Invisible Parties — 21 of 31

Book - Teens

Under My Roof is a challenging party in tangle. Under My Roof is north of beautiful people and west of startroom. The printed name of Under My Roof is "Under My Roof".

The description of Under My Roof is "Middle-class living-room, with couches. The teenagers variously slouched around the couches and the floor are clearly the occupant's spawn and comrades thereof. Big blocky stereo from back when CDs were new and exciting. The air's full of the reek of cheap weed, half-empty drinks are scattered over every surface and niche, and over at one end of the couch there's a couple pointedly making out."

the couches are an unimplement in Under My Roof. Understand "couch" or "sofa" as couches. The description of the couches is "Highly comfortable. Not cheap, but not new."

the blocky stereo is an unimplement in Under My Roof. The description of blocky stereo is "From an era when everybody felt the need to own gigantic hi-fi tower speakers, then play recopied tapes on them."

The tsadesc of Under My Roof is "Either the Rebeccas are pulling on your experience or they're [i]murderously[/i] good at guessing: this is basically you at seventeen or so, gangly and raw-boned. You dressed in a similar style back then, only with worse taste and an aggressive indifference to whether clothes fit properly. Or needed to be washed. Or repaired. Or burned."

The desolation of Under My Roof is "There's a muffled explosion. It takes you a second to realise that it's the door being kicked in.[p]Then there are red-and-blues flashing harsh through the windows, and everyone's scrambling in one direction or another. There's muffled shouting through a megaphone, but the words are broken up by further crashes and yells of fear or pain. [i]Thump[/i], a window breaks and the room's filling with smoke, and some of the shadows moving through it have gas-masks and clubs."

Instead of using warrior in Under My Roof when Under My Roof is doomed:

say "This is an unsustainable fight. You've got no allies, a surprise attack by what look like LE professionals, no weapons or defences worth speaking of. Chances are you're surrounded. Escalate and they'll just fucking shoot you. Your only way out is through the ways.";

The demise of Under My Roof is "A gas-masked figure grabs you, wrenches your arm around behind your back. He gets about halfway through the motion before reflex decides for you, twisting from the hold, reversing the grip, and finally driving your weight against the extended arm to break the elbow. You're not really watching as you do this; you're scanning the room for the next one.[p]The next one unholsters and shoots you, snap-snap snap-snap, in the chest.[p]Intellectually you know you're dead, but the warrior gift (or pure adrenaline) gets you far enough to shoulder-throw him into a wall before your body stops doing what you tell it. As a final act, it should have been a lot more gratifying."

The javeinit of Under My Roof is "Jave is sitting in a big armchair, blonde-dreadlocked, entirely comfortable but a little apart from the group."

The javedesc of Under My Roof is "Yeah, holy fucking shit, those are some [i]masterful[/i] blonde dreads. Given how long they must have taken to cultivate, and that your first impression of them isn't [i]greasy louse-farm[/i], she has to have at least five years on anyone here. Which, now that you consider it, is probably about right: the others have body-language with the slight, self-conscious deference due to the Older, Unfathomably Cool One."

The javecostume of Under My Roof is "Her hair is still in those spectacular dreads, and a small, impractical part of you hopes she'll be moved to keep them."

The listendesc of Under My Roof is "Peppy, punk-tinged white-girl ska. Summer tunes. You've got enough of a buzz on that they feel agreeably cheerful rather than irritating."

The singdesc of Under My Roof is "You don't really know the words well enough to follow along."

The dancedesc of Under My Roof is "You get to your feet and pull of a few steps of a skank, shuffling self-consciously. Nobody passes comment."

The boozedesc of Under My Roof is "An ill-conceived assortment of pre-mixed, syrupy cocktails-in-a-bottle, cheap beer, and - oh, god, tequila shots. You didn't know tequila could come in plastic."

The shortbooze of Under My Roof is "You reluctantly snag a wine cooler."

The rivdesc of Under My Roof is "Rivka Strossi sits cross-legged on the floor at the head of the coffee table, skinning up."

The rivcostume of Under My Roof is "One temple is buzz-cut over the ear, and she's wearing a stringy tank-top that exposes impossibly detailed tattoos across both arms, a random explosion of patterns and pop-culture iconography that you can't decipher."

The teenagers are a crowd in Under My Roof. The description of teenagers is "You estimate the age range to be between fourteen and twenty, with the mode about sixteen; this is unreliable, though, because everybody's trying very hard to look older than they are, principally through the medium of dirt."

The rivweapon of Under My Roof is "a katana".

Understand "couple" or "kids" or "kid" or "teenager" as teenagers.

The closeclue of Under My Roof is "That smell. The weed's Dun Thunder, no question about it."

the Dun Thunder is an unreachable clue. the javeclue of Under My Roof is Dun Thunder. The description of Dun Thunder is "Lacmore was like prison's meant to be, in that you needed something to trade. You figured boredom would be the lethal part, brought books. Jave showed up with several thousand Sharpies and about ten kilos of Dun Thunder, a smooth bud grown by one of the far-flung freeway communes. The good thing about Dun Thunder was that it wasn't very exciting, but if you smoked a one-skin, very slowly, about every four hours, it worked about as well as the horse pills without making you feel like a carcass the next morning. In short order, everything in barracks smelled of it." Understand "weed" or "pot" or "marijuana" as Dun Thunder.

Instead of smelling in Under My Roof:

if the location of Dun Thunder is Under My Roof begin;

try examining Dun Thunder;

otherwise;

say "People whose sense of hygiene is a work in progress. Weed, largely cheap resin. Bad beer growing stale.";

end if;

Carry out using laughing one in Under My Roof:

say "You don't think she knows you, in this context. Nothing to suggest she picks you out from the rest of these schmucks. So how did you two actually connect, at first, anyhow? Not the first time you technically knew one another. Lacmore, at some point, but... fuck, you try not to focus on those circumstances too much, and you spent enough time in one form of escapism or another that memory is not to be relied upon.[p]To some extent, you're pretty sure that you started hanging out in Lacmore because you were the only people you knew who weren't painfully hopeless kids, losing their shit, or true believers. You'd quirk an eye at her during the more murderously nonsensical moments of officer briefings, and once you realised that you could make her laugh... everything else follows.";

wait for any key;

say "If she could laugh about fuckwitted middle-managers running a bloody bush-war, she can laugh about stoned teenagers desperately trying to be cool. So you bide, and take a toke or two, and watch for her gaze. At length you catch it and aim an 'aww, bless' side-eye at a narrow-trousered bumfluff delivering sagacities on Palestine, and she tightens her mouth to suppress a snigger. And god, the sparkle in those eyes.";

ruin everything;

Carry out using troublemaker in Under My Roof:

say "You hate to mess with them. They're just kids, they're raw and stupid in so many different overlapping ways, and... somehow they're comfortable. You don't grow up by being comfortable, is the thing. This group's never going to change or grow without a major disruptive influence.[p]The fact that this justification seems completely reasonable to you is probably a sign that this place is making you raw and stupid yourself, but when in Rome, what the fuck, right?[p]Your overture is sequentially snogging both halves of a couple in the upstairs hall, letting yourself get caught the second time. You extract some stoned secrets from one guy and deliver them to the worst possible recipient, with certain shifts of emphasis. You identify the guy with bottled-up fury and subtly needle him until he has a spittle-spraying outburst at someone less subtle. You allow the drama to overlap and interweave.[p]You don't feel [i]good[/i] about it. But at the end of the evening, there are [i]two[/i] people who are at the heart of everything, and Jave is quietly watching you, awaiting your next move. It's a start.";

ruin everything;

Carry out using warrior in Under My Roof:

say "Jeez, they're just kids. Drunken roughhousing seems socially plausible, but you'd probably break one.";

Carry out using abider in Under My Roof:

say "She seems to be handling that fine already. The question here, seems to you, is not whether you get through the party; it's whether the two of you connect.";

Carry out using commander in Under My Roof:

say "This is not an evening that would be improved by leadership.";

Carry out using antinominalist in Under My Roof:

say "She's cool enough as it is.";

Carry out using critic in Under My Roof:

say "You dread to think what insights you would derive from any writing this lot produced. Mercifully, if any of them have artistic aspirations, they're not leaving their manuscripts lying around."

Carry out using forager in Under My Roof:

say "[one of]FOOD. YES. The best idea. With unerring instincts, you locate a kitchen, raid the fridge, find a frying-pan, and produce a fried-egg sandwich stacked with an ill-considered assortment of larder loot - blue cheese, cashew nuts, mayonnaise, dill pickles, probably some other stuff. It's too sloppy to consume with your hands, so you eat it over the sink, off the blade of a steak-knife. It is the finest meal.[p]On returning to the living-room, your situation has not markedly improved.[or]You could make another sandwich, sure, but then you'd eat it again. Which would be great, yes, but maybe you should focus[stopping]."