She put out candlesticks and said, "Rick, can you load the dishes and run them? I'd like a chance to get cleaned up. After that you can change. And Bryce? What are you wearing?"

We swept the floor, put an extra leaf in the table, brought in five more chairs, and set the table. We set it all wrong, of course, but all my mother had to do was shuffle things around to make it right. It looked the same to me, but what do I know?

"Trina and I agreed on a dress-up, so --"

Realizing that my father had the same sense of humor as Garrett gave me the serious willies. I had the hardest time just looking at my dad, let alone speaking to him. But at about five o'clock Friday afternoon I agreed with him about one thing -- we should've barbecued. A barbecue is more, you know, low-key. Instead, my mom was flying around the kitchen, slicing and dicing and barking orders at Dad and me like the president was coming to dinner.

"Mom, it's the Bakers. Are you trying to make them feel totally worthless?"

My dad put a hand on my shoulder and said, "So we can all feel equally uncomfortable, son."

"But why?"

"No, but some sort of button-down instead of a T-shirt would be nice."

Twenty minutes later I still wasn't dressed. And I was extremely ticked off about it because what did it matter? Why did I care what I looked like at this stupid dinner? I was acting like a girl.

Then through a gap in my curtains I saw them coming. Out their front door, down their walkway, across the street. It was like a weird dream. They seemed to be floating toward our house. All five of them.

I pulled a shirt off my bed, punched my arms in, and buttoned up.

Two seconds later the doorbell rang and Mom called, "Can you get that, Bryce?"

I went down to my room and ripped through my closet looking for something with buttons. There were lots of buttons, all right. Lots of geeky buttons. I thought about boycotting my mother's dress-code requirements, but instead I started putting on shirts.

Women. I looked at her and said, "Does that mean I have to wear a tie?"

Luckily, Granddad beat me to it. He greeted them all like they were long-lost family and even seemed to know which one was Matt and which one was Mike. One was wearing a purple shirt and the other was wearing a green one, so it shouldn't have been that hard to remember which was which, but they came in and pinched my cheeks and said, "Hey, baby brother! How's it goin'?" and I got so mad I mixed them up again.

"They look wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!" My mother was acting so hyper I couldn't believe it. She took Juli's pie, then whooshed a path to the kitchen with Mrs. Baker.

Lynetta appeared from around the corner, which made Matt and Mike grin and say, "Hey, Lyn. Lookin' good."

My mother zoomed in from the kitchen, saying, "Come in, come in. It's so nice you all could make it." She called, "Lyn-et-ta! Rick! We've got company!" but then stopped short when she saw Juli and Mrs. Baker. "Well, what's this?" she asked. "Homemade pies?"

Mrs. Baker said, "Blackberry cheesecake and pecan."

She wasn't looking at me. She seemed to be looking at everything but me. And I felt like an idiot, standing there in my geeky button-down shirt with pinched cheeks and nothing to say. And I got so nervous about having nothing to say that my heart started going wacko on me, hammering like it does right before a race or a game or something.

Black skirt, black nails, black eyes -- for a nocturnal rodent, yeah, I suppose she was looking good.

They disappeared down to Lynetta's room, and when I turned around, my granddad was taking Mr. Baker into the front room, which left me in the entry hall with Juli. Alone.

On top of that, she looked more like that stupid picture in the paper than the picture did, if that makes any sense. Not because she was all dressed up -- she wasn't. She was wearing some normal-looking dress and normal-looking shoes, and her hair was the way it always is except maybe a little more brushed out. It was the way she was looking at everything but me, with her shoulders back and her chin out and her eyes flashing.

We probably only stood there for five seconds, but it felt like a year. Finally I said, "Hi, Juli."

Her eyes flashed at me, and that's when it sank in -- she was mad. She whispered, "I heard you and Garrett making fun of my uncle in the library, and I don't want to speak to you! You understand me? Not now, not ever!"

My mind was racing. Where had she been? I hadn't seen her anywhere near me in the library! And had she heard it? Or had she heard it from somebody else.

I tried to tell her it wasn't me, that it was Garrett, all Garrett. But she shut me down and made tracks for the front room to be with her dad.

So I'm standing there, wishing I'd punched Garrett out in the library so Juli wouldn't stick me in the same class as someone who makes retard jokes, when my dad shows up and claps me on the shoulder. "So. How's the party, son?"

Speak of the devil. I wanted to whack his hand off my shoulder.

"Yeah, you know, I knew that." He rubs his hands together and says, "I guess I ought to go in and say hello. Coming?"

I shrug away from him. "Mr. Baker's name is Robert, Dad."

He leans out so he can see into the front room and says, "Hey, the dad cleans up pretty good, doesn't he?"

"Nah. Mom probably needs my help."

I didn't run off to the kitchen, though. I stood there and watched Mr. Baker shake my father's hand. And as they stood there pumping and smiling, this weird feeling started coming over me again. Not about Juli -- about my father. Standing next to Mr. Baker, he looked small. Physically small. And compared to the cut of Mr. Baker's jaw, my dad's face looked kind of weaselly.

This is not the way you want to feel about your father. When I was little, I'd always thought that my dad was right about everything and that there wasn't a man on earth he couldn't take. But standing there looking in, I realized that Mr. Baker could squash him like a bug.

Worse, though, was the way he was acting. Watching my dad chum it up with Juli's dad -- it was like seeing him lie. To Mr. Baker, to Juli, to my grandfather -- to everybody. Why was he being such a worm? Why couldn't he just act normal?

You know, civil? Why did he have to put on such a phony show? This went way beyond keeping the peace with my mother. This was disgusting. And people said I was the spitting image of my father. How often had I heard that one? I'd never thought about it much, but now it was turning my stomach.

Mom jingled the dinner bell and called, "Hors d'oeuvres are ready!" and then saw me still standing in the hallway. "Bryce, where'd your sister and the boys go?"

"Go tell them, would you? And then come have some hors d'oeuvres."

I shrugged. "Down to her room, I think."

"Sure," I said. Anything to get rid of the taste in my mouth.

Lynetta's door was closed. And normally I would have knocked and called, Mom wants you, or, Dinner! or something, but in that split second before my knuckles hit wood, my hand became possessed by Evil Baby Brother. I turned the knob and walked right in.

Matt-or-Mike whispers, "It's about over. We'll be right there," like of course I was there to say it was time to eat. What else would I be doing there?

Does Lynetta freak out or throw stuff at me and scream for me to get out? No. She ignores me. Matt-and-Mike give me a nod, and Lynetta sees me, but she's got her hands over some headphones and her whole body's bobbing up and down as she listens to a portable CD player.

Nothing new there, but now it really bugged me. Like all of a sudden I didn't fit in anywhere.

Something about that made me feel, I don't know, left out. I wasn't even a person to those guys. I was just baby brother.

Not at school, not at home… and every time I turned around, another person I'd known forever felt like a stranger to me. Even I felt like a stranger to me.

Standing around eating little round crackers smeared with whipped cheese and fish eggs didn't do much for my mood either. My mother was acting like an entire swarm of busy bees. She was everywhere. In the kitchen, out of the kitchen. Serving drinks, handing out napkins. Explaining the food, but not eating a thing.

Hanging near her didn't stop the Baker boys from shoving crackers in whole, though. Man, I was just waiting for them to wrap themselves around a table leg and flex.

Juli, her dad, and my grandfather were off to the side talking nonstop about something, and my dad was over with Mrs. Baker looking about as stupid as I felt, standing by myself talking to no one.

My mom flutters over to me and says, "You doing okay, honey?"

"Yeah," I tell her, but she forces me over to where Granddad is anyway. "Go on, go on," she whispers. "Dinner will be ready in a minute."

Perpetual motion.

Lynetta didn't buy Mom's explanation on the hors d'oeuvres -- she wound up dissecting hers, categorizing the parts into gross, disgusting, and revolting.

My friend, I didn't even know what perpetual motion was. They were talking closed systems, open systems, resistance, energy source, magnetism… it was like joining a discussion in a different language. And Juli, Juli was saying stuff like, "Well, what if you put the magnets back to back -- reversed the polarity?" like she really understood what they were talking about. Then my granddad and her dad would explain why her idea wouldn't work, but all that did was make Juli ask another question.

So I stand there and the group of them opens up, but it's more like a reflex than anything. No one says a word to me. They just keep right on talking about perpetual motion.

"Amen? As in you're glad high school's over?"

"Isn't that funny," he says, looking around the table. "High school was probably the best time of my life."

After Mom served everyone their food, Dad seemed to decide that he ought to be the one directing the conversation. "So, Mike and Matt," he says, "you're seniors this year."

Matt and Mike look at each other, then back at my dad. "The regurgitation gets to you after a while."

Matt-or-Mike says, "Seriously? Dude, it's totally lame!" Mrs. Baker shoots him a look, but that doesn't stop him. "Well, it is, Mom. It's that whole robotron attitude of education. Confine, confute, conform -- I've had totally enough of that scene."

My father starts twirling his fork. "Why's that?"

I was completely lost. And even though I was pretending to follow along with what they were saying, what I was really doing was trying not to stare at Juli.

"Absolutely."

When my mom called us for dinner, I did my best to pull Juli aside and apologize to her, but she gave me the cold shoulder, and who could blame her, really?

I sat down across from her, feeling pretty low. Why hadn't I said something to Garrett in the library? I didn't have to punch him. Why hadn't I just told him he was out of line?

"Amen!" they say together.

I took a deep breath and tried to relax. Tried to dive down to calmer water. This wasn't my fight.

My dad eyes my mom with a little I-told-you-so grin, then says to Matt and Mike, "So I take it college is out of the question?"

Besides, Matt and Mike seemed cool with it. "Oh, no," they said. "College is a total possibility."

God, what was with him? In a flash I was clutching my fork and knife, ready to duke it out for a couple of guys who pinched my cheeks and called me baby brother.

"Yeah, we got accepted a couple of places, but we're going to give the music thing a shot first."

Matt and Mike look at each other, then shrug and get back to eating. But Lynetta glares at him and says, "Your sarcasm is not appreciated, Dad."

"Oh, the music thing," my father says.

Mom freezes, not sure what to do about Lynetta, but then Mrs. Baker says, "Dinner is absolutely delicious, Patsy."

"Lyn, Lyn," says Matt-or-Mike. "It's cool. Everyone's like that about it. It's a show-me-don't- tell-me thing."

"That's a great idea," Lynetta says, jumping out of her seat and dashing down the hall.

"Thanks, Trina. It's… it's nice to have all of you over."

All the adults were dying to jump up and turn the thing down, but Lynetta stood guard and just glowered at them. And when the song's over, Lynetta pulls out the CD, punches off the player, and then smiles -- actually smiles -- at Matt and Mike and says, "That is the raddest song. I want to hear it again and again and again."

"Tough," says Lynetta, and cranks the volume.

Matt-or-Mike says to my dad, "You probably don't like it, but it's what we do."

There's about three seconds of quiet and then Lynetta comes in and jabs at the CD player buttons until the drawer slides back in.

Boom, whack! Boom-boom, whack! The candles practically shake in their holders; then guitars rip through the air and about blow them out. Matt and Mike look up at the speakers, then grin at each other and call over to my dad, "Surround sound -- awesome setup, Mr. Loski!"

"You boys wrote that song?"

"Lyn, no! Not a good idea," says Matt-or-Mike. "Yeah, Lyn. It's not exactly dinner music."

Matt and Mike interrupt him with a slamming hard high five. And while I'm getting uptight about my dad asking them questions about money, of all things, my mom's fumbling all over herself, trying to sweep away my dad's big pawprints. "When Rick and I met, he was playing in a band…"

He looks at it a minute and says, "So if you're Piss Poor, how do you afford to press CDs?"

Dad holds up the CD. "This is the demo?"

My dad laughs a little and says, "Right," but then adds, "Although I am a little curious. This is obviously not a home-done demo, and I happen to know studio time's cost-prohibitive for most bands…"

"Dad!" Lynetta snaps at him.

"It's okay, Lyn. Just a joke, right, Mr. Loski?"

Poached salmon was suddenly swimming down the wrong hatch. And while I'm choking, Lynetta's bugging out her raccoon eyes, gasping, "You? Played in a band? What did you play, clarinet?"

Matt-or-Mike laughs and says, "Dude, we've got a thousand songs, but there's only three on the demo."

He motions Lynetta to pass the CD over, saying, "Just the one song?"

"Yeah."

"Uh-huh."

My mom kicks him again, but Dad turns on her and says, "Stop it, would you? I'm just curious!"

"No, honey," my mom says, trying to hold it all together. "Your father played guitar."

Matt and Mike lean in. "We did it ourselves."

"Country," my dad says. "Which is nothing to scoff at, boys."

Matt and Mike are still grinning. "There's not."

"Guitar?"

"And when our band looked into getting a demo made, it was astronomically expensive. That was in a big city, where there was a little competition. Getting a demo made around here? I didn't even know there was a facility."

"So where'd you go? And how'd you afford it?" My mother whacks him under the table again, so he says, "I'm just curious, Patsy!"

"This right here? You did this yourselves? That's impossible." He's looking almost mad about it. "How'd you get the gear?"

"Cool!" Matt-or-Mike says. "Rock? Country? Jazz?"

Matt-or-Mike says, "It's cool, Mrs. Loski." He smiles at my dad and says, "We kept cruising the Internet and the trades looking for a deal. Everyone's blowing out their old analog gear for digital because that's the move everyone else has made. Digital, if you want to know our opinion, is weak. You lose too much of the waveform. There's not enough fat to it, and obviously we like it beefy."

"Dude! We know. Total respect, man."

Which was probably the only honest thing my dad said all night. After that he was quiet. He'd try to plaster up a smile now and then, but man, underneath it he was broody. And I was feeling kind of bad for him. Was he thinking about the good old days playing in a band? I tried picturing him in cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, with a guitar strapped across his shoulder, playing some old Willie Nelson song.

"Exactly, but that is the last and only step we'll compromise on. It's just a necessity of being part of the industry. Everyone wants CDs. But the multitrack and the mixdown to two-track is analog. And we could afford it, Mr. Loski, because we got used gear and we've been saving up our pennies since we were twelve years old." He grins and says, "You still play? We could, you know, lay down some of your tunes if you want."

My granddad puts up a finger and says, "But a CD's digital, so…"

My dad looks down, and for a second I couldn't tell if he was going to get mad or cry. Then he sort of snorts and says, "Thanks, but that's not me anymore."

Then, when the night was over and the Bakers were piling out the front door, something else strange happened. Juli touched my arm. And for the first time that night she was looking at me. It was that look, too, channeled directly and solely at me. She says, "I'm sorry I was so angry when we first came in. Everyone had a good time, and I think your mom's really nice for inviting us."

Then she was gone. Out the door and into the night, part of a chorus of happy good-byes. I tried to catch my breath. What was that? What was wrong with me?

He was right -- it just wasn't him.

Her voice was quiet. Almost a whisper. I just stood there like a moron, staring at her.

But the fact that it ever had been made me feel even more like a stranger in a strange land.

"Bryce?" she says, touching my arm again. "Did you hear me? I'm sorry."

I managed a nod, but my arm was tingling, and my heart was pounding, and I felt myself pulling toward her.

My mother closed the door and said, "There. Now what did I tell you? That is one delightful family! Those boys are nothing like I expected. Lynetta, why didn't you tell me they were so… so charming!"

"They're drug dealers is what they are."

Everyone turned to my father and dropped their jaws.

"What?" my mother said.

"There is no other way those boys could afford to buy recording gear like that." He glared at Lynetta. "Isn't that so?"

Lynetta's eyes looked like they were going to pop right out of her head.

There was a split second of silence, and then he slapped her, smack, right across the cheek. That put my mother in his face like I'd never seen and sent my sister screaming insults over her shoulder as she ran down to her room.

"Rick, please!" my mother said. "You can't just make accusations like that!"

"It's the only thing that makes sense, Patsy. Believe me, I know how musicians are. There is no other explanation for this."

Lynetta shouted, "I happen to know for a fact that they don't use or deal. Where do you get off saying something like that? You are such a twofaced, condescending, narrow-minded jackass!"

My heart was pounding. Lynetta was right and I almost, almost got in his face, too, and told him so. But then my granddad pulled me aside and we both retreated to our own little corners of the house.

Pacing around my room, I had the urge to go talk to Lynetta. To tell her that she was right, that Dad was way out of line. But I could hear her through the walls, crying and screaming while my mom tried to calm her down. Then she stormed out of the house to who-knows-where, and my mom took up with my dad again.

So I stayed put. And even though the earth quit quaking around eleven o'clock, there were tremors out there. I could feel them.

As I lay in my bed staring out the window at the sky, I thought about how my dad had always looked down on the Bakers. How he'd put down their house and their yard and their cars and what they did for a living. How he'd called them trash and made fun of Mr. Baker's paintings.

And now I was seeing that there was something really cool about that family. All of them. They were just… real.

And who were we? There was something spinning wickedly out of control inside this house.

It was like seeing inside the Bakers' world had opened up windows into our own, and the view was not a pretty one.

And why hadn't I ever seen it before.

Where had all this stuff come from?