The Christmas Orphans Club(30)

Theo returns with a white bedsheet and hands it to Priya. “Great, I was about to explain the rules.” Everyone listens to Priya with rapt attention. “First, everyone gets ten slips of paper. You can write down anything you want. A person, a movie title, a place, an object. There are four rounds: The first round is like Catchphrase. You can say any word except the words on the paper to get your team to guess. The second round you can only say one word. The third round is charades. The fourth round is charades under a bedsheet. We use the same words every round, so people get better at guessing as it gets harder.”

“Are there teams?” Finn asks, already excited.

“Yes, we split up into two teams. We go back and forth and each team gets a one-minute turn to get their team to guess as many words as possible. The round is over when we get through all the slips of paper. Each paper your team gets right is a point.”

“This feels too complicated for drunk people,” I say.

“Trust me, it’s fun. The winters are cold at Syracuse, we had a lot of time to fill.”

“I’m game,” Finn says.

“Me too,” Clementine adds.

“Fine,” I say.

“What are the teams?” Theo asks.

“How about boys versus girls. You have one fewer person, but you can go first,” Priya suggests.

Theo moves to stand behind Finn and reaches down to rub his shoulders like a manager hyping up his prizefighter. “You up for it?”

“Absolutely.” Finn beams like he won the lottery.

After refills and tracking down pens—the only ones in Theo’s office were two Montblanc fountain pens in decorative stands, plus we found Clementine’s hair pen under the dining room table—we brainstormed our words and threw our folded slips of paper into a crystal bowl.

“This is way fancier than when we played in college,” Priya says. “We used to use the popcorn slash vomit bowl for this.” She heaves the vessel towards Finn, who is going first.

“One minute on the clock. Go!”

Finn picks out his first slip of paper, and grins when he reads the clue. “It’s a musical about Oz!” he shouts at Theo who has a blank expression on his face.

“Kristin Chenoweth!” Finn adds.

“Erm . . .” Theo scrunches his forehead in thought.

“Popular!” Finn shouts. When Theo doesn’t say anything, Finn tries singing it instead. “POP-U-LAR.”

It doesn’t help. I feel bad for Theo. This reminds me of the time Finn tried to teach me how to play Zip, Zap, Zop, the game they used for warmups in his acting class, and was furious when I didn’t catch on fast enough.

“Witch!” Finn screams at Theo.

“Can we pass, then?” Theo asks.

“Oh my god, we’re going to need to fix this ASAP if we’re going to be friends,” Finn scoffs as he picks a new slip of paper.

“Murder podcast everyone’s obsessed with.”

“Serial?” Theo says.

Before Finn can pick a new slip from the bowl the alarm on Priya’s phone rings to signal time. “They got one point.”

Theo reaches over and grabs Finn’s thigh. “I let you down. I’ll do better next time.” I watch as Finn stares down at Theo’s hand wide-eyed.

“They’re cute,” Clem leans over to whisper to me. I nod, unsure of how to answer.

Priya takes the first turn for our team.

“C’mon, Priya, you’ve got this!” Clementine urges, giving her a drumroll by slapping her hands on her thighs.

Theo starts a timer on his phone. “And, go!”

Priya pulls out her first slip. She squints one eye closed while she thinks. “Topless paparazzi photos of Clem,” she says.

“Leonardo DiCaprio’s yacht!” Clementine shouts, and it’s unclear if she is elated by the memory or getting one right.

“People dumping water on their heads on social media,” Priya says.

“The Ice Bucket Challenge,” I yell.

“The woman from The Hunger Games,” Priya urges. She picks up a fistful of paper scraps instead of one. Our team is on a roll.

“Katniss Everdeen!” Clementine shouts.

By the time Theo’s alarm sounds we have eight slips of paper in our discard pile. Clementine offers Priya a high five when she takes her seat on the couch.

An hour later, we’re in the final round, and my stomach hurts from laughing. After a rocky start, Finn and Theo have come from behind to narrow our lead. Coming into this round it’s seventy-four for the boys, and seventy-six for the girls. Theo’s way too into it, revealing a competitive side that rivals Finn’s. The slips left in the bowl are the ones that keep getting thrown back because no one can guess them.

“Guess it’s me. Promise you’ll still speak to me even if I boff it?” Clementine asks.

“You won’t boff it,” Priya tells her.

Clementine puts the sheet over her head, bringing along a few slips of paper with her underneath.

“Ready, set, go.”

Clementine tips her head back and mimes something with her hands. It looks like she’s playing an imaginary trumpet. Then she starts thrusting her hips like she’s dry humping something.

Theo is laughing so hard that he has to wipe tears from his eyes. We would be laughing, too, if we weren’t so invested in figuring out what the hell Clementine is miming. I never could have predicted tonight ending with an honest-to-god pop star dry humping the air with a sheet on her head. If paparazzi would have paid good money for the photos of her new nose, imagine how much we could get for these. The headline would read: “Clementine Del Suffers Mental Breakdown.”