Dark Room Etiquette

by Robin Roe

Genres: YA Mysteries & Thrillers

Synopsis

SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD SAYERS WAYTE HAS EVERYTHING.

Popularity, good looks, perfect grades—there's nothing Sayers' family money can't buy.

Until he's kidnapped by a man who tells him the privileged life he's been living is based on a lie. 

Trapped in a windowless room, without knowing why he's been taken or how long the man plans to keep him shut away, Sayers faces a terrifying new reality. To survive, he must forget the world he once knew, and play the part his abductor has created for him. 

But as time passes, the line between fact and fiction starts to blur, and Sayers begins to wonder if he can escape . . . before he loses himself.

 

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Release date: October 11, 2022

Publisher: HarperTeen

Print pages: 512

Sample

Prologue

I’m having coffee with my statue friend.

“This isn’t bad, right?” I say. “Maybe not as nice as a Caffè Americano . . .”

My friend doesn’t laugh. He’s never really had the best sense of humor.

With a sigh, I lower the paper cup back onto the table. Straight ahead of me there’s an old-fashioned television, the kind with one of those fish-eye screens, and in it I can see the entire room: dilapidated wood paneling, a shiny silver door, an ancient paisley sofa, and me—at a round table right in the center. If I stay perfectly still, my reflection looks like stone.

I wave. A blurry hand waves back.

Yep. This is what becomes of a person with too much free time—they talk to themselves and befriend their own reflection.

Shaking myself out of it, I quit pretending my cup of water is coffee and grab a paintbrush. I’m determined to complete a self-portrait today, or at least a passable human. I study my face in the screen, but it’s got a fun-house-mirror effect, so my drawing turns out wavy and featureless, like a shadow with green eyes.

Maybe I should just stick to what I’m good at.

I dip my brush into the water, slosh it around to clean it, then plunge it into the well of blue paint, and start covering the shadow-boy in choppy ocean strokes. I’m so focused I barely notice when the silver door slides open behind me.

My eyes find the TV screen again, and for a second it looks like a statue father is standing in the threshold. But then he moves, ruining the illusion by stepping into the room and setting his thermos on the table next to my watercolors. When I look up at him, he ruffles my hair with a big hand that smells like motor oil.

“Been doing this all day?” he asks, unfastening the top button of his flannel shirt.

“Yessir, pretty much.”

Smiling, he squeezes my shoulder and holds up a brown paper sack.

“Is that . . .” I edit my tone, asking as carefully as I can, “Is that my surprise?”

His cheerful expression evaporates, making it clear I didn’t ask carefully enough. “What’s the problem? You don’t even know what it is.”

“It’s just when you said surprise this morning . . . I thought . . .”

“You wanna go outside.”

I don’t answer, which is the same as a yes.

Looking bone-weary now, he drops the sack onto the table and takes a heavy seat in the empty chair across from me. “You know it’s not safe.”

“Just for a few minutes.” I’m trying not to whine, which sucks because I’m failing miserably. “I bet no one would even see me.”

“We can’t take that kind of chance.”

“But—”

“I told you no.”

I glare at the tabletop. I can’t help it.

“Are you gonna sulk now?”

“I’m not.”

“Then change your face.”

Sometimes that order feels impossible, like he might as well be telling me to shapeshift. But I concentrate, make my eyebrows relax and my lips go slack. I’m rearranging all my cells, creating the face of a boy who is sorry.

He taps the side of the bag with two fingers. “You don’t care about this?”

“Yessir, I do. I just want—”

“Enough,” he snaps. “You can’t always get what you want. Now gimme your foot.”

I take an invisible breath, and then I empty my eyes.

Turning in my seat, I stretch out my leg. I keep my face blank as his fingers slide behind the shackle to touch my skin. He takes the key ring from his pocket, shuffles though the many keys, and unlocks the cuff. Now that my foot is free, I rub my ankle where the flesh is a little raw.

He’s still watching me—I can feel it—so I sneak in a hidden breath, fill my face with gratitude, and say, “Thank you.” 

One

“Slow down.”

I let out an aggravated huff and check my speedometer. I’m not going that fast, and even if I were, in what world is it even remotely okay for Lex to order me around in my own car?

Deciding not to answer, I slant a smile at Bria, who’s euphoric in the bucket seat beside me, like we’re on our way to a party instead of the first day of junior year.

She crosses her long legs, her brown hair cascading over her shoulders as she adjusts the black-framed glasses she wears purely for aesthetic purposes. She likes to do this thing where she rips the glasses off her face and stuns you with her beauty. It’s funny because there isn’t much of a difference, but either way she’s striking, like an all-American girl at a photo shoot.

“Aren’t you excited?” she says.

Luke sticks his wild blond head in between us. “I’m excited!”

“We can tell,” I say, teasing. “You’re wearing your best Star Wars shirt and everything.”

He nods cheerfully, then returns to his position of cuddling Lex in the back seat.

“Can you believe it, Saye?” Bria clutches my arm. “We’re finally eligible for court!”

“Court?”

“Homecoming court! Of course I can’t be queen yet, not until we’re seniors. But princess!”

“You’re already a princess,” I tell her, and she flutters her long lashes—the ones she had installed last week, strand by perfect strand. Her glossy red lips move fast as she tells me about this year’s theme and how we have to color-coordinate our outfits because we’ll remember that night FOREVER and EVER!

I honestly don’t know how she can get excited about another school dance. Nothing ever happens. Just the same bad music and sexually-repressed principals making sure no one dances close enough to enjoy themselves.

“We have six weeks,” I remind her.

Her hazel eyes bulge. “You’re right! There’s so much to do!”

“What do you need to do besides buy a dress?”

“Trust me. A lot.” She pats my shoulder like my ignorance is charming.

“Well, I have to plan the entire after-party.”

“But you have a team of people helping you with that.”

“He does?” Lex pipes up from the back seat.

Bria nods at her, then says to me, “I bet you’ll get prince, Saye.”

I grimace. King sounds cool, I guess, but the king’s kid? Not so much.

“Yeah, probably,” I agree, glancing in the rearview mirror just in time to catch Lex rolling her eyes.

Bria pivots to the back seat. “Hey, Lex, have you picked out your dress?”

“I’m not sure I have a date yet,” Lex answers, and right on cue Luke assures her that she most definitely has a date, but he has to figure out how to ask her in the most perfect way. Another glance to the mirror, and I catch the pair of them smiling into each other’s eyes like it’s going to be their wedding day.

“What about you?” Bria curls her fingers over my thigh. “Are you going to ask me in a romantic way?”

Before I have to answer that, Lex says, “We’re going to get pulled over if you don’t slow down.”

“Saye . . .” Luke’s voice drifts to the front of the convertible. “Maybe you should.”

Meeting his eyes in the mirror, I scowl. We’ve been best friends since preschool, and he’s never given me shit about anything—not till Lex moved here this summer. She breezed into that Fourth of July celebration on the Square, all sophisticated and runway-pretty with her perfect cheekbones and mermaid hair, and somehow she gravitated to Luke of all people. And it’s cool that he has a girlfriend. Seriously, good for him. But I don’t know why it has to be a girl who’s constantly giving me death glares.

“It’s fine,” I snap. “We’re not going to get pulled over.”

And that’s when I hear the shriek of a siren.

“Oh my God! I told you!” Lex is clearly about to lose it, and Luke starts murmuring that everything’s going to be okay as I pull onto the shoulder.

With a bored sigh, Bria checks her cell phone. “I hope this doesn’t make us late. I have a Student Government meeting before school.”

“It won’t.” I give her a quick kiss. “Everything’s cool.”

There’s a loud thud behind me, and I turn to find an enormous cop knocking his baton against my tinted window. As soon as I press the button to lower it, he pokes his upper body inside, reminding me of the time I went on a drive-through safari with my third-grade class and a moose stuck his head into our bus.

“Do you have any idea how fast you were going?” Moose Cop growls.

“I have some idea, yes.”

He looks dumfounded for a second—and then pissed. When I don’t start quaking, he lowers his sunglasses to scowl at me more directly in a way that I guess is supposed to be intimidating.

It’s not.

We

lock eyes until his gaze strays to my hyper-red Aston Martin, and to me again with an expression I’m used to. He’s jealous.

“License and registration.”

I hand them over and see the exact moment he recognizes my name. Sayers Wayte.

A multitude of expressions cross his face all at once, then he returns my cards. “I’m gonna let you off with a warning. But you need to watch your speed.”

And he stalks off.

As I merge back onto the road, Lex asks, slow and astounded, “What just happened?”

Bria gives her a meaningful smile. “You’ve got a lot to learn about this town.”

We’re a block from school when Bria cranks the windows down and the music up. Clusters of kids turn to stare as I zip past the bronzed lion at the main entrance and into a spot at the front of the student parking lot.

I kill the engine, climb out, and immediately, a bunch of friends surround my car. Everyone has the chemical smell of new clothes and too much hair product. Bria’s in her element, gliding from person to person, while I hang back with Luke and Lex, where I’m forced to watch them whisper into each other’s ears.

I must be making a face because Luke’s forehead wrinkles in concern. “Aww. Are you feeling left out?” He asks this without a trace of sarcasm as he slings an arm over my shoulder.

Immediately, I try to squirm out of reach—it’s next to impossible to look cool when someone’s sympathetically cuddling you. Luke smiles like I’m being funny, but he removes his arm. I’ve just struck a more respectable pose when Garrett makes his way over, wearing a plain white tee with rolled-up sleeves like a 1950s greaser. His heavy black eyebrows are mid-glower, and he’s clearly about as excited to be here as I am.

“Hey.” He presses his big fist into mine. “You taking that weight training class this year?”

“Uh. No.” I can’t imagine using public gym equipment covered in some stranger’s sweat. “You?”

“Yeah. I’m benching three hundred now.”

I also can’t imagine having to sit beside Garrett, trying to lift as much as he can. Once upon a time we were both average-height boys just shy of average weight, but he keeps hitting the growth spurt lottery, while my height’s been stubbornly in check for months.

“Hey, Lex!” Bria calls out. “If you want to join the SGA, we should probably go.”

Luke relinquishes his tight hold on Lex’s hand, then watches the girls disappear into the school with the pitiful eyes of a puppy someone left out in the rain.

“So . . .” Garrett says to him. “You and the new girl?”

Luke’s immediately on guard. “Yeah?”

“Just surprised.”

“Why?”

Garrett

 shrugs. “She’s so full of herself. All she talks about is New York like she’s too good for anyone in Texas.”

A knowing smile spreads across Luke’s face. “You mean she shot you down.”

“She wishes. I’m with Marissa.” Garrett’s eyes are hooded, but I spot the irritation flashing in them, and I let out a groan. We’ve been at school for less than thirty minutes, and he and Luke are already getting into it. “Does Lex know you’re Luke Biwalker?”

If Luke’s bothered by being called that, he doesn’t let it show. “Garrett, you do realize this is the twenty-first century, right?” He flings out his arms as if he’d like to hug the whole world. “Sexuality is fluid!”

“Yeah, maybe for you. All’s I’m saying is Lex thinks she’s better than everybody.”

The enormous grin hasn’t budged from Luke’s face. “No. She doesn’t. She just has very particular tastes.”

Amused, I pat his back. “Yep, she has a thing for skinny kids who like Yoda. Honestly, Luke, she may be your only hope.”

His eyes light up when he gets my non-offensive Star Wars reference, then the bell rings and a more serious expression settles over his face. “All right, Junior Year. Here we come.”

This has got to be the dumbest thing our school has ever done. I’m not sure who thought it would be a good idea to crush the entire student body into the auditorium—in August with subpar AC—but my nose is already cringing at the clashing odors of cheap body spray and one thousand perspiring teens.

“Let’s get out of here,” I tell Garrett, who’s seated beside me. Immediately, he starts scanning the perimeter with his pale blue eyes in a way that makes me think of a sniper.

Luke sends me a scandalized look. “It’s the first day.”

“So?”

“So I don’t want to get in trouble.” Luke’s been saying this to me since I wanted to steal the classroom gerbils when we were five.

“Well, no one asked you.” Garrett glares at him.

Pouting, Luke crosses his arms. “Some teachers are blocking the exits anyway.”

I peer over my shoulder. Sadly, he’s right.

I’m still looking for a way out when Marissa enters the auditorium, clicking photos with her phone as she walks.

“Hey, Saye!” She smiles, then climbs over my lap to sit next to Garrett, and I guess he was telling the truth because they immediately start making out so hard it looks like they’re going to hurt themselves.

More friends file in to join our row, but I’m not sure where Bria is. I keep glancing around the auditorium, and I wince when my eyes land on Abby Whitley, this aggressively Christian girl who was always trying to recruit me into her church back in middle school.

Someone’s

tapping the mike, so I face the stage. Principal Gardiner, dressed in a crinkled brown suit, clears his throat. “Welcome back, Laurel High School students,” he says, and the auditorium goes quiet long enough for him to announce that he’s got a real treat for us—an introduction to all the extracurriculars we can join this year.

Fantastic.

A moment later the Thespian Society saunters out. Even their walk is dramatic, like they learned how to do it in a classroom instead of in real life.

I check the exits again. Still blocked.

They perform a ridiculously long skit about avoiding the evils of drugs. We fidget, roll our eyes. Then they reenact the funeral scene from Steel Magnolias, and the tough-but-fair crowd starts to boo.

It only goes downhill from there. There’s the Glee Club, Chess Club, Computer Club, and with each one, the crowd keeps getting bolder and more Lord of the Flies. When some dude tells a band kid what he can do with his flute, Principal Gardiner stomps back out.

“Faculty.” He presses his mouth to the mike. “Please be advised that you are to write up any student who disrupts today’s proceedings.”

The teachers start moving through the aisles like a SWAT team.

Gardiner spends a few moments staring the audience down before he waves a beckoning arm toward the wings, and a boy with chubby cheeks and a head full of bouncing curls rolls a sheet-covered cart onto the stage. The wheels squeak loudly in the now-silent auditorium.

“Hello,” the kid says in a surprisingly confident voice for someone who looks about twelve. “My name is Evan Zamara, and I’ll be representing the Science Club today.”

This should spark a thousand groans, but the crowd’s been frightened into submission.

“The Science Club has some amazing activities planned—including a viewing party here at school for the meteor shower.” The kid glances around like he’s expecting a chorus of gasps, but it’s crickets. “They’re predicting a thousand meteors an hour—that’s sixteen meteors a minute. Nothing like this will happen again in our lifetime or the next.”

Still nothing from the bored-as-hell crowd.

Undeterred, he points a remote at the giant screen behind him, and an artist rendering of what the sky is expected to look like is projected onto the screen.

Luke starts grinning at me like a maniac.

I shake my head for him to cut it out. We were into space stuff when we were like ten, but we’re too old for that now. I’m beginning to think that having a friend who’s known you since you wet your pull-ups isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Luke pokes out his bottom lip and directs his eyes back to the stage, where the Science Club kid’s still talking. “This meteor shower is happening on August nineteenth—just one year from today.”

Now the auditorium fills with annoyed murmurs. Why is he even telling us about this? No one’s going to remember a meteor shower by then.

I

check my phone. We’ve been stuck in this auditorium for so long, but surely things are about to wrap up.

“And now for the experiment,” the boy says.

Dear God.

He whips the sheet off his cart, and underneath is a mass of wires and bulbs. He explains his experiment while he’s twisting the tiny multicolored cords, and it’s boring, so boring.

“If we can just dim the lights . . .” The lights dim a little. He flips a switch. “And now . . .”

Only nothing happens.

The boy scratches his dark curls and fiddles with the wires. “Okay, now.”

Still nothing. If this were the 1920s, someone would be looping a cane around this kid’s waist and yanking him off the stage right about now. He keeps on fiddling until I can’t take it anymore. It’s one thing to miss the first two periods, but this is eating into Homeroom, which is free time.

“I think I should go up there and put him out of his misery,” I joke under my breath.

Garrett gives me that look—the one that means I’m shocking, but in a good way. “Do it.”

Luke shakes his head at me wide-eyed, and now he’s just made it irresistible.

I stand up.

Nervous laughter skitters out of my row as I walk down the aisle. I pass a couple of teachers who look like they aren’t sure if this is part of the show or not, and I keep taking long strides until I’m center stage, gazing out at a thousand curious faces.

I soak it in.

Then I lower my lips to the mike. “I just want to say how . . . extraordinary this has been. I honestly don’t know how any of us are going to be able to choose between all these incredible clubs.”

The crowd roars with laughter like I’m the best stand-up comedian they’ve ever heard.

“But I think we need time to process all this, so I’d like to propose that we be dismissed. Immediately.”

Thunderous applause races across the auditorium, joined by stomping feet. The curly-haired boy looks up with Bambi eyes, but they quickly shift down to his mound of tangled wires.

Principal Gardiner storms back out and leans into the mike. “All right, Mr. Wayte, thank you for sharing.” His put-upon tone just makes the crowd laugh harder. He glances to his old-man watch. “I suppose this has run a little long . . . Very well, people. Dismissed.”

“Are you in trouble?” Luke asks when he spots me in the hall a few minutes later.

“What do you think?”

Shaking his head, Luke falls in step beside me. “So what class do you have now?” I show him my schedule, and his blond eyebrows fly up. “You’re still taking that class?”

“Apparently.”

“

But it’s so . . . so useless.”

“Yeah, yeah, te futueo et caballum tuum,” I say, and he cracks up with the easy delight of a little kid. I’ve been teaching him how to curse in Latin and screw you and the horse you rode in on just happens to be his favorite.

“But seriously, why don’t you just take Spanish or French or something? You’re basically fluent now, right? Or actually! Why don’t you switch and take art with me?”

“Luke. We have five classes together.”

“And . . . ?”

“And you already talked me into using one of my electives on Psychology.”

“That’s because Ms. Wells is the best. She’s our Homeroom teacher too, you know.”

“Okay, so that’s five classes and Homeroom.”

“I don’t care! Switch into art!”

“I don’t think so,” I tell him, veering left.

I can’t draw to save my life.

When I get to third period, Mr. Rivas closes his newspaper and adjusts his pin-striped bow tie. He looks like a method actor gearing up for a part, only he’s doing it all wrong. This is nineteenth-century college professor, not modern-day high school teacher.

“Sayers,” he says formally.

“The one and only.” I glance around the empty classroom. Looks like I am literally the one-and-only person who registered for Advanced Latin, which is strange, because of all the languages I know, I think Latin might be the most interesting.

“So how was your summer?” Mr. Rivas asks me, in Latin.

“It was all right,” I answer, in English. “I went to Paris, but it was boring, then I went to Spain and that was even more boring. How about you?”

“Hmm.” He strokes his gray-speckled beard. “My car broke down, so I took the bus to Target a lot. It was fun.”

I chuckle. He has a nice, dry sense of humor. “That’s funny.”

“In Latin.”

“Istud ridiculum est.”

He corrects my pronunciation, and I argue that it’s hard to be certain just what the correct pronunciation is, and he grins as if he’s delighted.

“Ready to dive in?” He hands me a new textbook and a syllabus, and soon I’m getting lost in conjugating verbs until my phone—which is bright red like my car—buzzes on the corner of my desk with a series of texts from my father:

Got a new place!

Check it out!

Then a blast of photos.

I scroll through them. They’re a total cliché of what bachelors are supposed to want, all modern and silver with lots of windows but no curtains. Through one of the floor-to-ceiling glass walls, something grabs my focus.

I text:

Is that the OCEAN?

And he texts back:

How bout we catch a movie on Sunday, and I’ll explain. We can go to the Rialto. I know how much you love their balcony seats.

Yeah. When I was ten. My thumbs hover over the screen. I’m not sure I want to see a movie with him. I never have fun when we hang out, plus there are a bunch of back-to-school parties this weekend. But I haven’t seen him in over a month.

I’m still trying to decide when I get this I’m-being-watched feeling—and not the good kind. I look up and spot an old man glaring daggers at me from the hall. He huffs and puffs his way into the room with the swagger of a mall cop. The billion keys on his waist are jingling.

“Can I help you, Mr. Elders?” Mr. Rivas asks.

“Is that student s’posed to be usin’ his cell phone during class?” he demands.

“I’ve got things under control,” Mr. Rivas says primly. “But thank you.”

The old man scowls as he huffs back out.

“Who was that?” I ask.

“Our new assistant principal.”

“Doesn’t he know who I am?”

“Sayers.” Mr. Rivas gives me a mildly disapproving look.

“What?” But then I realize what he’s getting at, so this time I ask in Latin: “Doesn’t he know who I am?”

I slip out the back doors before the final bell, beating the after-school crowds, and hop into my convertible. Now that no one’s around to complain, I lower the top and race through my town. Over the bridge, past Wayte Library and the Square, and I make it to the wrought-iron gates surrounding my neighborhood in record time.

The guard nods at me through the window in his little booth, then he buzzes me through, and I speed along the winding road to my house. When Luke and I were little, he’d call it my castle, and that’s probably because the architect modeled it after an actual castle in France. In preschool, Luke would run out of Legos trying to build it. He’d annoy other kids by hoarding all the towers. His version was always a rainbow-colored monstrosity, but in reality Wayte House is all about clean lines.

White stone.

Blue slate roof.

Every window symmetrical, every shrub a neat square or perfect circle.

I press the button on the small remote pinned to my leather visor. The next iron gate parts, so I continue down the tree-lined drive to a parking space, then climb out and stroll down the walkway, passing acres of immaculate green lawn. There’s a white gazebo, scattered fountains, an English garden, statues of Greek figures, and at the edge of the property are thick woods. My mom’s thrown a lot of events out here, and in just a few weeks it’ll be my turn. My mom’s even promised to clear out on the night of Homecoming so I can really be in charge.

Reaching the back door, I brace myself. I’m so ready for a little me-time, but I still have to get past Mrs. Marley, and for a lady pushing seventy, she has incredible hearing.

I cross the black-and-white marble checkered floors of the great room—so far so good—into the long, vaulted hall, and I’m almost to the backstairs when I hear, “Saye, honey? Do you need anything?”

I cringe, embarrassed even though no one’s around to witness this. But honestly, no one else my age still has a nanny.

“I’m good, Mrs. Marley!” I call over my shoulder.

“Would you like me to bring you up a snack?”

I pause in my steps. I suppose it does make her happy to look after me, so I call back, “That would be fine,” then I jog up the stairs to my room on the third story. Streams of sunlight are flooding through all my windows, along with the irritating whine of a riding lawn mower. One by one, I snap the shutters closed, then I collapse onto my bed, finally, blissfully alone.

At seven o’clock, I stuff myself into a black suit to attend the fundraiser for some place called Oak Hill that works with troubled horses, or maybe it’s troubled kids who ride horses. I can’t keep track.

My mother’s waiting for me at the bottom of the main staircase wearing a sparkly dress, more sparkly stuff clipped into her blond hair. She lifts her head as I descend, a radiant smile brightening her face.

A secret that will die with me is that when I was eight years old, I bought best friend necklaces for the two of us—that kind where each person gets half a heart. Actually, I guess it’s not much of a secret since I wore it to school for weeks until some older boys questioned me about it, then made it clear you can’t be best friends with your own mother.

At the moment, my mom’s decked out in a strand of dripping emeralds, but to this day, she swears that brass half-a-heart is her favorite piece of jewelry.

“You look so nice!” She draws her phone from her purse as quick as a gunslinger and aims it at me.

Moaning, I hold up a hand, but she ignores me, so I deliberately make monster faces on every click.

“

Saye!” Her tone is scolding, but she’s laughing too hard to sound very threatening. “Come on—one normal face, just one.”

“Why? You know they’re going to take a million photos at the event.”

“I don’t care. These are for me. Now stop being such a teenager.”

A few media outlets covering the event snap our picture, and before I even have a chance to tell my mom I told you so, we’re whisked into a crowded ballroom where I’m encircled by legions of her friends and colleagues.

Oh my, so handsome!

Look at that golden hair.

Be careful with this one, Nadine.

All the winks and tones are a lot more suggestive than they used to be, something Luke would call Seriously Creepy, but my mom doesn’t seem to notice.

She nudges me in my side. “Beau Baxter is heading our way—he’s a state senator, but word has it he’s running for governor next year.” She lowers her voice to a whisper, “Be charming.”

As soon as he reaches us, I hold out a hand. “I hear you’re going to be our next governor.”

With a big bleach-white smile, he heartily shakes my hand. “I can’t confirm or deny anything just yet.” Then he leans in like this is just between us. “But that is certainly the plan.”

Mom gives me an approving smile before she takes the senator’s arm, saying there’s someone he just has to meet, then they’re off to mingle.

I snag a glass of champagne from a passing tray and find a dark corner. Bored, I scroll through my phone, but I look up when a dramatic hush falls over the room.

My grandfather’s here, looking like a ruthless sea captain with his blue tailcoat and steely gaze, but his expression softens like it always does when he sees my mother. He wraps her into a warm hug and swoops her around the room, puffed up with pride. They schmooze for a solid hour before we’re shown to a dining room dotted in white-cloth-covered tables and votive candles, and I’m all for ambience, but it’s so dark I can hardly see.

Increasing the brightness on my phone, I snap a few pics, then post one.

Right away the comments roll in, stuff like: Where are you?? And of course: Jealous!

“Sayers,” my grandfather says in the same imperious tone he uses on everyone except my mother. “Why is your phone out at the table?” Mom sends me an amused look and a wink that says, ...