“Shit, I totally could have gotten some from my parents,” said Ben, thinking of the neglected bottles at the back of the cabinet under the sink in the den, wondering if they could afford to lose it now. A boy will never use intoxicants; answer these questions with a steadfast heart. “I know there’s a bottle in the way back they’ve never scratched.”

“Oh, dude”—Hutch turned to Ben—“how could you not tell us that Ahmed walked out of newb boxing!”

“Ugh, Jesus,” Ben said.

“It’s like,” Evan began, “how much further does it go? If he’s doing shit like that and nothing happens, then that becomes totally fine, and then…”

“And then,” said Hutch, “fuck that.”

“Fuck that,” said Evan, before crouching down and hefting the second speaker.

Evan’s body went still as he began to place the front edge of the speaker on the sill, and Hutch looked at Ben and Kyle and grinned. Ben felt cold. Hutch held his finger to his lips, stood up from the stuffed chair, and silently began to move toward Evan. He turned to Ben and Kyle and beckoned with his hands for some conversation so as not to have Evan suspect anything. Ben’s mind was empty and then he said, “They’ve got to have a bottle of Beefeater about a decade old. They mostly drink wine and that shit’s for cocktail parties, but when was the last time they had a cocktail party?”

By this time Hutch was within arm’s reach of Evan, and he carefully extended his arm, then bumped the heel of his hand into Evan’s elbow. The speaker moved a crucial four inches, less teetering than cascading out the window, but Evan lunged forward and got his fingers around the far edges, scraping his forearms against the inside of the window frame. The speaker went still again. “You motherfucker!”

Hutch folded back on the chair in laughter, and Evan shakily set the speaker on the carpet. He took the few steps over to Hutch, and Ben could see him weighing how much he should let out. He punched Hutch’s arm lightly enough that Ben could tell that if he had punched harder, he wouldn’t have been able to control himself.

“Motherfucker!” Evan said again, his voice embarrassingly high, and then, because there was nowhere else to go, he laughed too, and the four of them sat there laughing. Then Evan went back to the window with the second speaker, turning around again and again and show-glaring at the other three, and then it was in place and they played the Allman Brothers live At Fillmore East. Evan kept looking around the speakers to see if there was anyone below them hearing it.

“Yo,” Hutch said to Ben, “I think we’re going to town Saturday.”

“Oh, cool,” Ben said, trying to remember how much money he had in his checking account.

“Where should we go?”