Dawn gathers us all in a U formation. She looks over a few times like she’s expecting me to do something. I try to say Nah, you shine today with my eyes.

She announces the word “Horn,” and looks at me again.

The group repeats the word slowly. “Horn. Horn. Horn.”

“Horn,” I join in on the third horn. We sound like a scary cult.

Then people just start spewing random intercoursing words.

“Subway,” a dark-skinned boy wearing a Dunder Mifflin shirt shouts.

“Meatball parm,” a petite pale woman with spiky purple hair responds.

“Chemistry class,” Aaron shouts. My eyes bounce from one team member to the next, trying to understand the pattern. Each time someone says a word, they hold eye contact with someone. Sometimes me. I try not to look as stupid as I feel. Everyone’s constantly looking at each other to make eye contact instead of looking away to avoid it. It’s extremely intimidating.

“Benjamin Franklin.” A tall, white, skinny, freckled guy with a man-ponytail giggles.

“Benjamin Franklin working at Subway!” Aaron counters. He looks at me, seemingly for approval.

Dawn hops in. “The Founding Fathers founding Subway the sandwich company!” She says it with confidence. Authority.

“Yes!” the others chorus. “Yes!” I throw in belatedly, nodding along with their overeager enthusiasm. Some of them throw in commentary of what the Founding Fathers founding Subway would be like. It’s a struggle to match their energy levels through the many layers of confusion fogging my comprehension.

Clearly, they’re all following some sort of pattern, and I am not in the know.

“Horn!” Dawn starts again, her eyes searching mine now. What the hell are we doing?!

My eyes fall to her long perfectly styled tossed waves. “Hair model!” I shout blindly.

The woman with the purple hair pipes up, “Rapunzel!”

We play this weird game three times, and then everyone moves back against the wall of Dawn’s spacious living room. I’ve never felt like more of a floundering idiot.

They’re performing what feels like a choreographed act, and I haven’t learned the steps. In sets of two, the team members get off the wall and start performing scenes loosely related to the phrases yelled out during the weird cult shouting game.

How do they know which ideas to use? How do they decide who should step off the wall and who stays here? Dawn keeps throwing me questioning looks. Maybe other members are too, but I don’t notice them as much because my eyes follow Dawn around wherever she goes, and everything she says takes root in my mind and settles there and makes me like her more. It’s subtle, but it’s clear she’s in control here. She’s the team leader. When she says something, everyone takes it in. And when she speaks, it’s always simultaneously thoughtful, spontaneous, and hilarious.