It began with a text from Elliot that simply read:
"Operation Contraband Owl: 9PM. Room 2B. Tell no one except everyone."
Followed by an owl emoji, a ghost emoji, and—curiously—a wheel of cheese.
Archie stared at his phone, brow furrowed.
"What the hell is Operation Contraband Owl?"
Anne leaned over his shoulder, sipping soda from a straw that was clearly stolen from the campus café. "It's code. For 'party in your room tonight, bring alcohol, don't alert the RA, and probably someone's gonna cry.'"
Archie blinked. "In my room?"
"You have the biggest floor space. And by 'biggest,' I mean you don't have piles of taxidermy or a cello taking up half your bed."
—
By 9:12 PM, the room was aglow with soft, stolen fairy lights strung up between the curtain rod and Elliot's bedframe. Someone had smuggled in a Bluetooth speaker and queued a playlist that shifted between mellow indie and chaotic disco like it couldn't make up its mind.
Marco was first through the door, carrying a duffel bag that clinked. "Let it be known," he declared, "that I risked my life for this. The liquor store clerk was mean and I had to talk to strangers."
"Hero," Anne muttered solemnly.
Jonas arrived next with Lila, tucked into a too-big sweater, balancing a giant bag of kettle chips and a gallon jug of iced tea like a fragile sculpture.
Maya followed, already annoyed. "If we get caught, I'm telling them this was all a sociology experiment and I was just observing the idiots."
By 9:30, Archie's room had transformed from modest dorm box to makeshift speakeasy. The bottle lineup was eclectic and worrying: bottom-shelf vodka, a fancy bottle of plum wine Felix swore was "aesthetic," something bright blue and unlabelled, and, inexplicably, a half-empty bottle of elderflower liqueur.
They sat in a wide circle—on beds, beanbags, blankets on the floor—like a group of camp counselors on their last nerve. In the center, a red Solo cup sat atop a ring of playing cards.
King's Cup.
The rules were simple, chaotic, and completely mutable depending on who was playing. Jin printed a cheat sheet "for legal reasons," but everyone immediately ignored it.
Anne drew the first card: a three.
"Three is for me!" she shouted, toasting herself and taking a bold swig of plum wine. "It tastes like regret and flowers. I love it."
Archie drew next—an eight. "Mate."
Anne immediately pointed at him with glee. "Suffer with me, Jonas."
He groaned, sipping from his cup. "You planned this."
"Obviously."
As the game rolled on, the room filled with laughter, bad decisions, and strange truths. Maya, drawn into the chaos against her better judgment, admitted to once stealing a goose from a golf course. Marco insisted on dancing every time someone drew a Jack. Lila turned out to have a terrifying poker face and kept winning every "Never Have I Ever" round by revealing absolutely nothing.
But it was Anne who held the spotlight.
She could make the room tilt with her laughter, tell a joke so dry it needed a glass of water, and somehow, without trying, pull everyone in. Archie found himself watching her more than once—laughing with her, yes, but also anchoring to her in the storm of jokes and noise.
And she noticed. Of course she did.
Later in the night, after someone spilled vodka on Elliot's sweater (prompting a minor existential crisis) and Maya declared she was "allergic to Jonas energy," the deck grew thin and the buzz in the room softened.
Jonas, now very dramatically wearing Marco's sweater like a cloak, flopped onto the bed. "This," he said, voice muffled, "is the dream."
Anne leaned against Archie's shoulder, warm and tipsy and entirely unbothered. "We're a mess," she whispered. "But it's kind of a beautiful one, huh?"
Archie nodded, the corners of his mouth curling into something soft and unguarded. "Yeah. It really is."
Outside, the wind rattled the windows. Somewhere in the hallway, footsteps passed—too distant to matter.
In here, in the low golden light and clutter of mismatched cups and crumpled cards, Archie didn't feel lost.
Not exactly found, either.
But held. Tethered. Like maybe, just maybe, the threads were beginning to weave themselves into something more.