A couple of weeks later, it was a Friday night, about a week after my seventeenth birthday. Gail had been in town with Pete and Ashley, and just after dark, they arrived home in Pete's car, with some beer, a bottle of bourbon, and some bottles of coke. They were followed down our long driveway by Lisa, in her car, with some guy called Craig, who she was with that week, and they got out with some booze of their own, and everybody came inside.

My parents had gone out as usual on a Friday night, and we wouldn't see them until after midnight, and Gail had left our dinner in the oven before Pete had arrived to pick her up, so we all ate in the big room that we referred to as the dining room. Like most of the rooms in the place, it was huge, and in addition to the dining table, it had a couple of couches and a TV set in there as well, so it was also used as our family room.

The living room was down a corridor from the dining room, and it was a huge room, about twenty-four feet square, and divided into two sections by an archway supported by two columns. It must have been pretty grand in its day, and the far wall had a row of windows that looked out onto the veranda, with French doors leading out there. The veranda went around three sides of the house, and if you walked out through the French doors, you could walk to the front door of the granny flat at the side of the house.

The side veranda was on my dad's to-do list at that time, so some of the floorboards out there were little rickety, but it was okay if you watched your step.

We all sat around a big table as we ate, and Gail had changed into some jeans and a casual top, but Ashley was still in her school uniform, which consisted of a dark blue plaid skirt and a light blue blouse, but she had taken off her shoes. She had gone straight downtown from school to meet Gail and Pete, and hadn't bothered to change out of her uniform when they got back to our place. Lisa was wearing a short skirt and sleeveless top, and even during dinner, she and Craig had their hands all over each other. Stevie and I sat and ate, and during dinner, Pete and Craig brought out some six packs of beer, and the three girls all had a beer with dinner, as well as the guys.

After dinner, Stevie went to his room to play with his computer games, and that left me with my sister and her friends in the dining room. The beer was flowing by this time, and Pete offered me a beer from one of his six-packs.

I got on well with Pete, and although he was only a year or so older than me, he had a car and a part time job, and I saw him as an experienced man of the world, which just shows how much I had to learn about life, at seventeen. Pete used to sit around with me sometimes, talking about cars and football with me, when he and Gail weren't mauling each other, and I liked a beer occasionally so I took the beer from him.