And then my brothers clomped into the house, and it broke my concentration. I realized how hungry I was, and sometimes the triplets brought home leftover burgers, cold fries, so I went downstairs to see if they had anything, even though I knew it would make me sick. Zeke was out grocery shopping with his grandmother, and he had promised to see if the posters were still stuck to the boxes of Cookie Crisp.

When I stepped into the living room, my brothers were sitting on the sofa, leaning over the coffee table, staring at a copy of the poster. My poster.

“What’s . . . what’s that?” I asked, my voice sticking in my throat, like it hurt to ask.

“What does it look like, dum-dum?” Andrew said.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“Well, neither do we,” Andrew said.

“They’re all over town,” Charlie said. “I found a bunch of them taped up to the dumpster.”

“And Jenna said her parents got one in their mailbox,” Brian said.

“It’s kind of fucked up,” Andrew said.

“It seems like something you guys would do,” I finally said.

“Yeah, I know,” Charlie replied. “But we didn’t.”

“What. Is. IT?” Brian said, clearly frustrated, like the poster was infecting his brain.

“Like, is it a band?” Charlie said. “Fugitives? That’s a stupid fucking name for a band.”

“Look at those goddamn hands!” Brian shouted.

Just then my mom came home from work. She was holding one of the posters. “Boys,” she said, the poster flapping around in her hand like an unruly bird, “did you do this?”

“NO!” all three of my brothers shouted in unison.

“Oh, thank god,” my mom replied, sagging against the door for a second. “Hobart is writing an article about it.”

Hobart was a guy who worked at the local newspaper. My mom pretended that he was only a friend, but we all knew that they’d been dating in secret, off and on for the last four months. My mom would feel overwhelmed or worry they were getting too close, say they couldn’t see each other, and then they’d end up at Gilly’s Bar and Grill, dancing to the J. Geils Band on the jukebox. They had known each other in high school, though they hadn’t been romantic, but I think my mom needed someone who wasn’t my dad, like maybe the complete opposite. Hobart had this scruffy, unkempt beard and wore Hawaiian shirts and talked about the movie Billy Jack all the time. He was like if Lester Bangs wrote about Fourth of July cake contests instead of the Stooges. And I was happy that there was a guy, even if he was a little embarrassing to me, that my mom could look at and think, Maybe you’ll be better than the last guy. Hobart seemed like a good dude to start with. And now he was going to write about our poster.