The cops broke up the legendary party before midnight. It was too legendary to last.
One of the art girls was smoking on the front porch, so she saw the cops first. She came into the house yelling, Cops cops cops!
We all ran. Everyone was pushing, trying to get out the back door. A bunch of kids jumped off the deck. It wasn’t so high. Dave’s house was back in the woods. We all got away.
My car was parked down the street. I ducked through a neighbor’s yard and got in, then drove the other way. I drove around alone for a while, too amped to go home.
But the magic of the legendary party was still with me. Because just when I thought I’d have to go home, that there was nothing else to do, I stopped for a Slurpee and found Richard, Ham, and Alan at the 7-Eleven. They were just leaving. Alan had a cell phone and Dave had called him to find us all and meet him at Denny’s.
(After that, it was tradition. We always knew to meet up at Denny’s after a party got broken up.)
Dave and Max were already eating pancakes when we got there. Dave grinned. Sit down, gentlemen, I have a story.
The man has a fucking story, Max said. He was grinning, too.
Dave had gotten out through the basement and run into the woods. Then he circled back to check what was going on at the house. The cop was still there, talking into the radio on the front porch. I freaked the fuck out, he told us. I could see the look on my dad’s face already. The cut-me-a-switch-boy look.
(Dave used to say his mom was a lawyer and his dad was an asshole. I didn’t know if he meant the switch thing literally, but no one asked.)
So Dave couldn’t go back in the house, with the cop on the front porch. But his car was parked on the curb, so he snuck around and waited until the cop had turned his back and then started the car and just fucking gunned it out of the neighborhood. He didn’t think the cop got his plates or anything.
Just before he turned onto the main street, he saw a guy walking on the side of the road. It was Max. For a while they drove around together.
Dave kept whining about his dad, his dad, what am I gonna do, Max said.
Dave said, But then Max gets an idea.
They went to the movie theater and waited until a couple of cute girls came out. They were private school girls. Dave and Max told them what had happened and got their ticket stubs from them.
What movie? we wanted to know.
Get this: it was the nine o’clock showing of Gone in 60 Seconds.
We all burst out laughing at that. It’s a sign, we said. Richard did his impression of Nicolas Cage again.
The story continued: Dave and Max drove back to Dave’s house, to all the beer cups scattered on the lawn. Dave called the police. He said someone had broken into his house while he was out at the movies on a double date. He wanted the cops to come and make sure it was safe.
We laughed and laughed at that. It’s true, Max said. I had no idea Dave had such big balls, but it’s true. I watched him do it. The cop who showed up was the same cop who had broken up the party. Dave played it perfectly. He acted like he was scared and upset. Max backed him up. The cop was skeptical, of course.
“You’re saying to me,” Dave said, doing the cop’s voice as Nicolas Cage. “You’re saying to me that you’re a senior in high school and you have no idea who might have broken into your house to throw a party on the Saturday night your parents are out of town.” And I just flash him my big baby blues and say, “No, sir!”
No way he believed you, I said.
Probably not. Richard shrugged. But it’s nearly one in the morning, he wants to go home, he doesn’t actually care about a party.
Plus we had the ticket stubs, Max said. Said we were on a double date, gave him one of the girls’ numbers if he wanted to check out our story.
She’s my alibi, Dave said. I think she likes me.
Of course Dave’s parents didn’t buy it. We found out later that he got in big trouble. But at Denny’s we were impressed. It was a really good lie. We were impressed with Max for having the idea and impressed with Dave for pulling it off.
We all ordered pancakes to celebrate. And then we started talking about what had happened during the party. Hotboxing the bedroom. Max’s three girls. All the incredible things that had happened that night. We hadn’t realized how legendary the party had been until we told the story together. As we talked about it, we realized we’d been through something amazing. And we couldn’t wait to do it again.
* * *
• • •
FOR A WHILE THAT SUMMER, Dave hooked up with his alibi. Life imitates excuses, Richard said (he was always quoting The Kids in the Hall like we were still in eighth grade). Dave’s alibi loved comedy movies and she went to fifth base, so Dave didn’t hang out with us as much and we understood why. It was summer, anyway, and some of us were at the beach or in Europe with our parents, and a lot of us went to different lax clinics, especially if there was one at our top-choice school. Richard was at the Naval Academy, for example. I didn’t have a top choice so I went to one at the University of Maryland. I also got a retail job at the lacrosse store, Lax World, where I spent afternoons talking to kids who were just getting started. When I told them I was a face-off specialist and that my average was over 50 percent, they looked at me with real respect in their eyes, and I remembered what it was like when I was just a freshman, watching the team from the outside.
Which is all to say that we were busy, we didn’t really miss Dave. And our parties were smaller on the whole, just a few guys hanging out and drinking and telling stories about the legendary party and how we’d throw an even more legendary one in the fall.
By August, Dave and the girl had kind of drifted apart, so he was back with us in time for conditioning. Around then our parties started picking back up, too. Dave said all of the private school girls wanted to hang out. Even though he and the alibi had broken up, they were still friends.
Private school girls were like that. They never put any pressure on you. Not that they were the kinds of girls you wanted to hang out with all the time or anything. Our public school was a really good school. My mom said that kids in our town only went to private school because something was wrong, like a learning disability, or like they’d been kicked out of public school. We didn’t know exactly what was wrong with the private school girls, but you could just tell something was off. Like one time, I was talking to one who said that she loved to get a six-pack of beer on a Friday and just drive around all night, drinking and listening to the radio.
When I heard that, I thought to myself, That’s a little much. I mean, sure, maybe sometimes I drove myself home from a party when I was a little too buzzed to drive. But I wasn’t going to have that be my whole goal for the evening. I kept talking to her, to be nice. But I couldn’t really respect her after that.