Sheila Beloyianis’s going away to college party wasn’t exactly ruined by Ted Offgutt, but it can certainly be said that the quality of the company took a sharp dive when he and the rest of his gang showed up at her backyard gate dressed in their gamer t’s and bowler hats. If one were to take a poll of the attendees – friends, family, a selection of her favorite teachers – nine out of ten would have rated the party an admirable attempt, soiled only by the crew who showed up with the Carls Jr breath.

Who invited Offgutt? As the case normally is with these things, no one really knows. The next morning, while picking streamers out of the grass, Sheila put the blame solely on her ex-best friend, Orin Whittle, who had a penchant for pettiness and could conceivably have organized his revenge in the six hours between being uninvited to the party and Offgutt’s arrival. Of course, it’s entirely possible that no one is to blame, and that the gang simply saw the bright colored lanterns while walking down Tamarind Place and wandered in uninvited, but the pieces fit together so well in Sheila’s mind that she was more than content to villainize her friend of three years and never speak to him again.

No matter their origination, the Offgutt gang – or, as Parker Lewis and the rest of the Lacrosse team called then, the AV Club – arrived at 9:12 and immediately set about chatting up everyone they were even tenuously connected to. They made everyone at the festivity an awkward interpretation of themselves five minutes earlier, with long stretches of silence and flimsy excuses that were necessary to hasten an escape. It should be said that neither Ted Offgutt or any of his friends had a malicious bone in their body. They were slight, peaceful soldiers, content to take their anger out on the digital world, not the actual one. They terrible energy they brought was unintentional, which somehow made it all the mote irritating to the people who had come to wish Sheila well.

Ted, the de facto leader of the gang (because he owned a car), was the chief offender of the night. He lingered near the drink table, a cup of red punch in hand, chatting up anyone who was thirsty enough to brave his company.

“Pretty cool party, huh?” he asked Todd Yi, the quiet head of the yearbook committee. It didn’t matter who he was talking to, though, as it was the same cadence every time, as if he was reading from a TelePrompTer.

“Yeah. I’m really going to miss Sheila,” the cornered person would say as they hastily filled up a cup with non-alcoholic blue. At this point, his feelers picking up on the faintest aroma of an actual conversation, Ted pulled down his t-shirt so the entirety of the image imprinted on it could be seen. This is always met with a confused raising of the eyebrows, a nodding of the head.

His t-shirt was maroon with four gold names organized in a block. Shigeru & Gunpei & Satoru & Hiroshi.

“You like it?”

“What is it?” they invaroably asked.

“It’s the names of the four guys who made Nintendo what it is today. This guy made Mario and Zelda and pretty much everyone important, this one invented the Game Boy, this one was CEO when Gamecube came out, and, of course, there’s Hiroshi. ”

“Cool.”

“Its actually a riff on an old Beatles t-shirt. John and Paul and George and Ringo.”

“Oh,” this person would say. “So it requires me to have seen that t-shirt and know the names of the guys that invented the Nintendo.”

“I guess,” Ted replied, and smiled sheepishly. He let go of his shirt. “Most people have seen the Beatles one.” And then it would be over. The acquaintance would nod a few times, take a step in any direction away from Ted, and mutter some sort of goodbye. Ted would purse his lips as they walked away, then scan the crowd to see if anyone was making eyes at him.

How many times did this conversation take place over the course of the two and a half hour party in Sheila’s backyard? A dozen times, at least. Friends, family, the hired help – no one was spared the explanation of the Meatbun t-shirt. Those who made the mistake of lingering near the drink table rarely returned, and those who did did so hastily, as if a horde of wild animals was about to stampede through and there was only two minutes to pour a vodka cranberry.

One can be thankful that Ted remained positioned where he landed, and didn’t rove through other people’s conversations or, God Forbid, walk up to Sheila and engage in pleasantries with her, but while Ted Offgutt explained his t-shirt to everyone at the party, his gang did space out like the many awkward tentacles on a nerdy giant squid.  They gorged on the food, proclaiming it’s deliciousness to anyone who would listen, then scoured the house for awkward family photos to take pictures of on their Droids and upload to Facebook.

By one o’clock, the party had shrunken to four of Sheila’s closest friends. They huddled around a bonfire and traded stories about Freshman year while Offgutt and his gang cleared out the back gate. They had a raid they wanted to a get through before five AM, and it was obvious that they weren’t going to score with any of the girls here, and wouldn’t have even if the girls had wanted to.

The next morning, when the party was over, Sheila spent all day cleaning up her backyard and feeling like a chapter of her life had just finished. She was going off to school, where she would grow up and make new friends. Her future was amorphous, but she knew it was going to be bright and full of possibilities. Any hard feelings about the unmistakable turn for the worse her party took were thrown out with the garbage. She was above her home town problems, now.

Ted Offgutt slept in until 11:22. He pulled himself out of bed when he heard his roommate, Rich Waltertop, firing up the PS3. He sat on the couch and pondered the phone number written on his hand. When had he written it? Whose number was it? Is  it possible that he met a girl who recognized the humorous references on his shirt? That they hit it off and he didn’t remember it?

He gave the number a call.