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
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