But right now, what was most on Katie’s mind was getting her brother back home before he got himself into some kind of trouble with his dimwitted pals. Her first instinct was to call her mother, but she’d made it pretty clear before she left that this was a very big day for her. The last thing she wanted to hear was that Archie was up to no good.

So instead of calling her, Katie decided to try to talk some sense into her idiot brother herself. She brought up archie from her contacts list, and tapped on his name.

It rang. And rang. And rang. And—

“Yeah?” Archie said.

In the background, someone—Katie thought it sounded like Nick—shouted, “Hi, Katie!”

“You need to get your ass back here right now,” she said in her most stern, older sister voice.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said.

“After Intercourse!” That time it sounded like Rory.

“Whose car are you in?” Katie asked.

“Nick’s, I mean, like, Nick’s dad’s car.”

“Do his parents even know he’s got it?”

Archie paused. “Nick’s dad set it all up to take voice commands from him.”

“That’s not what I asked you. Do they know he’s got the car?”

“Okay, maybe not technically. But he’s very responsible, and the car won’t do anything stupid or illegal. We can’t speed or anything. In a lot of ways, it’s not even any fun at all. Did you know there’s a place in Pennsylvania called Intercourse? I wonder if there’s an In-N-Out Burger there?”

“Get home right now,” she said. “If you don’t get back here, I swear I’ll kill you.”

“Well, if I don’t come back, then you can’t kill me,” Archie countered. “That’s very abusive language you’re using, Katie.”

The little shit. He was parroting their mother.

Maybe the time had come to just plead.

“Come on, Archie, just get them to drop you off. Please. You know Mom’s not going to freak out just at you over this. She’s going to freak out at me, too. And then it’s going to be awful around here. We’re both going to be grounded till Christmas.”

Archie was quiet for several seconds at his end. Katie briefly wondered if the call had dropped out. It happened a lot on the island.

But then, “Hang on, Nick is saying something. Nick is saying we might go to Garrett Mall. Is that okay? If we’re at the mall, we can’t get into any trouble there.”

“It doesn’t even open for, like, another hour,” Katie said.

“So we’ll drive around the neighborhood till then. We’ll be fine. Gotta go.”

And with that, he ended the call.

“Shit!” Katie said.