And so the adolescent fire drill began. Folks threw their cups to the ground, and there was a surge toward the back gate. Emma ran into the house, and Dan was about to follow her when he heard the squawk of a cop siren and froze. Within seconds, a squad car had pulled into the alley. The Highland Park police, like those in any tony neighborhood, were particularly fascistic in their peacekeeping duties. A cop entered the backyard and first came across fellow sophomore Jason deMarini, who, to Dan’s surprise, was not doing anything wrong, and screamed at him to get on his knees, hands high.

That set off a panic, and those left in the backyard scooted into the house to hide. But there were a couple of cops inside too, clearing out the kitchen. Dan had edged into the shadows of the backyard below a lone droopy pine. The backyard Gestapo kept yelling at people to get on their knees. Is this asshole actually going to arrest people? Dan started to freak out. He couldn’t get arrested, for two reasons. The first was these were just bullshit circumstances—he wasn’t even tipsy. The second was that he was more afraid of his mother than the Highland Park police department. He snuck behind the pine tree as the cop knocked wine coolers off tables and continued to harass the partygoers, shining his flashlight into various dilated pupils.

“You know who called us, folks? Everyone. The whole goddamn neighborhood complained. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re officially done here.” The cop grabbed some drunk wiseass—Yep, that’s Tim Hebert from honors bio—by the collar. “Have something to say about that? Try me. All of you are in a shit-ton of trouble.”

The cop turned away, and Dan hitched himself over the fence. As he swung his leg over the top, a spotlight fell on him.

“You! Get down!”

Dan swung his other leg around and fell into a row of hedges. He sprinted across the neighbor’s yard, the thick St. Augustine grass a strange and beautiful blue in the moonlight. He had seconds before a cop tried to cut him off in the alley. As luck would have it, the next fence over was chain link and only five feet high, and Dan hurdled it quick on both ends, putting him three houses down. He heard the squad car begin its crawl down the alley. The next fence was twelve feet high and it was facing in, with no good crossbeams to make purchase on. Dan scanned the far end of the chain link. The house across the alley didn’t have a fence at all and was an open run to the next street over.