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while baked were hurled at you by your closest friends in an attempt to defeat your buzz. Each attack required retaliation and further bong hits, the whole disordered affair not infrequently bringing Emily to tears - of distress or drugged stupefaction one could never quite tell - while the boys more often resorted to throwing objects or shoving one another into the pool.

As surrogate families went, the four of them were tight-knit, having learned early on the value of ridicule as a means of avoiding the awkwardness of their mutual affection.

The game that day had begun with the minor stuff of yeast infections, poor hygiene, and other bodily insecurities before reaching personal matters - Emily's retarded cousin, Hal's inability to attract girls. And it might have ended there but for the stuff they were smoking. Having failed to graduate, Jason, on Hal's canny advice, had thrown himself on his parents' mercy, promised to rededicate himself to studying in the fall, and suggested that what he really needed was the chance to help others for a while. Thus it was that he'd recently returned from his week of Habitat for Humanity - in Jamaica.

What little he remembered of the experience, he recalled fondly. A nail-gun injury on the second day had put him on the sidelines of the actual construction, but he'd made the most of the company. The four jumbo tubes of Crest he'd emptied and stuffed with the finest of the local crop had sailed through customs at Logan in his toiletry bag and made it safely back to the house. Life since had taken on a new texture. Jason had hacked around on an electric guitar for years but it was only after returning from this trip, after hours of practice in the soundproofed basement, that he'd begun to realize just how outsized a talent he might be. Others had not fared so well. Interlopers to the gang of four had come, smoked, required Xanax, and fled. The first girl Hal had courted since sophomore year had wept in terror at the sight of the Hollands' tabby cat and demanded to be driven home. When seriously gotten into, the new stuff was an all-hands-on-deck kind of experience.

And so it came to pass that in the late stages of this particular session, at the point where someone usually threw in the towel and began agitating for food, reprisals instead intensified. Nate, coming to Emily's defense in response to the hit on her defective relative, went straight at Mrs. Holland's alcoholism.

"Oh, that's a good one," Jason said, sitting with bare, rounded back at the end of the diving board. "That's a real good one. It reminds me, I've been meaning to ask you, Nate, how's the widow? Your mother, I mean. The one who's sitting at home right now. The one who's going to watch the fireworks alone tonight. Ever think maybe you should spend a little more time with her?"

The question stung but the line of attack had been used before, hardening him to the sharpness of it.

"Whatever," Nate said, lying back in his deck chair. "You haven't been able to ejaculate since you started those anti-depressants."

Jason leapt to his feet and came around the pool to stand over Nate, his face flushed and shiny with bakeage. "You're a liar. At least I haven't been spending my nights on my knees sucking some stranger's cock."

"Jason!" Emily shouted, leaping up from her chair. "Shut the fuck up!"

In this game, surprise was the only trump and Jason had played it. Nate had thought it would be safe to share his secret with Emily, but he'd been wrong.

"Interesting," Hal observed, crossing his legs and lighting another cigarette with which to enjoy this final round.

"I mean I knew you were queer," Jason said, "but senior citizens? Is that some kind of fetish thing? You like Daddy?"

"You are such a royal asshole," Emily said.

"Come on, tell us. What does the old man taste like?"

"Fuck you," Nate said, picking up his book and towel and heading back into the house. Just inside the door of the Hollands' solarium, he paused, listening to the whir of the engines powering the Jacuzzi and the sauna and the air conditioner, the THC in his blood still burning down the cells of his brain.

He could go home if he wanted. But things were too real there, too slow. And what use would it be heading over to Doug's? Six nights in a row now he'd gone to the mansion