"Goodbye, Summer": The Party 

"This is the party of your lifetime!" Arcturus yelled to a crowded room while wearing giant prop sunglasses and a party hat. Then he woke up. "This is gonna be a nightmare", he sighed. It was the official last day of summer, a weekday in the middle of September and, I guess this is a good time to tell your friends to waste their night at your house?

At lunch, Arcturus was very quiet. "What's wrong?" Betty asked. "I gotta go get stuff for this party tonight." "What party?" "Our party" "We're having a party?" Arcturus stood up, looked at her and gave a shrug. "I guess." He put his jacket on and walked out the door.

"What does one do for a 'End of Summer' party?" he thought.

At the grocery store, Arcturus saw the solution to his troubles: Fireworks. Riverview wasn't too stiff about safety, so they had a lot of the good stuff. And some of the dumb stuff. Arcturus even bought some of the dumb stuff. He wanted this party to be good but not too good. "Riverview good," he muttered to himself.

Arcturus was arguing with someone on the phone when the first guests started to arrive. (Of course the first guest was Rainer. He's always first.) The woman on the phone was telling Arcturus that the bouncy castle he ordered wasn't going to make the party at all. The bouncy castle guy retired earlier that day. "You're a joke," Arcturus said and hung up.

Later on, the people who showed up, invited or otherwise, were really enjoying themselves. Arcturus went out back to start making food. It was dark out already. I guess that's the problem with having an outdoor party so late in the season. It's a little cold and the sun goes down hours before some people get home from work. It was so cold that most chose to go back inside when they got their food.

Some new faces, some old. Some uninvited. Some missing.

Arcturus broke out the fireworks almost immediately because it was getting late for a school night. Nobody really came outside to look at the show either. I expected them all to gather around like it was an event. Then I would have been able to take some sweet group shots. Who doesn't like a fireworks show?

Oh, someone's excited.

Look at Arcturus's face here. Like this is just "ok" for him.

Arcturus ran around trying to impress the small crowd of his friends that had actually come outside. A true firework artist, some would later say.

Giant fireworks in the sky,...

snakes crawling across the lawn,...

and spinners on the walkway.

It all ended with an interpretive dance on the invention of fireworks. Arcturus incorporated some pretty fantastic usage of the sparkler during the dance.

Nobody was there to see that dance finale though. They all had gone home. Weeknight.