Lola sighed and shook her head. “There’s a storm coming,” she said, even though my weather app predicted little more than light rain.

THE END OF NOVEMBER brought with it an influx of eccentric relatives who came from all the far-flung corners of the country to a) attend the annual Thanksgiving weekend craft fair, b) eat all our food, and c) make my life a living hell.

Normally the parasites got free run of the house at Thanksgiving, meaning they usually set up their camp in the basement and kicked me out to sleep upstairs, but seeing as it was senior year and I had so much studying to do, the parasites had (much to their disgust) been relegated to sleeping in Sadie’s old bedroom and on air mattresses in the living room.

The visitors included:

 My grandmother on Dad’s side, Erica Page, a terrifying woman who’d supposedly been a spy during the Cold War and had a shady past she refused to talk about.

 Grandma’s boyfriend, Harold, a meek, pleasant landscape architect who’d been following Erica around saying little more than “yes, dear” for the last decade.

 Dad’s brother, Michael.

 Uncle Michael’s “housemate,” Albert.

 Mom’s sister, Juliette, and three of her five children, all of whom were named after fictional animals. Pongo, Duchess, and Otis were supposedly still too young to be left at home alone (even though Pongo was almost my age). Bagheera and Aslan had purposefully chosen colleges on the opposite side of the country to make the facilitation of easy travel impossible. Aunty Jules still couldn’t understand why they never came home for the holidays, even after they legally changed their names to Bradley and Asher.

 Lola’s aunt and uncle, Wing and Richard, who were inexplicably staying at our house this year instead of at Lola’s. Plus their two kids, Sarah and Brodie.

Thanksgiving dinner went how most Thanksgiving dinners go in the Page household (or any household, for that matter). Albert left in tears after Uncle Michael introduced him to Lola’s relatives as his “long-term housemate.” Aunt Juliette overcooked the turkey and also decided that halfway through the main meal was the perfect time to ask Pongo if he’d ever smoked pot. And Granny Page, when giving a demonstration of what she’d been learning at her local YMCA, managed to knock Brodie momentarily unconscious with a Wiffle Ball bat.

But the cops weren’t called and Uncle Nick, Juliette’s ex, didn’t show up at our house and break his restraining order this year, so it was pretty much a resounding success.

Black Friday brought with it another Page family tradition: going to stores at five a.m. in an attempt to satisfy all our most intense capitalist cravings in one day. Unfortunately, this was also the tradition of almost every other family in town. We all nearly got trampled in a small stampede, there’d been an altercation with pepper spray that left our eyes burning, Brodie had gone missing for several hours, and there were news reports that someone had been stabbed in a department store, but I got a GoPro and an animatronic Yoda for 85 percent off, so yay consumerism, I guess.

By Friday night, I’d taken to barricading myself in the basement to escape the upstairs carnage and questions from my aunt and grandmother about why I looked so glum.

“I see his skinny jeans and his long hair,” I overheard Grandma telling my parents. “He’s been indoctrinated into an emo circle, that’s the problem. I read all about them on the computers at the YMCA.”

“Oh no,” said Mom. “He’s actually practicing Satanism.” Which shut Grandma up pretty quick.

Then it was Saturday. Cold. Dark. Miserable. Appropriate for Grace’s birthday. Time for the oncoming storm: the Thanksgiving fair.

Although the craft fair had originally been designed to showcase livestock and fall produce, it had—since its inception some seventy years before—been a favorite annual social event of teens across the city. Something about the crisp, cool air, the twinkling carnival lights, and the scent of deep-fried food provided the perfect atmosphere for reckless teenage abandon.

I spent most of the day getting ready. Normally I didn’t give much of a crap about how I looked, but tonight . . . Tonight it seemed important to look as attractive as possible. I got my hair cut short. I bought a new jacket—gray marl—new black skinny jeans, and a new black scarf. I didn’t wear my dad’s old clothes, but the expensive wool coat my parents had given me as an early Christmas present. I shined my shoes. I combed and parted and slicked down my new hair. I plucked a wayward strand from my eyebrow. By the evening, I looked like a different Henry. An older Henry, from an age long past.

I wrapped the present I’d bought for Grace as I waited for Lola and the others to arrive. In the end, I’d settled on a book as her gift, a kids’ book called You Are Stardust by Elin Kelsey. It wasn’t exactly metaphorical; the paper didn’t represent the fragility of life or our relationship or anything like that. It was just something I thought she’d like.

I enclosed it in brown paper, a tradition started with Murray years ago after he’d watched The Sound of Music for the first time. We never gave each other cards. Instead we drew on the wrapping paper, sometimes deep and meaningful quotes, sometimes random patterns, sometimes Abe Lincoln riding a velociraptor into battle. It varied. (For instance, this year Lola’s had been the Magic: The Gathering symbols. She was not impressed.)

I thought about poetry at first, some romantic or moving quote, but it didn’t fit. So I sketched Walter White in black pencil, the same rough image the Salamanca cousins used in Breaking Bad, and wrote “Happy Heisenbirthday, bitch” underneath.

“Holy,” said a voice from the stairs. I turned to find Lola in her usual ASOS garb, looking like she’d time traveled here from the late nineties. “Henry, you look hot. Like, super hot. I don’t normally find the male species attractive, but damn.”

“Your tone of absolute surprise is not good for my self-confidence.”