the idea that there are more people who would want veggie than meat seems baffling. Are you in the minority in sometimes enjoying as much meat on your pizza as the structural integrity of a slice can hold?

You circle back to the pepperoni and load up, three slices all one atop the other. You looks at Chris’ plate and he figured out how to fit the pieces on his plate a little better, all of them overlapping a little but spread out and overhanging the plate, like a sample platter. It looks like he’s gotten one of each, like he’s doing some kind of taste test or something. “You doing some kind of taste test or something?” you say to him, giving a little head nod at his plate. Chris looks at you, at his plate, back at you, and smiles. He laughs, does a little shoulder shrug. Both of you fill a big red Silo cup with Mountain Dew and turn to look at the room.

            Everyone is divvied up into small circular tables, like lily pads spread out around the lake of the room. It’s not unlike the lunchroom at school, though the groupings are different. There isn’t a table of jocks, nor a table of punks or drug kids or kids who don’t do drugs but dress and act and feel kind of proud if you think they do. There isn’t a table for the popular kids. There aren’t really any popular kids. This is part of why you like youth group so much. There are cliques, and there’s tiers or gradations of cliques like anywhere, but they’re flattened, the distance between each smaller, sometimes even so small as to be indistinguishable.

            You wonder if there aren’t any popular kids because nobody that that cool comes to youth group, or because that’s how youth group works, like outside popularity is some kind of identification or membership that Youth Group doesn’t recognize.

            Matthew and David are sitting with Brandon and Mark and Christina and Mary. The Jesus Freaks. They’re all a year or two older than you, and they’re all very, very into God. You love youth group, but they love church. They listen to Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman and old Amy Grant, like the Jesus-y version of only listening to a band’s early records from before they became popular. Outside of worship, like when actually at a place of worship—church on Sundays, youth group on Wednesdays, occasional weekend retreats, at some point later tonight—you listen to secular music. In another couple of years, a subset of Christian music will get “cool”—more guitars, more riffs, sometimes more yelling or even screaming, more rock, just generally more secular sounding—and you’ll like some of that, this bridge between your worlds. Everyone at this table— everyone except Christina, who will never see the appeal—will listen to some of that, too, though hesitantly. Like with suspicion, like they’re being tricked. The praise and Bible lyrics will be a little subtle that preferred, a little more implied and obscured than would be ideal for music that is supposed to have a message.

            The table behind them is a couple of other adult leaders for the night, Tony and Meg, and three kids, Cheryl and Adam and… a girl you don’t recognize. Who’s that? You try not to stare. You’re pretty sure she’s never been to youth group before. No, you know she hasn’t. You’d remember. How did she end up here? You try not to stare. She’s got curly red hair. Not bright red. Dark red? Auburn? Brick? You want to call it just, like, red-brown, but there must be a better word for it. Red-brown might work if she wasn’t so cute, but she deserves better. Her tight, bouncy curls are the kind that, when you see on a cute girl like this, you immediately think, curly hair! My favorite!, even while knowing a cute girl with short straight hair, or long straight hair, or waves would make you think how short straight hair, or long straight hair, or waves is your favorite. You try not to stare. You keep looking at her and then looking away, or, even more, you keep trying to casually look around the room, just happening to look at her then away as you scan past, while hoping that she’ll see you looking at her and she’ll know you’re just looking around the room, not staring, but you’ll pause for a second as your eyes meet and you’ll smile at each other. You wonder who she came with. She’s sitting with Cheryl and Adam, but doesn’t seem especially friendly with them. And then you wonder if Cheryl and Adam were sitting there and the new girl thought they looked inviting enough and so sat there too, or did she sit first and then they followed, hoping to make her feel welcome and not left out; and did they all sit there after Tony and Meg, like they chose to sit at an adult table, or did Tony and Meg follow after, and if that, was it because they likewise wanted to sit with the new girl and make her feel welcome, or did they choose to sit with Cheryl and Adam and the new girl was there by coincidence, or if it just all happened at once, some weird simultaneous sitting that became their table and dinner companions for the night before they’d realized what had even happened.

            Next to them is Ron and another adult leader, Tom. Tom is the oldest one here, by far. Old enough to be your granddad; old enough, probably, to be the dad of any of the other adult leaders, the oldest of whom would be Ron, you assume, who you’d probably say is about your dad’s age, if you had to guess, which you don’t, you’ve never been asked and never even really thought about it, but if you did, if someone asked, if you had to guess. Because he’s in charge or because you’re still young enough that the ages of almost all adults is still a mystery and most everyone seems either your parents’ age or your grandparents’, though years from now you’ll realize he’s only ten years older than you, maybe even only eight, which in fact puts him closer in age to you than your dad. Tom won’t stay all night. He’s here to help with dinner and to get everything organized and running smoothly, a kind of youth group journeyman here to help with whatever Ron or anyone else might need help with. Until it gets too late and he goes home to go sleep, in his own bed, later than he normally does but still earlier than anyone here will. Sitting with Ron and Tom are Rachel and Matthew and Daniel. Matthew and Daniels are twins. They go to the other high school in town and so you don’t really know anything about them outside of youth group, and you don’t actually know much about them here either. They’re twins and they go by Matthew and Daniel, not Matt or Dan; they’re quiet, but not so quiet as to be awkward, and they’re not cool, though not especially uncool either. Rachel, meanwhile, is the hottest girl here. You’re not totally sure why she’s sitting with Matthew and Daniel or Ron and Tom but it doesn’t seem weird or curious either. Rachel is so pretty that you don’t really question anything about her life or who she hangs out with or what she does or who she sits with or even why she comes to youth group at all; she seems so pretty as to not just be out of your league but to be outside the possibility of understanding anything about what her life must be like at all.

            Next to them is Katie and Jenn and Liz and Marnie. They came together and they sit together and dinner and you’re sure they’ll sit together making quiet little inside jokes during songs and games and worship, unless they get separated at some point, which will definitely happen, maybe by Ron, but probably more likely by Meg.  They are always separated at some point. You know they’re friends outside of youth group, a venn diagram that is true for some youth group friends and not others, but you aren’t exactly sure what that means. If they hang out on weekends or everyday after school or not actually that often but they talk on the phone every night, and if they do is it two-by-two or does one of them have a party line, or do they not actually see each other outside of youth group that often nor talk on the phone but even still think of each other as best friends? Sometimes you wonder why they come to youth group at all. It isn’t for the religion, like the Jesus Freaks, you’re pretty sure. They do seem to have fun and enjoy it, but they mostly just hang out with themselves, and couldn’t they do that anywhere? Marnie is friendly, and adorable. Tall, skinny, blonde. She looks like she could be an athlete, like a volleyball player, maybe, but she’s clumsy and her body, her limbs, seem to sprawl and flail a little out of control and without much grace when you guys play games, which is actually endearing and makes her less intimidating than an actual cute volleyball player. You’ve had a crush on her for a year, maybe more. You kind of assume everyone does, but no one says so, and if they do, it isn’t obvious. No one says they have a crush on Rachel, either, but no one needs to, she’s so obviously gorgeous as for it to be universally accepted, like the law of gravity, and also so out of everyone else here’s league as for it to be a fact that need not be explicitly acknowledged. On the other end of the spectrum is Kate. Marnie’s best friend, the Hardy to Marnie’s Laurel, a jab Chris said one time and you laughed and laughed and haven’t been able to not think about the two of them ever since, although you always have to stop for a second and think about it to remember who is who. She’s annoying in a way that’s hard to put into words, and talking and hanging out with her is like the toll for talking and hanging out with and just generally being near Marnie in the hope that you become the friend that becomes romantic. You’re not sure if that promotion ever actually even happens, you can’t think of having seen an example in real life, not here at youth group, not at school, not… well, those are mostly your two real lives. But it seems like it happens on TV and in movies all the time and so you hope you can, you’re already at least kind of friends and you can’t see yourself asking her out, you can’t see yourself actually asking out anyone, ever, so this seems to be your one possible route. You look back over at the new girl. She’s probably even cuter than Marnie. Just because she’s the new girl? Maybe. But that also means you're a new guy, to her, and so maybe there’s a chance she’ll think you’re cute or cool or funny, lots of girls say they like funny, although like friends becoming romantic, you’re not sure if you’ve ever seen that to be true in the real world either, no matter what you’ve heard them profess. Liz is somewhere in between the two—less annoying that Kate but not as nice as Marnie, and she’s cute, too, though also not as cute as Marnie. No one ever acknowledges her as being attractive, but not in the way that you don’t with Rachel, like it’s too obvious to even state, and also not in the way that ou don’t with Marnie, like everyone maybe thinks they might be the only one who thinks so and has a chance and doesn’t want to say it out loud, like mentioning an in-progress no-hitter. With Liz, it is almost like everyone has taken a vow to never admit that she’s cute, no matter the circumstances. Even if asked outright. You’re not sure why this is, though you also don’t question it. It’s never even occurred to you to question it. Were it to, the best you’d be able to come up with would be that maybe Kate seems too sensitive to take the kind of teasing-bullying everyone kind of wanted to lobby at her whereas Liz seems stronger, like she could withstand anything, and so she gets the brunt of it, both her own teasing and Kate’s overflow, in a way that shields Kate but also somehow makes her less attractive. Because the teasing overrides and denies attractiveness or because the perception of that much strength negates her femininity? Probably some of both. And also, you’re all teenagers and thus assholes, and also thus largely mysterious and unexplainable, as much to each other and anyone else as you are to yourselves.

            Next to them is Kai, sitting by himself. He’s wearing a hat that looks like it has the oval Ford logo but it says Fuct instead of Ford. You’re not sure if you’re more surprised that he wore or that no one has told him he isn’t allowed to. Did he wear it just to see if he would be told to take it off? Did he forget what it said? Did he never once even think about whether he should or shouldn’t, could or couldn’t, he just put it on? All of it seems baffling to you.

            Chris is ahead of you a couple of steps and you follow behind, zigzagging your way through all the tables, all the way to the back corner to sit with Kai.

            As soon as you sit down, you hear Ron’s voice bellowing through the room behind. “Guys! Guys.” You turn around and he’s clinking a clear plastic fork against his plastic red Silo cup and if it makes any sound at all, it’s too quiet for you to hear from where you are but he’s acting like it’s the grand gesture that should be getting everyone’s attention. “Everyone. Real quick.” He pauses, waiting for everyone to get quiet and turn around and give him full attention. You look back at Chris just in time to see him fold up a piece of pizza and then shove it all into his mouth at once. His cheeks bulge and the pizza is spilling out of his mouth, too full to close all the way. You start to giggle a little, mostly holding it in but your whole body hiccupping a little at the sight, but then there’s something about the way Chris is looking at Ron like there’s nothing at all out of the ordinary, like he’s just waiting to listen to whatever Ron has to say, like he didn’t just shove an entire slice of pizza into his mouth, and you can’t hold it in any more. Ron looks over and gives you and Chris a look and rolls his eyes, but you can tell he wants to laugh too.

“Chris,” Ron says, matter of fact.

Chris raises his eyebrows like, What? Like, I’m listening. Like, Go on.

Ron shakes his head but doesn’t say any more. “OK, everyone. Thanks for coming out tonight. We’ve got a fun night planned. I just want to go over everything before we really get started, so everyone knows what’s what. We’ve got dinner til 8, and then we’re gonna head out to Sprinker. I don’t want to dilly dally, I don’t want there to be any arguments over who goes with who. I know some of you got dropped off and some of you drove yourselves—”

“I rode my board here.”

The voice surprises you, and it does Ron, too.

“What was that?”

“I just said I rode my board here,” Kai says again. He points over to the wall where his skateboard is leaning up against the wall. You wonder if now is when Ron is going to say something about his hat.

“Right. Some of you got dropped off, some of you drove yourselves, some of you rode on your skateboards here. However you got here, I don’t want anyone driving to Sprinker except for designated adult leaders. I’ll be driving the van—”

You and Chris look at each other and both know what the other is thinking. You need to get to the van after you eat, before anyone else.

“—Tom is going to drive. I think he can take three or four—”

Ron turns to look at Tom, who is holding up his hand with three fingers.

“Tom can take three, Meg can take… five?”

He looks at Meg and she nods.

“Tony?”

Ron looks at Tony, who makes a face and shakes his head. You think it would be funny if Tony tried to squeeze a few of you into his tiny little Miata.

“OK. No Tony. I think Wayne and Carol can each take five or six. Maybe more?”

Ron looks around, and you look around. It doesn’t look like Wayne and Carol are anywhere. Are they running late? Somewhere else in the building?

“I think they’re down in the basement, getting that set up. That should be good for us though. We’ll do another roll call here as soon as everyone is done eating, right before we leave. We have Sprinker until 10:30 and then we’ll all come back here. Soon as we’re all back, that’s when we’ll lock the doors. We’re gonna have a little sermon, some worship. At midnight, we’ll play a game. After that, we’ll probably start separating. We’ll have a couple of quiet rooms, if you want to go to sleep—downstairs for the guys, down the hall, in the nursery, for the girls, and we’ll probably set up a movie in here.”

Ron looks at his watch, prompting you to do the same. 7:40.

“OK, we’ve got about twenty minutes. Eat up, we got lots of pizza, and then we’ll pack it up and head to Sprinker.”

You look over at the new girl. You wonder if she’ll know to head to the church van. Like she’ll maybe just somehow know that that is always the most fun. Or maybe someone already told her. You wonder if you should tell her. Maybe you can tell her like you’re giving her advice. Maybe that advice could even lead to her sitting next to you.

“Hey!” Chris yells at you, only it’s all muffled and full-mouthed garbled. “Hey!” He points to his full mouth and says two unrecognizable syllables that, because he’s Chris, and because he’s your best friend, you know mean, “Watch this.” And so you watch as he starts masticating—one of your new favorites words, though you don’t remember where you learned it—these big, weird, full head and neck motions that remind you of the last time you went over to Jason’s and as soon as you got to his house he asked you if you wanted to watch him feed his snake and you wondered when he’d gotten a snake, and why he’d gotten a snake, and you followed him to his room and, indeed, there was a new, giant terrarium that he opened up the top of and then reached into a nearby shoebox and pulled out small mouse and then dropped it in for the snake which proceeded to grab the mouse in its mouse and then swallow it whole, albeit slow and with an amount of effort that surprised you, and that looked not unlike Chris right now swallowing that whole piece of pizza that he’d fit into his mouth and then just held there while Ron ran down the schedule for the night.