What Beer?

Broomall sat on the western edge of Delaware County, where the subdivisions started to look more like the Main Line than the rest of Delco. This was the buffer zone—twenty minutes from Center City up Route 476, but a world away from the rowhouses and the accents. Here, the colonials had slate roofs and circular driveways, the split-levels sprawled across acre lots with in-ground pools hidden behind privacy fences. Doctors, lawyers, pharmaceutical reps, and the occasional ex-NFL player like Geoff’s dad—people who’d made it but hadn’t quite made it to Radnor or Villanova.

The houses were built in the sixties and seventies, when developers bought up the last of the old estates and carved them into winding streets with names like Fawn Hill and Meadow Brook. By the late nineties, the neighborhood had matured into its wealth—the oaks and maples towered overhead, the landscaping was professionally maintained, and every driveway had at least one luxury car. Basketball hoops were the kind that were installed, not wheeled out of the garage. Above-ground pools didn’t exist here, but heated indoor ones did.

The “crick”—nobody called it a creek, no matter how much their mothers spent on private school tuition—was Darby Creek, or one of its tributaries that cut through the property lines where one development met another. It ran through a genuine stretch of woods, the kind that real estate agents called “natural buffer” and parents pretended made the neighborhood feel rural. The path down was worn smooth by decades of kids taking shortcuts to parties, marked by exposed roots and the occasional beer can some landscaper had missed. In a few spots, someone’s contractor had installed proper stone steps. In others, you still had to navigate the slope carefully, especially after a few Milwaukee’s Best.

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“What, dude? What beer?” Matt asked, as he obviously guided the warm can of Milwaukee’s Best Ice behind his scrawny back.

“What are you doing with that beer, man? Where did you get it?” Mike asked, partially in jest but, like a lawyer, knowing the answer already. They ordered it from Bryn Mawr Beverage. A shady, unscrupulous local beer distributor that never asked for ID when delivering cases of beer. The brothers had it dropped off at Geoff’s house next door. His mother was never home, some divorced bigwig medical administrator. Geoff’s dad played for the Washington Redskins at some point in the past, which everyone thought was cool.

“Dude? What beer?” Matt responded. The camcorder was making him nervous. He thought about how this evidence could and would be used against him in a court of law.

Mike spun the camera around to scan the finished basement. Faux wood paneling enclosed a pool table, an entertainment center, a freezer, and a couple of couches on a thin shag carpet. There was no pad, as it had been removed after the floor flooded years ago and never replaced, and parts of it would slide on the concrete floor and lift into humps of danger-inducing obstacles. With the amount of spirits consumed in this underage speakeasy, they were curious why more accidents didn’t arise from it.

“Who’s got next? I want to play a couple of games before I get too sloppy,” said Justin. Loud, hilarious, and insecure, Justin wore JNCO jeans and a white college hat like so many other Juniors and Seniors. His antique Mercedes served as the group’s main mode of transportation, but only if someone had five bucks to spare. Gas wasn’t free, and since no one had jobs, the only guaranteed travel would be Justin being able to afford enough fuel to drive to the house and get back home. If you wanted to pick up a girl, pick up some drugs, or grab food from a place that wouldn’t deliver—you needed five dollars. Justin never had to put his own gas in the car, as many of these trips didn’t use the full amount of fuel.

Mike walked past the two support beams that players had to navigate while playing pool and sat down in front of the massive bay window, the camera seeing the pool table from another angle now. The video is static for a few moments, as Mike adjusts the settings and soon becomes bored. He glances to the right and sees Jamie and Frankie playing NBA Hangtime on the Nintendo 64. Everyone had their own memory pack with custom players saved and would often use their own creations in the round robin tournaments. An unspoken rotation occurred from the TV set, to the blackjack table, to the pool table and back to the couch, with someone breaking out for a cigarette every 15 minutes. The CD player blared Wu-Tang Clan, Cypress Hill and Rage Against The Machine with a massive black case next to it that held all of the classics.

The laughter drifted through the open back door like a siren’s call—high-pitched, musical, unmistakably female.

“Yo, you hear that?” Justin paused mid-shot, his pool cue frozen over the felt.

Everyone stopped. Wu-Tang went quiet between tracks. Even the Nintendo 64 seemed to sense the shift in atmospheric pressure.

“Girls,” Frankie said, stating the obvious.

Matt moved to the window, pressing his face against the glass like it might help him see through the darkness and trees. “Sounds like a lot of them.”

“Dude, there’s gotta be a party.” Mike grabbed the camcorder, suddenly filled with purpose. “This is it. This is exactly what I’m talking about—we’re sitting here in this basement like a bunch of losers when there’s clearly something happening out there.”

“Could be anywhere,” Jamie said, but he was already putting down his controller.

“It’s coming from across the crick,” Matt said. “Maybe Cornerstone? Someone’s parents must be out of town.”

The energy in the room shifted instantly. This was the scenario they’d discussed a hundred times, usually around 1 AM when the beer had run out and someone would say “wouldn’t it be awesome if…” Now it was actually happening.

“We should go,” Justin announced, already reaching for his jacket.

“Obviously we’re going,” Mike said. “This is destiny, man. This is like… this is our ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’ moment.”

“Except we’re not crashing,” Matt added quickly. “We’re just… investigating. Reconnaissance.”

“We walk in casually,” Justin said, his voice taking on the dreamy quality it always got when he spun his fantasies. “The door’s open. Music’s playing. Some girl—like a Jennifer Love Hewitt type—is standing in the kitchen and she’s like ‘oh my god, where have you guys been?'”

“And she’s got friends,” Frankie added. “Like six friends. And they all go to Sacred Heart and we’ve just never met them somehow.”

“They think we’re hilarious,” Jamie said, warming to the narrative. “They’re like, ‘you guys are so much funnier than the Villanova guys.'”

“They ask us to stay,” Matt continued. “Someone’s older brother bought them like really good beer. Not Beast Ice. Like Yuengling or something.”

“And there’s no weird dudes there,” Justin said. “No sketchy older guys. No one’s boyfriend showing up. Just like… available hot girls who think we’re cool.”

Mike was filming now, panning across the faces of his friends as they constructed their shared delusion. “We stay until like 3 AM. We get phone numbers. We make plans for next weekend.”

“This is it,” Frankie said solemnly. “This is how it starts. We show up to this party, and everything changes. We’ll look back on this night as the night we stopped being the basement guys and became… I don’t know, legitimate.”

“We need to grab Geoff,” Matt said, already heading for the stairs.

They filed up the stairs, a ragtag expeditionary force armed with Milwaukee’s Best confidence and adolescent optimism.

They crossed the yard to Geoff’s house. The lights were off downstairs—his mom working late as usual. Geoff appeared at the back patio door before they could knock, like he’d been watching from the window.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Party across the crick,” Justin said. “Girls. Lots of them.”

Geoff’s eyes lit up. “Game on.”

“Stealth mode,” he whispered as he slipped back inside, moving with exaggerated tiptoe steps that made zero sense since no one was home.

“Dude, stealth mode?” Matt hissed. “Your mom’s not even here.”

“It’s about the principle,” Geoff said, emerging thirty seconds later. “You gotta maintain operational security.”

“We’re definitely getting caught or this whole event is gonna be bunk,” Mike muttered to the camera. “He said stealth mode.”

The night air was cool, that perfect late spring temperature that made you feel alive. They moved as a pack down the hill, past the professionally landscaped beds, toward the banks of the crick.

“I can still hear them,” Justin said. The laughter was clearer now, punctuated by shrieks and squeals.

“Definitely a lot of them,” Jamie confirmed.

They hit the path into the woods, and Mike turned on the camcorder’s night vision, giving everything a greenish, found-footage quality. “This is it, boys. Document this moment. This is the night we found the party.”

The path was familiar in daylight but felt like genuine adventure in the dark. Tree roots grabbed at their sneakers. Someone’s white college hat got knocked off by a low branch. They navigated by the distant porch lights on either side of the woods and the increasingly loud sound of female voices.

“What if they’re like college girls?” Frankie whispered, though there was no reason to whisper.

“Even better,” Justin said. “They won’t care that we’re in high school.”

“We should have brought more beer,” Matt said.

“No, this is better,” Mike insisted. “We show up empty-handed but charming. Like we just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

They crossed the crick on the fallen log that had served as a bridge for years, Justin nearly losing his balance and having to windmill his arms while everyone laughed. The woods on the far side were thinner, and they could see lights now—a house with every window blazing, the backyard lit up like a stadium.

“Holy shit,” Matt breathed. “It’s huge.”

They emerged from the tree line into someone’s lawn, moving low and tactical for no reason other than it felt right. The voices were crystal clear now. Music thumped from somewhere. They crept around the side of the house, and Mike got the camera ready.

“Okay,” Justin whispered. “We go in cool. We act like we belong. We—”

“Stealth mode,” Geoff whispered, crouching lower.

“Oh god, he said it again,” Jamie muttered.

They rounded the corner into the backyard.

A massive trampoline dominated the lawn, and on it, at least fifteen people were jumping, screaming, laughing with wild abandon.

They were all about four feet tall.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEGAN!” someone’s mom yelled from the deck, holding a cake with candles blazing.

The boys froze. On the trampoline, a girl in a birthday crown—maybe ten years old—shrieked as her friends bounced her higher. Streamers hung from the trees. A banner read “DOUBLE DIGITS!”

For a long moment, nobody moved.

Then Mike started laughing. Silent at first, his shoulders shaking, and then building into a full-body wheeze that he tried desperately to muffle. That set off Jamie, then Frankie, then all of them, doubled over in the shadows at the edge of the property, trying not to be heard.

“Jennifer Love Hewitt,” Matt gasped between laughs.

“So much funnier than the Villanova guys,” Justin managed.

“Stealth mode,” Geoff wheezed, barely able to get the words out.

“This is our ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’ moment,” Mike whispered, the camera shaking as his whole body convulsed with laughter.

One of the moms on the deck turned, squinting into the darkness. “Hello? Is someone there?”

They ran.

Back through the yard, crashing into the woods like a retreating army, branches whipping their faces, someone losing a shoe, all of them laughing so hard they could barely breathe. They didn’t stop until they’d crossed the crick and made it halfway back through the woods, collapsing against trees and gasping for air.

“A ten-year-old’s birthday party,” Frankie wheezed. “We crashed a ten-year-old’s birthday party.”

“The way we were talking,” Jamie said, tears streaming down his face. “The fantasy we built up.”

“‘They think we’re so cool,'” Matt mimicked Justin’s earlier voice.

“Shut up, man, you were into it too!”

Mike checked the camera. “I got it. I got all of it. This is going in the vault.”

They stumbled back toward the house, their grand adventure deflated but somehow better for it—a story they’d tell forever, proof that their basement parties, their Beast Ice, their tournament rotations and cigarette breaks were exactly where they were supposed to be.

They slipped back in through the basement’s back door, the same way they always came and went. NBA Hangtime was still paused on the screen. The pool table waited. Wu-Tang started up again from the CD player.

Matt looked at his friends, all of them grinning like idiots, and cracked open another warm Milwaukee’s Best.

“Absolutely nothing at all.”