Kalliope 2015 | Page 45

full by now, then snap it shut. If I had learned anything, it was that my parents’ hospitality would brook no argument. The guests would eat. That was that. I glimpse a small object reclining on the sofa, hidden between the cushion and the arm. Kneeling to grab it, I exhale as I confront a common sight: my father’s phone. If it wasn’t the phone, it was a pair of his eyeglasses, scattered haphazardly throughout the house. The eyeglasses are not a huge concern—they are just reading lenses—but the phone is a different story entirely. Brandishing the phone accusingly, I rush over to my father as he turns to enter the main house once more. “Dad, you’re forgetting something!” Blinking, he looks at me questioningly until he sights his phone. “Ah, thank you. I was wondering where that went.” Tucking it into his pocket, he turns to continue his campaign to feed my friends into capitulation. Grabbing his sleeve, I exclaim, “If you’re going to leave your phone lying around, could you at least put a screen lock on it? A pin, a password, something! What if someone else found it and started going through it?” He straightens up, back facing me, and stills for a moment. He turns back, facing me with an unusually serious expression. For a second, he is perfectly framed by the doorway. He replies, with a little shrug, “I have nothing to hide.” I gape at his casual response. “I’m not saying that you do, but could you at least...” No longer listening, my father restores the smile to his face and ventures back into the chaotic party atmosphere, searching for his next victim. Sighing once more, I decide that I have played host for long enough and walk over to a cluster of people. They are listening attentively to an epic story of lacrosse glory, narrated enthusiastically by Curtis. “And then Ross passed me the ball. There were three guys in front of me. I could probably have gotten past them all, but I didn’t want to embarrass them too badly, so I signaled Ross to run a diamond pattern. That opened up a little bit of space in front of me, so I started sprinting forward. One guy came up to check me, but I juked him like this,”—Curtis sidles sideways to demonstrate— “and then I only had the goalie to beat. I looked up for a moment and saw that there was only, like, three seconds left. Everything was riding 45