The next day I got up early to pretend to go to church. Our church had services all day Wednesday, and I always said I went so Mom wouldn’t get mad when I almost always skipped Sundays. I almost always skipped Sundays because I was almost always out late on Saturdays. During the school year I couldn’t go Wednesday mornings and Mom would drag me in and usually with a horrible hang over I had to act like I didn’t have, and that was awful. But there were more awful things like going out Thursday night and taking a physics test first thing Friday, and it was okay now because it was summer.

I went to Barnes and Noble. That’s a pretty lame way to skip church, I know. But most of the rest of the mall was closed at that time, and you could see employees getting ready for the day or something. I didn’t really know what they were doing; I’d never had a job. Anyway, I went to the self-help section because I thought maybe I’d go on a diet.

There are lots of books on being happy back there, though not as many as the ones about being skinny, or getting rich quick. I bet you think I’m going to comment on society now, about how we value being rich and beautiful over being happy, but I’m not. I’m not because I could never be happy knowing I’d found happiness from a how-to guide.

I picked out one of the dieting books I hadn’t read yet and sat down with it and read for a while. Then I thought stores were probably open and I went out and bummed around the mall for a while. The only thing I bought was coffee, though, because I was yawning all over the place.

Eventually I went to Catherine’s house. She was still in her pajamas.

“Hey,” she said and walked away from the open front door. I followed her back to the kitchen, where she was watching a movie on her mom’s portable DVD player and eating Lucky Charms cereal. I told her I was going to make grilled cheese. She grunted, and I made it.

After the movie was over and we’d finished our meals (mine was lunch and hers was breakfast), Catherine went upstairs to shower and dress and I started on what we called ‘Operation Party-Proof.’

I started in the main dining room. Catherine’s family normally ate in the ‘breakfast corner,’ even when it was dinner, and their dining room was dominated by a huge, grand table that was still pristine from years of only eating out their for holidays and big social gatherings and the like. At first we were going to put the snacks out on it, but the table was too perfect and broke up into pieces anyway, so we decided to move it out of the way.

I didn't know how to take the table apart, so I just went about getting rid of the cream-colored tablecloth and the fancy glass centerpiece and all the useless decorative plates hung on the walls. I put them in her parents’ bedroom, which we planned to lock. I wasn’t sure what to do with the plants in the huge, painted ceramic pots. They framed the bay window looking out to garden they’d put in the front yard, and I knew there was no way I could move the plants by myself.

Catherine found me taking small, decorative things from random rooms down to the basement. Some vases, family portraits, a little bonsai plant. Those sorts of things. I got her to help me take apart the table and drag the pieces into her parents’ room.

We had this plan, you see. Operation Party-Proof. We’d spend two or three days moving everything we thought could be broken into the basement and her parents’ room, then we’d lock them and her room upstairs. We’d leave the guest rooms open– you had to have free beds at big parties. Then we’d cover the fancy couches with old blankets. It would look stupid, but it would be more comfortable than my grandma’s plastic covers.

After the party, we’d spend the next few days before Catherine’s parents came home from Seychelles cleaning up. We’d also take down all those fliers we put up for it.

We were really excited about this plan because even though we’d spent all of last semester party-hopping with our new drivers’ licenses, we’d never had one of our own. We weren’t even really sure how to get booze, short of raiding Catherine’s dad’s collection– but that was out of the question. We would definitely get caught that way.

That’s where the fliers came in. We’d get a bunch of cool, older guys to come and bring their own beer. It was perfect.