Hobbledehoy: (n.) An awkward, gawky young fellow.
"Alright, alright everyone, simmer down." Annie looked up at the man standing in the centre of the room, surrounded by a large cluster of about twenty people that were crammed together on the furniture and even sprawled out across the floor so everyone could find a seat. There was a pretty sizeable variety, but more than half of them had nearly identical dark hair and eyes that placed them as Andersons. Annie was squished in between Auggie and his younger sister, Abigail, the only Anderson sibling that was younger than him.
"So everyone knows the rules, right?" the man in the middle of the room, Auggie's oldest brother, Alan Junior – who apparently only answered to AJ – said. "Each Anderson, and their significant other, takes a shot whenever they are involved in a scuffle in the video. Two shots if it's a fight involving Adam."
As everyone murmured their agreements, Annie couldn't help but think that this was the strangest funeral she had ever been to. When she had offered to go with Auggie to his next oldest brother's funeral, he had warned her that the Andersons did things a little differently. Said that they didn't mourn over death, but instead celebrated life. She hadn't really expected this though. The actual funeral had been fairly normal. But now the entire family was armed with shot glasses and bottles of whiskey were sprinkled between them all, and they were crowded around the large television preparing to play a drinking game while watching home movies.
"You don't have to do this if you don't want," Auggie said to her in a low voice, looking uneasy.
"It's fine," Annie assured him, nudging his shoulder with hers. "How bad can it be?"
Auggie snorted but he was smiling. "I'm the youngest brother," he said like that was an answer. "We'll both be under the table in the first five minutes of footage."
AJ had started the video and he perched himself on the arm of the couch next to his wife. Annie watched the television as a grainy image blinked into life, showing a living room, the same one they were currently crammed into, only the furniture was old and tacky, and the white numbers in the bottom corner of the screen dated the video back to December 1984. The seven Anderson children were standing there, little Abigail no more than two years old, all of them bundled up in heavy winter clothes.
"Alright everyone," a motherly voice said from somewhere behind the camera, "wave to the camera."
All seven children on the screen began waving wildly, grinning from beneath their caps and behind knitted scarves. The only way Annie could tell them apart was by their sizes, although this was still guesswork because the three middle boys were nearly the same size. At a word from their mother, the children began trooping toward the front door, talking excitedly about their snow day. One boy abruptly shoved another – the smallest one, not only in age but in stature too since he was built differently than the older boys – and in retaliation the youngest boy whirled around and shoved the other back.
"Ha, Auggie gets first shot!" Anthony, second oldest boy, crowed and the others laughed. "And that's Adam he's fighting with."
"We are off to a lovely start, my dear," Auggie intoned to Annie, grinning. Then both of them poured their first shots, swallowed them, and then refilled and did it again. Annie blinked a little in response to the burning in her throat, and next to her Auggie shook his head like he was trying to get water out of his ears. "Damn, that's some good whiskey," he remarked, making his family laugh. "Which of us makes good enough money to afford this stuff?"
The rest of the video continued on in much of the same way. It turned out that the two Anderson girls, Abigail and the oldest child April, got into fights just as often as any of the boys. By the time the video concluded with Anthony's eighth birthday party, everyone in the room had consumed at least five shots, some of them even more.
Stumbling slightly on his way to the video cabinet, AJ selected another one at random and popped it into the ancient VCR. This video opened up in the backyard, and the date at the bottom of the screen read June 1996. There were only the four youngest kids present in this video, all of them now teenagers. When Annie's eyes found the face she'd been searching for, she let out a very loud laugh before she could stop herself.
"What is it?" Auggie asked, but then on the video Adam – the Anderson sibling that wasn't sitting in the present day living room with them – began shouting something about his car and Auggie looked horrified. "Oh God, no, AJ did you have to pick this one?" he asked in alarm.
"I didn't choose it on purpose," AJ replied, trying not to fall off the arm of the couch as he laughed at the scene and his brother's reaction. "I just grabbed one at random." The rest of the family had dissolved into laughter as Annie turned to look at her best friend.
"Auggie, is that really you?" she asked, comparing the image on the screen to the man sitting next to her. The Auggie on the television – she did a quick calculation and realised he would've been fifteen at that point in time – was even narrower than in the present. Instead of smooth and lean, he was long and lanky, looking a bit like someone who'd been stretched out. His limbs seemed too long for his body and his clothes – a Metallica tee-shirt and acid washed jeans – hung oddly on his thin frame. The curly hair on his head was longer, hanging in what looked vaguely like a mullet, and a pair of Coke bottle glasses were perched on his nose.
"Possibly," he said evasively. "Unless it is the video I think, then no, that is definitely not me."
"It's totally him," Abigail chipped in brightly.
"Yeah, you can tell by the ears," Anthony said, causing all of the other siblings to try and stifle their laughter. "No one else on earth has ears that big."
"Oh shove it," Auggie said, one hand coming up to touch one of his ears self-consciously as a blush spread across his cheeks.
"Besides, Augs always has been the nerd of the family," Andrew, the middle child, said with a shrug. The discussion didn't get any further than that, cause at that moment teenage Abigail had thrown herself at Adam and everyone's focus turned to the shots she was taking.
Annie noticed that Auggie still seemed a little tense at her side, fingering the edge of his shot glass and not joining in on the teasing. His neck and ears were bright pink. She bumped him with her shoulder, and he cracked a small smile. "So my teenage years were a little awkward," he admitted, trying to sound offhand. "I eventually grew into my limbs."
"You wore glasses," Annie commented, and it brought a real smile to Auggie's face.
"Yeah, until I –" he faltered for a second, and she saw his eyes flick around like he was checking to be sure no one was paying them attention, "until I moved to DC," he amended pointedly. "That's when I invested in contact lenses. I think I still have my old glasses stashed somewhere in my apartment, not that they do me much good anymore."
Annie looked up at the television again, and felt a soft smile cross her face. "If it makes you feel better, in high school I had braces," she said and he laughed. "And you know, I think you were actually kinda cute."
"Were?" Auggie asked, raising an eyebrow. Annie chuckled and elbowed him in the side before relaxing her weight against his shoulder. He didn't even bat an eye, just slipped his arm around her shoulders and drew her in more comfortably. They sat quietly, listening to the present day Andersons bickering around them and Adam Anderson arguing with the teenaged Auggie on the screen.
"We never agreed on anything," Auggie said at length, a faraway look on his face. "Adam and I, I mean. We were only sixteen months apart, the closest in age of any of us, but there wasn't a single discussion in existence that we would stand on the same side of. But he was the first person to show up at the hospital after my accident and he was there every day until I was released. And even there, he was the first one to not treat me any different. The first thing he said to me when I woke up was, 'Welcome back, Jackass.'" Annie saw the moisture building in his eyes even as he chuckled quietly and she reached across him to find his hand, squeezing his fingers reassuringly. He returned the pressure with a smile.
"I'm going to miss that crazy bastard," he said and drew his arm more securely around her shoulders. "Thanks for coming with me, Annie. I just – I really didn't think I could face this alone." Annie couldn't think of a good verbal response to that, so she simply threaded her fingers in his and nodded against his shoulder. It was only a few seconds later that the Adam on the television had jumped on Auggie from behind, making them both tumble to the ground as they struggled to get the upper hand.
"That's us again," Annie said with a laugh, grabbing the nearest bottle of whiskey and filling both of their glasses. When they'd downed them and she'd refilled them, she lifted hers slightly and said, "To Adam."
All around the room, the other Andersons scrambled to fill their glasses and they raised them as well, echoing her toast. Auggie was the last one and, tears in his eyes and a smile on his face, he took Annie's hand in his and lifted his glass. "To Adam."